Word: diplomatic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Pigs.' " Yet faced with a political upheaval in the Soviet Union and its spillover in Europe, Bush seems almost recklessly timid, unwilling to respond with the imagination and articulation that the situation requires. "He is supposed to lead, but he is not even really trying yet," complains a British diplomat...
...Gorbachev is the architect of "new thinking" in international affairs, Shevardnadze is his master builder. Like the General Secretary, the amiable, white-haired diplomat has a smile that can melt ice. And like Gorbachev, Shevardnadze sometimes shows a glint of iron teeth. Thanks, in part, to Shevardnadze's diplomatic labors, Soviet tanks and troops have been withdrawn from Afghanistan and are being partially withdrawn from Eastern Europe. A whole class of nuclear weapons has been marked for destruction under the INF treaty signed in 1987. As the Soviets and their allies disentangle themselves from conflicts in Namibia and Cambodia, they...
Kennan's statement contains his typical amalgam of self-effacement and presumption. The diplomat and historian has written 17 books on 19th and 20th century foreign policy; he knows very well that his current "pickings" contain 61 years of incomparable observations. He was in Germany when the Nazis rose to power, and in the U.S.S.R. during Stalin's purges. Since his departure from the Foreign Service in 1953 he has visited almost every dry surface of the globe, and he has never forgotten his notebook. From it he has now culled Sketches from a Life, which brims with diverting character...
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Kennan is imprisoned by the Nazis. Released, he goes on to serve in Portugal, London and then, as the war winds down, the Soviet Union. In the early days, the writer regards the country less as a diplomat than as a romantic novelist manque. Leningrad is "one of the most poignant communities of the world . . . I know that in this city, where I have never lived, there had nevertheless been deposited by some strange quirk of fate -- a previous life, perhaps? -- a portion of my own capacity to feel and to love...
...Gorbachev due in Beijing on May 15, China's rulers were loath to set the stage with a crackdown. Some cynics speculated that conservatives plan to use the spasm of protest to claim a new liberal victim, possibly Hu's successor, Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. But a Western diplomat in Beijing disagreed, suggesting that the era of fall-guy politics has ended. Said he: "Can they let another guy go down the tubes, given the growing cynicism of the Chinese people, the concern for human rights outside the country and their need for more foreign investment...