Word: warred
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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John F. Kennedy's promise in his Inaugural Address to "pay any price, bear any burden . . . to assure the survival and the success of liberty" was translated into policy as the Viet Nam War -- an unambiguous and, as it turned out, disastrous exercise in containment. Under the Nixon Doctrine of 1969, the U.S. deputized friendly potentates to defend Western interests. The star example, alas, was the Shah of Iran. In that case, as in others, this latest form of containment led American policymakers to rely excessively on the dubious principle that the enemies of our enemies would make good enforcers...
Thus, according to Kennan's original criteria, there perhaps can, finally, be an "appeal to common purposes" in Soviet-American relations beyond the elemental one of mutual survival. Until now, avoiding nuclear war has been the only common purpose on which the superpowers could continually agree. That is why arms control has been such a central element in superpower relations. Attempts to reconcile the deeper political disputes over the relationship between the individual and the state -- or between the Soviet state and the rest of the world -- have always failed. For example, in 1972 the superpowers signed a "code...
...emphasize containment as a theme in its policy insofar as the Soviets are willing to demilitarize their own international behavior. What that would mean in practice would vary from one part of the world to another. In Europe -- the original front line of the cold war and still the most important potential "regional conflict" -- there should be negotiation that could eventually lead to drastic cutbacks in NATO and the Warsaw Pact in exchange for genuine self-determination for Eastern Europe...
...only less of a bully toward Western Europe but also less of a thug in Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact may be the first alliance in history whose sole operational purpose has been to invade its own member states. Only when the Iron Curtain is lifted will the cold war be truly over...
History tells us that the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War were brave civilians who were ready to defend their territory at a minute's notice...