Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...diplomatic parlance, Clinton's trip is in large part a "confidence- buildi ng measure." He intends to persuade Western Europe that the U.S. is still involved in Atlantic affairs despite its recent concentration on the Pacific Rim and the North American Free Trade Agreement. "We need to sort of gin up the collective spirit of Europe," he said last week. He will also try to reassure the Central European states that he is concerned about their security while at the same time soothing the apprehensions of Yeltsin and his generals about an encroaching NATO...
...members. In Warsaw last week General John Shalikashvili, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said NATO will be ready for joint military exercises with Polish forces as early as this year. But while strengthening links, the Partnership will fall far short of full membership in the Western alliance. That status carries a sensitive and binding security guarantee -- that an attack on one is an attack on all. Central Europeans, especially the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians, have been clamoring for full membership because they perceive a "security vacuum" in the region. They argue in essence that the West...
This can be seen, for example, in the way Western observers keep moving the goalposts for that hero of democracy, Boris Yeltsin. Democracy lovers have been remarkably understanding as Yeltsin has shut down newspapers, produced a constitution out of his hip pocket that makes him virtual czar, forbidden candidates in the recent election to criticize his constitution on television, put off for years his own need to run for re-election and so on. This was all justified as an "interim" necessity in order to establish Russia on a democratic course. But if Yeltsin continues to govern in a style...
...less attractive version of this argument leaves out the last step. It holds that concepts like "democracy" and "individual rights" are Western notions, which (unlike, apparently, the Western concept of "capitalism") are out of place in consensual Asian cultures. Singapore and Taiwan have thrived on capitalism without democracy...
Bombs go off in western New York as part of a family vendetta...