59 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
59 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
THE SOVIETS
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What Are They Pulling Now?
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They kicked Andrei Gromyko upstairs and made him president. They have
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shuffled a lot of other people around in the Soviet hierarchy. Now they're
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offering a nuclear testing moratorium in memory of the 40th anniversary of
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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What are the Soviets up to?
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And what's the deal with this new foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, who
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speaks with so much less bombast than we're used to?
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George Shultz, of course, didn't let the lack of Soviet rhetoric at Helsinki
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slow him down. He lambasted Soviet violations of the spirit of the accords up
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one side and down the other.
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Both sides are "looking forward" to the upcoming summit meetings between
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Mikail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. The U.S. seems to be keeping the verbal
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pressure on, while the Soviets are looking like a bunch of the nicest guys you'd
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ever want to meet. Are the tables turning?
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Nope. The tables are not turning, we say; it's merely another Soviet ploy to
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soften up the West for a new round of...something.
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But what are they up to?
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It's possible that they're preparing for a gigantic "40th Anniversary of the
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A-Bomb Garage Sale." The Soviets probably have a lot of old stuff in their
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collective attic they'd like to get rid of.
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It's also possible they're planning to mount an agressive public relations
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campaign promoting communistic socialism. Can you imagine the commercials they
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might show on prime time television?
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But seriously, folks...George Will, the noted commentator and columnist,
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recently stated that nuclear weapons aren't for making war but for preventing it
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(or something to that effect). This is not new stuff, but it seems like a lot
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of our political leaders have been catching on to this kind of empty logic
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lately.
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In fact, lots of them sat around with Walter Cronkite recently and,
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paisley-tied, calmly spoke similarly. What they're really worried about, it
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seems, is not that the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. will push the button but that some
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weirdo like Khadafy will get ahold of a pound of plutonium and start causing
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trouble.
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(In case you can't see me, my mouth is agape as I write this.)
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One political wizard even went so far as to term nuclear warheads "diplomatic
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tools." (!!) Now, don't that beat all?
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The only way our arsenals of nuclear weapons could become diplomatic tools
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would be if someone developed one that would fit in an attache case.
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George Shultz ought to send the Soviets a couple "Mad Max" videotapes. Now
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THOSE would be diplomatic tools!
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