Word: communisme
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When the global revolution against communism came to China this year, stimulated in part by Gorbachev's visit in May, the U.S. Government was seized with ambivalence. It welcomed the outburst of democratic spirit, up to a point. At the same time, it feared instability, not just because widespread trouble could cost the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of students, but because it would jeopardize a long-standing relationship between the U.S. and the now so obviously misnamed People's Republic. The Administration was so eager to repair relations that it seemed willing to do so on the terms laid...
Among other reasons, the invasion was notable as perhaps the biggest U.S. foreign policy venture in 40 years that had nothing to do with containment of communism. Nobody ever pretended to find reds among Noriega's entourage or voiced any fear that Panama would go communist. Communism also was only a peripheral issue in the Philippines intervention. One reason the Philippine military dislikes Aquino is that it feels she has not been vigorous enough in suppressing communist guerrillas. But the main issue for Bush was simply the survival of a democratically elected government that Washington had helped to install...
...other hand, officials affirm that Bush is showing a new willingness to use American military power to further U.S. interests that have little or nothing to do with communism -- suppressing drug traffic or terrorism, for example. U.S. helicopter pilots have been supporting drug-eradication efforts in Peru and Guatemala, though Peru last week called a halt to joint antidrug action in protest against the Panama invasion. The Washington Post has quoted Joint Chiefs Chairman Powell as telling colleagues that "we have to put a shingle outside our door saying SUPERPOWER LIVES HERE, no matter what the Soviets do, even...
Gorbachev did not invent the idea of trying to reinvent communism, but during his formative years in obscurity he certainly learned a lesson about the connection between internal reform and international relations. He had seen Nikita Khrushchev's vigorous cultural thaw of the late 1950s freeze again in the intensified cold war that followed the Cuban missile crisis. Alexei Kosygin, who was Prime Minister until his death in 1980, attempted to reorient heavy industry toward consumer goods, decentralization and profitmaking in the mid-1960s. But, ironically, that program was aborted partly because the Soviet crackdown on "socialism with a human...
Hungarian revisionism, nicknamed "goulash communism," produced prosperity and glitter for a while, but the economy nonetheless went into a long decline because the stagnation was too widespread and deep rooted to be cured by tinkering. Party boss Janos Kadar, the quisling who had replaced Nagy, was ousted in May 1988. He was succeeded by moderate reformer Karoly Grosz. But as in the Soviet Union, moderate reform was, by definition, inadequate. Drastic measures were necessary and, in the Gorbachev era, acceptable to Moscow. In search of new ideas and a democratic image in January 1989, parliament passed legislation permitting the formation...