Word: pax
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...economy would benefit handsomely from vastly reduced defense expenditures. But the blessings of a Soviet collapse would certainly be mixed. Just as the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I led to Hitler's brutal exploitation of the resulting power vacuum, so the end of the Pax Sovietica in Eurasia might touch off an ethnic bloodbath among the squabbling successor regimes. For University of Alabama historian Hugh Ragsdale, a Soviet collapse would lead to a disastrous "Balkanization" of Eurasia and the emergence of "dozens of Khomeinis . . . skulking incognito among the Sufis and dervishes of the region...
Germany was conquered, then divided into two states designed to remain forever in a state of permanent, if cold, antagonism. Pax Americana and Pax Sovietica solved the German problem. To put it another way, the first achievement of NATO is that it contained the Soviet Union. The second achievement, underappreciated now but not for long, is that with the collaboration of the Soviet Union, it solved the German problem...
During the postwar "Pax Americana," Washington's world role largely involved resisting Communism through a network of military alliances. That period is passing, being replaced by what has been dubbed a "Fax Americana." America's influence will derive, in part, from its role as an exemplar of ideas and a purveyor of information. Ronald Reagan, in a speech in London last month, talked about how "electronic beams blow through the Iron Curtain as if it were lace." In Bratislava, Czechoslovak students sometimes drop by the city's new hotel, equipped for international television reception, where the maids let them watch...
...more than 40 years, the U.S. has held sway in Asia by a combination of Pax Americana and the almighty dollar. Uncle Sam has defended his friends against Communist expansionism while providing aid and guaranteeing markets. Now Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union is behaving less like the Big Bad Bear. The Soviets may well close their naval and air facilities in Viet Nam and continue to foster peace on the Korean peninsula. Many in the area believe it is only a matter of time before the U.S. withdraws from its own bases in the Philippines and removes its ground troops...
...ushered into the box-like family pews for what the minister termed a "little five minute talk." He tells us about Robert Newman (the trusty church sexton, remember?) and name drops Queen Elizabeth II and President Ford. After all, Pax Britannia may be dead and the colonies may be dead and the colonies may be free, but Episcopalian ministers still know who's got class. And who's got money. As we leave the church, he reminds us that the parish is funded only by our donations and hands out his business card, telling us to "come again...