Word: jointing
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...news media have dutifully reported both optimistic and pessimistic assessments over the months but have shown a readier appetite for in-your-face remarks than cautions. That was certainly the experience of retired Admiral William Crowe, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Appearing on ABC's This Week with David Brinkley last August, Crowe predicted, "In a major clash, we'll clean their clocks. If not today, later." He added that both sides would pay a terrible price. His words were quoted (sometimes misquoted) around the world, often with the warning omitted...
...signals from Moscow offered much cause for optimism. Gorbachev's decree on economic crime gave security squads the right to raid government enterprises, cooperatives, private businesses and even joint ventures involving foreign firms, and to carry out audits of their wares, cash holdings and accounts. The crackdown is supposed to wipe out the black market, but it may well trample underfoot the first fragile growth of free enterprise. Said Deputy of the Russian parliament Artyom Tarasov, a new Soviet entrepreneur: "This is no longer the politics of the free market but the politics of discipline...
With the Baltics cooling down, Gorbachev's decision to send troops into the streets everywhere else seemed all the more bizarre. Even though the Defense and Interior ministries' order on joint patrols was dated a full month ago, Gorbachev gave his official authorization for the decree only last week. When he did publish the directive, it was considerably watered down and accompanied by provisions for local watchdog committees on "the activities of law- enforcement organs...
Reformers had been incensed by the permission for the joint patrols -- and even armored vehicles -- to control "mass actions by citizens" and "social- political activities." Their anger led Pugo to explain that the reference was not to "rallies" but to "hooliganism and other criminal offenses and % nothing else." Pugo also said that each republic had the right to decide whether it wanted the army to join forces with local police. Taking him at his word, the Baltic republics and Georgia, Armenia and Moldavia promptly turned down the offer, and the Russian Federation called on Gorbachev to suspend the entire decree...
...without the implicit ! approval of governments. "A deliberate effort to fail to be informed," says Cordesman, "is just another form of collaboration." In a belated acknowledgment that arming one perceived monster to fight another can boomerang, Secretary of State James Baker and his Soviet counterpart, Alexander Bessmertnykh, issued a joint statement last week calling for restraint in the "spiraling arms race" in the Middle East. A gesture, most likely, both too little and too late...