Word: american
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What happens to a land beloved for its beauty when the beauty is ripped away? The northeastern islands of the Caribbean, ringed by sugary beaches, plush with unlikely flowers, inspiring rummy tropical dreams, have become the American paradise. Even the license plates say so. Two months ago, when Hurricane Hugo mowed across the islands from Guadeloupe to Puerto Rico, it turned a landscape that was achingly lovely into one that was painfully bleak. In the case of St. Croix, where a large bomb could scarcely have done more damage, the looting and disorder that followed were as terrifying...
...early 1980s, a new Rifkin cause was aborning. The Reagan Administration had begun to unshackle American industry by dismantling regulatory standards and environmental protections. At the same time, researchers were refining the new tools of molecular biology, which enabled them to redraw the blueprints of life. Genetic-engineering companies were launched in this era of deregulation with glowing prospectuses that promised both medical elixirs and vast profits from applications of the new technology...
This week's meeting in the Med will bring together the most daring of all Soviet leaders and one of the most cautious American Presidents. Mikhail Gorbachev frequently, and proudly, describes his approach to the world as "radical," while George Bush's favorite word when he talks about foreign policy is prudent. Yet Bush has come a long way in his thinking about the Soviet Union. In a matter of months, his Administration has gone from viewing Gorbachev as a slickly disguised variant of the old red menace to a potential partner in creating a new world order...
This evolution of American official attitudes has been subtle and uneven. It has been couched in caveats, often obscured by ambivalence and articulated, sometimes inarticulately, by a Chief Executive who has no flair for geopolitical grand rhetoric and has a tendency to step on his applause lines. Still, the change on the American side, if it continues, could turn out to be as important as Gorbachev's abandonment of the Leninist plan for winning the zero-sum game of history. The American equivalent of what the Soviets call new political thinking is all the more significant coming from the President...
Thus, in one curious and ironic respect, the Administration is back to square one. It has traded its skepticism about Gorbachev's intentions for pessimism about his chances. That leaves the Administration, at least in its own eyes, still stuck with a dilemma about what prudent American policy should be. The strong inclination remains to wait and see, to test, to keep its powder dry and to be ready for someone other than Mikhail Sergeyevich...