Word: gorbachev
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...Mikhail Gorbachev panhandles the U.S. and McDonald's draws longer lines in Moscow than Lenin's tomb, it is difficult to believe that less than three decades ago, Washington and Moscow were on the steely edge of war. The drama and tension of those years are vividly recaptured in Michael Beschloss's The Crisis Years. But this is no simple rehash of John Kennedy's sparring with Nikita Khrushchev. Beschloss casts new light on topics ranging from the Cuban missile crisis to the security risks of J.F.K.'s sexual dalliances...
Administration officials agree that Gorbachev faces crucial decisions and believe what the U.S. should push for is not increased efficiency alone but transformation of the entire system. Says one: "We have to provide political and psychological support to the Soviets and encourage them to continue in the direction of reform." Until such a fundamental program is actually being carried out, the official says, "all the nations of the West are going to be very cautious...
...speech to NATO foreign ministers in Copenhagen last week, Secretary of State James Baker listed several of the conditions for assistance that Gorbachev had tried to head off. The U.S.S.R. is potentially a prosperous country, said Baker, but "to tap this potential, the Soviets must move to embrace a real market economy." And to provide stable political underpinning for it, Moscow should fully accept the rule of law, stop repressing the independence-minded Baltic states, cut its military spending and curtail or end its aid to "regimes that pursue internal repression," presumably including Cuba...
Like Baker, Bush believes Soviet economic reform will be so agonizing that the West will have to dole out aid carefully, both to avoid waste and to give the Soviets an incentive for sticking to a hard road. "Bush knows Gorbachev is a communist and has no visceral or intellectual commitment to market reforms," says one of the Administration's top Soviet specialists. "But Gorbachev knows his country is going down the drain and that he has to do something extraordinary...
...leader and Washington lawyer, to be his next ambassador in Moscow. The appointment was hailed almost unanimously in Washington as a brilliant move. Strauss, 72, knows all there is to know about how Washington politics and American business work, though admittedly next to nothing about the Soviet Union. If Gorbachev pursues real economic change and there are deals to be made with him, Strauss can help close them. Of course, if reform stalls again and bilateral relations sour, Strauss could be out of business...