Word: crackdowns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Fears are widespread that Moscow is creating a pretext for a military crackdown by inflaming unrest in the South Ossetian Autonomous Region, an ethnic enclave created for the Ossetians as a reward for their political loyalty after the Bolsheviks took control of the republic in 1921. Last September, as the rest of Georgia was moving toward independence, the South Ossetian regional council declared the area to be a "Soviet Democratic Republic" loyal to Moscow. The parliament in Tbilisi responded by dissolving the autonomous region altogether. Conflicts between the Georgian police and local separatists have resulted in at least 12 deaths...
Watchers could only wonder if the crackdown marked an ominous turning point for Gorbachev's commitment to liberalize his troubled nation. Has he chosen to sacrifice his promises of change to demands for order? He appeared to have decided that Soviet unity was worth any cost. The bloodletting in Vilnius was plainly intended to warn other restive republics to draw back from demands for sovereignty -- before the troops arrive there too. Some in the West were beginning to divine a different message: a betrayal of their investment in Gorbachev's leadership. Even his well-wishers fear Gorbachev has embarked...
...interval between August and January took on a peculiar unreality -- a psychological suspension, an air lock between Saddam's offense and the retaliation against him, between peace and war. The world went on hold. Disturbances that in other times would have riveted attention -- the Soviet crackdown in Lithuania, the fighting in Somalia -- became secondary. When violence is so elaborately laid out in advance, when it is both insistently menacing and hypothetical, it loses spontaneity. The waiting makes war seem unnatural. By last week so much premeditation had given a certain pallor to the American mood, a sense of resignation...
...Cheney's crackdown on the A-12 was actually in line with the get-tough policy he has been pursuing for months. He had previously approved the killing of the Marine Corps's V-22 Osprey vertical-takeoff plane, the Navy's Lockheed P-7 antisubmarine patrol aircraft, the Army's FOG-M (fiber-optic guided missile) and an Air Force plan to place the MX missile on rails. Said a Pentagon official of the new procurement mood: "Programs that are bleeding cannot survive...
WORLD: A Kremlin crackdown on the separatists...