Word: foreign
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...longer. It may not yet be polite to say so, but the German question is back. The first widely noticed hint occurred this spring when the West German Foreign Minister, in a rare demonstration of German assertiveness, forced a change in the American position (and entirely undercut Britain) on the issue of short-range nuclear weapons. The issue is relatively minor, but the demonstration was not. It not only showed alliance willingness to accommodate German demands, it also showed German willingness to make them, and to make them purely and unashamedly in terms of its national interest...
Germany's immediate aim is to rid itself of the burden of being Europe's battlefield. (Hence the campaign against short-range nuclear weapons and low- flying training aircraft.) Its medium-range interest is to rid itself of foreign soldiers, which would turn it from an instrument of alliance policy into an entirely independent entity of its own. But its long-range goal is reunification or, to paraphrase Secretary of State James Baker in another context, dreams of a Greater Germany...
...great place for a powwow -- but a superpower rendezvous? This week's meeting between Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze takes place not in Washington or New York City but Wyoming's remote Grand Teton National Park, a glorious setting and a logistical nightmare. At a modern-day campsite near Jackson Hole, advance men have hauled in satellite dishes, encryption machines, secure telephones, simultaneous-translation systems, crates of computers, hundreds of pounds of barbecue and a gift box of hand-tooled cowboy boots...
After eight months in his mahogany-paneled office overlooking the Lincoln Memorial, First Friend Baker is not even running foreign policy -- the President handles that. After a rocky start in a new field, the legendary political operative is still taking lumps from critics who argue he is quick to cut a deal, such as the bipartisan accord on Nicaragua, but slow to present a consistent strategy for critical areas like Eastern Europe and the Middle East...
...criticism comes from both left and right. "To provide leadership, you can't just respond to circumstances, you have to create them," says Senator Alan Cranston, the liberal California Democrat and Foreign Relations Committee veteran. Frank Gaffney, director of the conservative Center for Security Policy, thinks that Baker "believes in success for its own sake and often finds specific goals inconvenient. That's not leadership or vision." Even Shevardnadze took a shot last week, complaining that "the restrained, indecisive position of the American Administration" has led to a "peculiar lull" in arms control...