Word: sovietize
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Alan Furst remembers exactly when he first looked on evil. In Russia, in 1983. A visiting journalist, he saw it reflected in the tired eyes of a middle-aged woman on a Moscow bus; in the frightened obedience of a man when a Soviet policeman shook his finger at the man; in a jab in the back when he offended a Yalta ferry purser. Says Furst, who talks with the same cinematic vigor that fills his six fine spy novels: "I thought, I'll pay him back when I get to the typewriter...
Russia is fuming about the Bush administration's plans to continue to develop its National Missile Defense (NMD). The system would intercept any missile fired at the United States, but it would also nullify the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty--one of the cornerstones of U.S.-Soviet stability during the second half of the Cold War. Although U.S. officials claim that the NMD is strictly for protection against such "rogue states" as North Korea and Iraq, allies and enemies are skeptical, and Moscow fears that the U.S. is scheming toward unilateral global supremacy...
Then came the revelations about a high-level FBI agent who has been accused of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia for the past twenty-five years. The accused spy, Robert P. Hanssen, is also believed to have informed the Soviets about one of America's most prized Cold War secrets--a surveillance tunnel under the Soviet Union's embassy in Washington...
...ballistic missiles and it has warned that it will equip its hard-to-detect Topol-M missile with multiple warheads if Washington goes ahead with the NMD system. Although it can scarcely afford to pay its soldiers and although its armed forces are barely a carcass of the old Soviet military machine, Russia can still act like a superpower when it wants to, and it expects to be treated...
While some would have a hard time believing that the Western alliance could become undone, it is not inconceivable. In the old days, other countries--especially our allies--would have tolerated America's overzealous security schemes because, next to the Soviets, the American way sounded pretty good. Those days are over--the Soviet threat is gone. The death of communism, combined with the rise of American arrogance, has made us less attractive as an ally...