Word: bushing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Although Administration aides spoke of considerable "arm twisting" by Bush, Cheney's turnabout reflected political and budgetary realities more than a major rethinking of U.S. defense needs. Faced with a lingering $110 billion deficit, Congress long ago abandoned Pentagon plans to increase defense spending each year. Overdue as Cheney's order may have been, the armed services responded by leaking hastily assembled cut lists, studded with base closings and hard-to-cut weapons systems that are immensely popular on Capitol Hill. Conspicuously absent from the lists were such big-ticket items as the Navy's Seawolf attack submarine...
More striking than the size of the Pentagon's proposed cutback was the timing of its announcement. Bush has become adept at letting the most conservative Cabinet members announce liberal-sounding policy changes that could anger the Republican right. It thus fell to Cheney to disclose that the Pentagon is examining conventional-weapons cuts that would go beyond Bush's plan, unveiled at last May's NATO summit, to reduce U.S. and Soviet forces to 275,000 each. Some Pentagon officials are worried that the talk about reducing defense spending could, in the words of one, give some allies...
...after Thanksgiving with the President at Camp David tutoring him on how to handle the Soviet leader, with whom she has met five times. Concerned that Cheney's announcement will weaken America's hand if the Malta talks take a substantive turn on arms control, Thatcher advised Bush, "Any surprise that you're presented with, you take it away and you consider it very, very carefully...
...pushing and pulling among allies will bolster Bush's wariness if Gorbachev delivers a surprise of the sort that caught Ronald Reagan off balance in Reykjavik. Much more likely are broader philosophical explorations of the future course of the superpower relationship and a series of small but still significant incremental steps on trade, chemical weapons and nuclear testing. But White House aides have been hinting for several weeks that Bush will not be going to Malta empty-handed. If past experience is any guide, Bush will not decide to play whatever cards he is carrying until he arrives in Malta...
Above all else, Bush, a true believer in the value of personal diplomacy, wants to cement a bond with Gorbachev that he thinks will enhance relations between the two countries. He has sought advice from experts he has long trusted, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Nixon, and from some about whom he has misgivings, like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Henry Kissinger. Bush hopes not only to impress Gorbachev with his understanding of Soviet problems but also to argue cogently about solutions. "It's one on one, and at stake is the world," said a senior Administration official...