Word: gorbachev
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Whatever else it accomplishes, Mikhail Gorbachev's diplomatic intervention in the gulf war has already revealed the shape of Soviet foreign policy in the months, perhaps even years, to come...
...Kremlin's new approach is a far cry from the "partnership" with the U.S. that Gorbachev proclaimed during the heady days of 1989, when he pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan and liberated Eastern Europe. Some conservatives have concluded, with as much glee as alarm, that Gorbachev is returning to the bad old days of the cold war. That characterization is not just simplistic -- it misses the irony of what is happening. The emerging U.S.-Soviet interplay is in some respects a throwback to the even older days of razzle-dazzle realpolitik, before the era of a global, Manichaean struggle...
...other issues, their interests -- and thus their policies -- diverge. For one thing, Bush and Gorbachev are operating in entirely different domestic political environments. The man in the White House has strong backing from his citizens, while his counterpart in the Kremlin has received delegations of Muslims from Transcaucasia and Central Asia who are angry at the spectacle of infidels bombing an Islamic nation...
While his actions on behalf of human rights permeate the book, Sakharov's incredible perceptiveness and extreme humility strike the reader most forcefully. Early in the book Sakharov engages in what appears to be indescriminate name-dropping--Thatcher said this, Mitterand that, Gorbachev another thing. However, Sakharov shows that each of these seemingly irrelevant anecdotes provide essential insight into a leader's character...
Sakharov realized that as the two icons of Soviet opposition, he and Solzhenitsyn felt a deep responsibility to the Soviet people. His constant work for freedom, even against those who purported to be refashioning Soviet society, showed him to be one of the real leaders of perestroika. Because of Gorbachev's caution, the U.S.S.R. is now even more of a shambles than when perestoika began. Would that Gorbachev had listened to this physicist-prophet before his chances faded...