Word: soviet-american
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Rarely have the inexorable forces of history been so starkly revealed by an exchange between two world leaders. Despite all the public handshakes and smiles, and despite the apparent rapport that emerged between two confident and forceful men last week, they were caught by a stark axiom of the Soviet-American rivalry: neither side can afford to base the security of a nation on trust alone. For 40 years, ever since the earliest days of the cold war, each American President, each Kremlin leader, has felt compelled to counter every move by a countermove, every new weapon with a newer...
...most cursory review of the Soviet-American agenda is sobering: with few exceptions, the more important and potentially dangerous the issue, the deeper are the divergences. The spirit in which they are discussed, however, can make a lasting difference in the long run, and only the heads of government can set the tone for their subordinates. Barring some spectacular blowup or equally improbable major agreement, the success or failure of the summit will eventually be judged less by what Reagan and Gorbachev do in Geneva than by what happens in what is likely to be a long and difficult series...
...years the world has watched with growing concern every move in the fitful drama of Soviet-American relations. As arms-control talks sputter and arsenals inexorably grow, so do the fears and, perhaps miraculously, so do the hopes. That is why Geneva was destined to be, more than any of the ten summits that have preceded it since the end of World War II, a global extravaganza, an event whose very occurrence transcended in importance whatever might be put on paper...
...address last week, recounting the problems his predecessors faced. "But these sad chapters do not relieve me of the obligation to try to make this a safer, better world." He proposed an expanded program of "people-to-people exchanges," spoke of "a historic opportunity" to change the course of Soviet-American relations, and dubbed his trip "a mission for peace...
...unresolved problems") and rather bombastic ("Sometimes even a single day may be equivalent to a whole epoch in terms of the scope of decisions that have to be made"). The Soviet leader attempts to woo Americans with assurances of his reasonableness: "We are committed firmly to returning Soviet-American relations back onto a normal track, back to the road of mutual understanding and cooperation...