Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bush Administration was made up of battle-scarred veterans with long memories. They were acutely aware that every President since the end of World War II had learned the hard way the domestic political perils of underestimating the Soviet capacity for producing unpleasant surprises and overestimating the possibility of profound, permanent improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations...
This week's meeting in the Med will bring together the most daring of all Soviet leaders and one of the most cautious American Presidents. Mikhail Gorbachev frequently, and proudly, describes his approach to the world as "radical," while George Bush's favorite word when he talks about foreign policy is prudent. Yet Bush has come a long way in his thinking about the Soviet Union. In a matter of months, his Administration has gone from viewing Gorbachev as a slickly disguised variant of the old red menace to a potential partner in creating a new world order...
...always the sort of politician who fretted about the consequences of a misstep. For Bush, therefore, slow is better than fast and standing pat is often the safest posture. Once he replaced Ronald Reagan, Bush's instinct was to apply the brakes to the juggernaut of improved U.S.-Soviet relations, to take the turns very cautiously and perhaps even to pull over on the side of the road and study the map for a while...
...couple of junior Senators named Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon. It was Nixon who called Truman's Secretary of State the dean of the "cowardly college of Communist containment." Two decades later, the New Nixon's policy of detente ran into a buzz saw of bipartisan anti-Soviet opposition. When a Watergate-wounded Nixon went to see Leonid Brezhnev in the Crimea in 1974, he refused to visit Yalta nearby, lest anyone accuse him of another giveaway. It was all for naught: the traveling White House press gleefully filed stories with the dread dateline...
When Jimmy Carter signed a SALT II treaty in June 1979, he gave Brezhnev a big kiss on the cheek. The treaty was never ratified, largely because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan six months later. In 1980 Republicans used photographs of the signing ceremony with the message to voters YOU TOO CAN KISS OFF JIMMY CARTER...