Word: formalities
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...collapse of the old regimes and the astonishing changes under way in the Soviet Union open prospects for a Europe of cooperation in which the Iron Curtain disappears, people and goods move freely across frontiers, NATO and the Warsaw Pact evolve from military powerhouses into merely formal alliances, and the threat of war steadily fades. They also raise the question of German reunification, an issue for which politicians in the West or, for that matter, Moscow have yet to formulate strategies. Finally, should protest get out of hand, there is the risk of dissolution into chaos, sooner or later necessitating...
...foundation of the old European order was the formal creation of two Germanys in 1949 and the decision by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer a few years later to tether West Germany to the Atlantic Alliance. For the Soviet Union, which subjugated East Germany as a satellite and buffer, this meant that any war with the West would occur on German rather than Russian soil. For the other Europeans, it meant a respite from the problem of German militarism. For the U.S., it made possible the creation of a strong NATO alliance to lead the struggle for containing the Soviets...
...century ago, when the pictures of nonpareils like N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish graced the tissue-covered plates. Still, Van Allsburg retains his special dream aura in the brooding shadows in which the swans float, in the surprising sight of pigs being led through the door of a formal bedroom, in the everyday surrealism of a man absorbed in reading while standing on a horse's back. As Van Allsburg puts it, in contrast to the foursquare rightness of traditional illustration, "I like the sense of 'What's wrong with this picture...
...George Bush has required before he would come face-to-face with Mikhail Gorbachev is more time than it took for Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev to meet and overcome their mutual suspicion. The 1985 Geneva summit between Gorbachev and Reagan proved that a get-together need not end with formal agreements to produce important results. In their staterooms off Malta, the U.S. and Soviet Presidents may finally launch a partnership to deal with the difficult, dangerous and exhilarating challenges that confront them...
...visit by the Polish-born former U.S. National Security Adviser was timely. Two years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev established a joint Soviet-Polish commission whose mandate included the reopening of the Katyn case. Since then, the Soviets have delayed a formal verdict. But officials, eager to clear the air before Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki's arrival in Moscow later this month, want to hasten a judgment. Applauding Gorbachev for making a "historic break with Stalinism," Brzezinski offered a face-saving way out. "Many Soviet people were also victims of Stalinism," he said. "So the acknowledgment of these crimes should lead...