Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...combination of Presidential distrust and operational embarrassments. However, for most of its existence, the CIA managed to attract some of the best and the brightest--people lured to the idea of defending democracy, collecting and analyzing intelligence that could prevent the next World War or preempting a Soviet maneuver that could upset the delicate power balance of the Cold War. Now, in this post-Cold War era, the CIA has another war to wage. This time its adversary is on its own soil and it looks quite different from Dr. Evil...
Just take the great martial powers of modern times: the U.S., the Soviet Union, Germany, Britain, Japan, China and Israel. The age of America's expansion in the 19th century was marked by the low-tech coffeepot that was left on the fire until the brew inside had thickened into a blackish acid just right for tanning buffalo hides...
...Soviet Union: toxic mud and tepid water. But the Red Army went all the way to Berlin in 1945. It blithely crushed revolts in various satellite countries, moved into Cuba, Africa and Afghanistan. Prussia-Germany? In the old days, only the rich could afford real coffee; the masses had to make do with a blend of burnt barley and chicory. But that stuff took the Wehrmacht to the gates of Moscow and Cairo...
...they chased American soldiers down the Korean Peninsula. Ditto the British, who for 400 years ruled the seas while swilling Java that was as tasty as their food. Tiny Israel has bested the Arabs in five wars. And why? Because Israeli "coffee" could eat through the armor of a Soviet-built T-72 in three minutes...
...should surprise no one that, as Dunn notes, Lenin had a statue of Robespierre erected in Moscow in 1918. (Made of cheap stone, it soon crumbled, as the Soviet Union would some 70 years later.) Sister Revolutions shows not only how the French and American experiments developed, but also why their differing examples have continued to beguile ambitious leaders...