Read it. Dont understand it. What did we get wrong?
Were we too tough? Not tough enough?
Should have cooperated with them? Should have nuked them? Should have surrendered to them?
Long, LONG read of observations anout the Russians and yetbI could not find in her article what we got wrong.
Help, please.
From another article
Over the past twenty five years I have observed a curious phenomenon in American policy. Somehow we always seem to be one leader behind: We treated Khrushchev as if he were Stalin, Brezhnev as if he were Khrushchev and now — Gorbachev as if he were Brezhnev. Because of this unfortunate predilection we have often missed opportunities in the past. I believe that this is the greatest opportunity we have had to try to forge a new relationship with the Soviet Union and it would be tragic if we were to muff this one now. We moan a lot about Gorbachev’s successful “peace” offensives. What are we suggesting that is better? We have clung to our model of a Soviet foreign policy so entrenched that it could never evolve, while at the same time remaining convinced that we, because of our more flexible and responsive system have a greater ability for change. Yet now, it is our leaders who seem curiously paralyzed. Perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) may be on the front pages of our newspapers and passed into our language, but not into our policy or our actions. Instead, we have responded with a bureaucratic sounding phrase “status quo plus” which sounds suspiciously like an American translation of “Brezhnevian stagnation.”