Word: humanize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Human rights and regional conflicts. Lawmakers could link ratification of the INF agreement to issues like a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan or an easing of the restrictions on Jewish emigration. Many Senators might find it hard to vote against such politically popular measures. But because these provisions have little real relevance to the missile accord, they could probably be shot down before reaching the Senate floor for a vote...
Even though there were no breakthroughs on arms control -- the thorny issue of Star Wars was set aside for another day -- and there were heated exchanges on human rights, the exalted pronouncements uttered in the afterglow were more than mere hyperbole. Something extraordinary was taking place: four decades of often truculent cold-war rhetoric were giving way to dispassionate discourse and high-level rapport. Neither side was forgetting the vast ideological chasm that separates the superpowers, but they were learning to work around their differences, to stake out common ground on which to build a better understanding...
...made in his televised speech Thursday night were overstated: the INF treaty is not the first to require reductions in the number of nuclear weapons (SALT II provided for limited cuts), the summit did not represent a victory for his SDI program, and he was not able to make human rights or regional issues anything more than a sideshow to the business of arms control...
Chopping the air with his hands and jutting out his lower lip, Gorbachev charged that all journalists wanted to do was grill him on human rights, "as if we are agreeing to give interviews not just to try to search for the truth, to prod each other to serious thinking, but to drive the politician into a corner." He then instructed the reporters, like a scolding schoolmaster, to "think over this part of my talk." The outburst, like his brusque answers to most of the questions that followed, revealed that glasnost has definite limits...
...sides made even less progress on the other issues under discussion. Reagan began the very first session with an hour-long lecture on human rights, pointing out that the U.S., a nation of immigrants, felt strongly about the right of people to travel and live where they pleased. He referred in particular to the cases of Jews who were not permitted to leave the Soviet Union. In the heated discussion that followed, Gorbachev angrily told the President, "I'm not on trial here, and you're not a judge to judge me." Gorbachev then compared the Soviet Union's emigration...