Word: expansionist
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...cold war would require a large measure of freedom within the Soviet Union to help dispel Western outrage over the way it treats the people it rules. The Kremlin would have to justify its authority by focusing on the needs and aspirations of its citizens rather than by pursuing expansionist aims. In addition, the Soviets would need to abandon the notion that their security depends on threatening the security of others. Lenin's old dictum of kto-kogo (who-whom) -- or who will prevail over whom -- would have to give way to a concept of live and let live...
American analysts from Kennan onward have stressed their own view of the connection: the Kremlin's totalitarian domestic system, they argue, is a primary cause of its expansionist foreign policy. In order to consolidate and protect its power at home, the ruling elite finds it useful to create a hostile international environment. Richard Pipes, a history professor at Harvard University and hard-line Soviet expert who served in the Reagan Administration, is a noted proponent of this view. Says he: "Aggressiveness is embedded in a system where there is a dictatorial party that can justify its power only by pretending...
Those who fear that successful economic reforms would lead Moscow to renew its expansionist policies argue that, despite Gorbachev's rhetoric, the Soviet quest for security is essentially aggressive. The Russian word for security, bezopasnost, translates literally as "absence of danger." Moscow's way of achieving that state has often been to identify a danger, then crush it. As a largely landlocked nation with a history of being invaded, Russia developed an expansionist desire to control large territories. Over the years, there has been nothing as offensive as Russia on the defensive. Witness the postwar subjugation of Eastern Europe...
...dictatorship of the opposite extreme. In the long run, the consolidation of a Communist system in Nicaragua also becomes a threat to peace. I have no doubt that the Communist government of Nicaragua is not the best for my country. If there's one country the Sandinistas, given their expansionist ideology, must try to discredit as an oasis of democracy and peace, it is mine...
Heller, however, was no doctrinaire expansionist. After leaving office in 1964, he saw clearly the danger of resurgent inflation in an overheated economy and tried vainly to persuade Lyndon Johnson to raise taxes again to pay for the Viet Nam War. Though he lost that round -- and had to watch while war-driven inflation soared -- he retained his influence as a professor, an inveterate witness before congressional committees and a counselor to Democratic politicians...