Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...flop on the notion of an expanded NATO. During an August visit to Warsaw, he had declared that Polish membership in the alliance "would not be counter to Russian interests." That was taken as a green light for drawing much of the old East bloc into the alliance, and Western policy planners immediately went to work on mechanisms for membership. First to join would be the so-called Visegrad countries -- Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary -- probably by the end of the '90s. Then might come the Baltic states -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- and in the more distant future...
Another obvious sign of Russian military pressure is an attempt to amend the CFE treaty so that Russia can move more heavy weapons southward for deployment. The Russians contend that their southern borders are threatened by civil wars in Caucasus, a circumstance unforeseen by the original treaty. Western negotiators are opposed to changes. "CFE is a good agreement," says a senior British diplomat. "The Russian generals never liked it, and now they feel in a stronger position to press Yeltsin to dilute it." Nevertheless, some Western leaders are hinting at a compromise. Manfred Worner, NATO's Secretary-General, agrees that...
There is a similar Western softening on NATO enlargement. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe calls it "premature," and liberals who formerly advocated expansion are having second thoughts. "I can only advise utmost caution when thinking about moving NATO eastward," says former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. "We should not exclude Russia." Among the few remaining advocates of early enlargement are the hapless Central European countries with better reasons than Russia to fear for their security. Yeltsin's flip-flop caused acute anxiety in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. "Poland's striving toward NATO is irreversible," said Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski...
Concubine is an Eastern film whose subject, scope and nonstop bustle will be agreeable to Western moviegoers. Anyone can appreciate the splendor of the theatrical pageantry or the dagger eyes of Gong Li as a dragon lady whose only commandment is survival. The scenes in the Peking Opera School, where boys are caned for doing wrong or right, are no less horrifying than the later tableaux of public humiliation at the hands of the Maoists. But Chen clearly sympathizes with the schoolmasters. From such brutality, he suggests, artists are created. Concubine offers another moral: From the crushing cultural restrictions...
...DEMOCRACY: Everybody's favorite Western-sounding word. The rebel legislators used it, but their aim was the antithesis of democracy -- to create a new form of dictatorship that would restore the authority and privileges they had lost. Yeltsin too has little claim to the term, particularly last week when he shut down newspapers, outlawed opposition parties and disbanded local legislatures...