Word: blocs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...living in Berlin has more than doubled since 2003. There are now more of them than Turks, who long made up the largest contingent of foreigners. In Mitte, almost 30% of the population comes from abroad; before the Wall came down, the only foreigners were a smattering of East bloc diplomats. The new arrivals are literally rejuvenating Berlin's population: unlike the Germans themselves, whose birthrate is among the lowest in Europe, the foreigners are either bringing their children with them, or having them there. Mitte has the largest proportion of children under the age of 6. And that...
ASEAN has grown up since the days of the so-called red threat. Not only are two of its members - Vietnam and Laos - socialist countries, but the regional bloc has transformed itself from an impoverished backwater to a key member of the global economy. Indeed, ASEAN's 600 million citizens have weathered the current global financial crisis far better than the citizenry of many other regions. Indonesia, for instance, is predicting upwards of 4% growth this year. (See Barack Obama's family tree...
Part of the problem, too, is the distance with which the U.S. held ASEAN in recent years. While China, India, Australia and other regional economies have been assiduously wooing Southeast Asia by signing free-trade agreements with the bloc, the U.S., particularly under the presidency of George W. Bush, kept ASEAN at arm's length. One reason was Burma's accession to ASEAN in 1997, which put the U.S. in a tough spot. Washington had been tightening sanctions on the Burmese junta because of its dismal human-rights record. By participating in ASEAN confabs, Bush's State Department worried that...
...only thing marring what could have been a perfect year for a country more accustomed to serving as a battleground in regional power struggles was the fact that Lebanon has had no government since parliamentary elections in June. That was until Monday, when the majority U.S.-backed political bloc and its rivals in the Syria- and Iran-backed minority coalition finally agreed on a new power-sharing Cabinet. But while the deal ends the three-year political crisis that brought the country to the brink of civil war, it doesn't address the question underlying the dispute: Should Lebanon...
...named TIME's Man of the Decade.) Neither Gorbachev nor Reagan was directly responsible for the fall of the Wall; rather, it collapsed from its own weight. But Reagan's speech presciently identified Berlin as the proving ground of Gorbachev's intentions to open up the communist bloc. If Gorbachev truly sought peace and liberalization, Reagan said in Berlin, then he should let the Wall come down. In the end, Gorbachev did, and the rest of the Iron Curtain followed. Allowing democracy to spread through Eastern Europe in 1989 was Gorbachev's greatest accomplishment; in this drama, Reagan...