Word: east
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Iran has thus far proved to be one of the most significant tests of President Barack Obama's national-security leadership. And the stakes are high: failure could mean an Iranian nuclear weapon and a Middle East arms race on the one hand, and military action by the U.S. or Israel that could inflame the region and create an Islamic backlash against the U.S. on the other. The key question is what price the President is willing to pay to avoid such outcomes...
...make critical choices, doing just enough to raise hopes but not enough to realize them. The Administration, for example, announced in mid-September that it was unilaterally dropping plans to base advanced missile-defense interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. Critics said Obama had given away the East European store to Russia in the vague hope of getting assistance on Iran. But a month later, literally on the same day that the U.S., Russia and others were negotiating with Iran in Vienna, Vice President Joe Biden was in Warsaw confirming plans to deploy Patriot ground-to-air missiles...
...years, the Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of the division between Eastern and Western Europe. So when East and West Berliners tore it down one night in November of 1989, it seemed as though this division would break down, too. Communist regimes throughout the region were replaced by democratically elected governments, and in 1991 even the mighty Soviet Union broke apart...
...Poland, where the Red Army’s presence there after the Second World War played a large role in installing a communist government. It’s not unreasonable that Russians should look back on their past with mixed feelings, at least. However, the divergent views in East and West about the communist past point to a more significant difference in each region’s dealings with present-day Russia...
Even disregarding Russian policies, the political divide between West and East has barely decreased since 1989. Ukraine is the only non-NATO country to be rated “free” in Freedom House’s most recent analysis of the former Soviet Socialist Republics, and even democratic Ukraine is the focus of Russian attempts to influence its presidential election in January. Although Western brand names are making inroads in many of these countries, opening stores and making goods available that would have been unheard of in communist days, democratic elections and free speech are often still lacking...