From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Republican (American?) Arrogance makes us lau
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 19:25:36 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.142537.14894@husc3.harvard.edu> koumis@husc4.harvard.edu (Anthony Koumis) writes:
>In article <1992Aug19.033655.5007@midway.uchicago.edu> sug6@usite-next.uchicago.edu (Patrick Sugent) writes:
>>  Well, his opinions are just that, his opinions.  To assume that they,
>>in any way, represent the views of all Europeans or all European literature
>>is just mistaken.
>>
>>  On a personal level, I know people from England, France, and even Croatia
>>that disagree with the above opinion.  As a regular reader of _The Economist_,
>>I can assure you that it gives credit to the policies of Republicans and
>>their influence on the end of the Cold War (so at least one bit of
>>European literature provides some credit to the Republican policies.)

>Please, _The Economist_ is a conservative magazine, a pal of MAggie
>who did all she could to pal up with Ronnie.  Dont take it as
>the definitve opinion of Europe.

	On the other hand, her party _has_ been in power for well over
a decade, suggesting that Britain at least didn't mind "palling up
with Ronnie" particularly.  There _isn't_ a definitive opinion of
Europe, any more than there's a definitive opinion of North America.

>On the whole, America is perceived as arrogant by Europeans I would
>think.  The status quo in power might like to not say that because
>they want our money and support.  But in general, I think the poster was
>pointing out the Bush was taking sole resposibility for ending the
>Cold War which is ridiculous. He lucked out by being president
>like Ronnie did.  GOrby deserves credit and in Bush's world vsion
>he Bush is the only one he did anything.

	I'll grant that Bush's major "contribution" was being on the
scene.  He really never seemed to understand what was going on.  But
neither did Gorbachev.  Gorbachev hoped that by limited liberalization
he could sustain a one-party bureaucratic state which wielded imperial
power over a significant fraction of the globe.  He never wished to
dismantle large state enterprises, made it clear that he believed the
Party should retain its "leading role", and did not intend to give
self-determination to the republics even if that meant, as in
the Baltics, sending in troops.  Gorbachev was Louis XVI, willing to
go just far enough to create instability, but not to make the systemic
changes necessary to resolve it.  And the credit for making that
necessary does, I think, belong to the fact that the US in the 80's
challenged Soviet expansion while forcing them to strain their economy
with a renewed arms race.  The US spent 6% of its GNP on its military
during the 80's-- the USSR spent _40%_.  There is no question that the
economic strains which forced Gorbachev to attempt reform were sparked
in large part by the necessity to spend close to half of what they
produced to maintain their military power.  In the end, they couldn't
do it.

	And the person most responsible for the final act was not Bush
or Gorbachev, but Yeltsin.  Yeltsin, on being purged by Gorbachev,
seems to have undergone a significant transformation, and whether it
was pragmatic or emotional is virtually irrelevant.  When it counted,
he did show courage, and it gave him victory in what appeared an
impossible situation.  Yeltsin, who spent years calling for greater
privatization, multiparty democracy, and self-determination for the
republics when Bush and Gorbachev were _both_ expressing committment
to a continued Soviet empire which could _only_ survive by shooting
enough Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and others to convince people that
they couldn't escape.  And make no mistake, that _could_ have been
done at any time up to the coup, just as Louis XVI could have aborted
the French Revolution by a show of force early enough.  Someone like
Stalin or Brezhnev would have done it.  Conversely, if Gorbachev had
been truly wise and courageous he would have done what Yeltsin did,
and freed his people to choose their own leaders.

	Gorbachev couldn't decide.  Last August, the two sides,
clashed, democracy and markets vying with centralism and tyranny.  As
soon as the coup came, Gorbachev was irrelevant.  Because with 10%
popular approval, his only power came from his importance to the
Party, to the military, and to the KGB.  The coup proved that that
importance was nil.  If the military had followed the coup leaders,
they would have won.  If it followed Yeltsin (as it did), then Yeltsin
established that he, not Gorbachev, had the power to control or defeat
the Party, the military, and the KGB, while Gorbachev had not.  It
took four months for Gorbachev to realize that he'd been pushed aside,
but the fact itself was pretty much inevitable from the moment the
coup began, whichever way it had turned out.

>I'm afraid your friends in Europe dont cut it with me.  I did
>graduate work in England and my spouse is Enlgish.  So I've
>met them, talked to them and even lived there. 

	Proving what?  I live in a university town in the US.  A
foreign student who lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who got to know a
large number of people living around here and took them as typical
Americans would be mystified at the fact that Reagan or Bush were ever
even on the ballot, and the fact that Bill Clinton beat Jerry Brown
would be equally inexplicable.  To be fair, Mr. Sugent's evidence was
just as anecdotal.  So was the original post which started this
thread, though to be fair it spoke only about "some of us here in
Europe".  In all these cases, what we get are limited views of
individual people.  But I don't think that anything else exists.  I
don't think that "Europe" has an opinion about the US elections.  Nor
does the UK.  Nor does England.  Particular Europeans, Britons, or
English people may, and those opinions are likely to be quite diverse.

Mike
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Workers of the world, forgive me.
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 You had more to lose than I thought."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Karl Marx (1990) as imagined by
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Jim Koncz (konc@midway.uchicago.edu)
Xref: sparky alt.politics.elections:10962 alt.fan.dave_barry:594