Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...vast area stretching from the Arctic Ocean south to the Black Sea and from the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad clear across Eurasia to the North Pacific into chaos or civil war. At the most extreme, some Western analysts are whispering again a phrase last heard in 1991, when the Soviet Union was breaking up: "Yugoslavia with nukes...
...fancy word is "subsidiarity." it's the principle that public functions should be performed at the lowest possible level of government -- the one closest to the citizens. The world is in a frenzy of subsidiarity at the moment. The former Soviet empire divides and subdivides into ever smaller sovereign units. In Western Europe, there is a rebellion against the "bureaucrats of Brussels," headquarters of the European Union. And here in the United States, a recurring theme of the Gingrich Ascendancy is that this or that Federal Government program should be turned over to the states. State governments, it is argued...
...first mistake Boris Yeltsin made may have been the worst: his decision to teach the rebellious little region a lesson. After losing Eastern Europe and 14 former Soviet republics, Russia would bend no more. To revive the country's pride and show other restive nationalities what happens to secessionists, Yeltsin decided to slap down the Chechens. He thought it would be easy to whip the backward province of 1.2 million into line and earn himself a much needed boost in popularity. Instead he marched his army into a humiliating, bloody...
...this be the same military behemoth that loomed over NATO for 40 years of cold war? As a matter of fact, no. This is the crippled army produced by the ) breakup of the Soviet Union and the near collapse of the Russian economy. The hardened troops of Ukraine and Belarus, with most of their equipment, are gone. The former Soviet Army's strength of almost 3 million men is now down to less than 1.5 million. The defense budget has been slashed, leaving units in the field with no money for fuel, fleets rusting in port, planes grounded without spare...
...warned the Russian parliament that "no army in the world is in such a poor state as ours." It was a sin, he said, to keep it "half-starved and destitute." That was no exaggeration. Thousands of troops who were pulled back from the far reaches of the Soviet empire are living in barracks and with relatives in Russia because there is no housing for them. Large-unit field exercises have not been held since 1992. Russian pilots fly only an hour or two a month, while U.S. flyers spend 20 hours a month in the air to hone their...