... objections from China and in the face of active antipathy from China. China too would make this mistake later, in relation to the USSR. By “go it alone” or go it with one’s allies but without each other, not only meant in world affairs in general but more specifically and much worse, in relations with the US and the West.
Within this matryoshka doll was another: the notion that the search for negotiations and pacts with the USA was strategically more important than, and on a qualitatively superior plane to the relationship with China. China would make ...
... engendered differences that have never been resolved and have – to be clear – become more acute since 2014.
For the West – the US and its allies – the collapse of the Soviet Union was a manifestly positive event that ushered in ‘a ... ... of motives. Neither the Baltic nor the South Caucusus republics, nor even Ukraine could have caused as big a country as the USSR to disappear so quickly. Only the will of the Russian establishment – the old one that was trying to hold onto the ...
... expanding the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, but the start of its decline. In short, the Soviet leadership correctly sensed (probably instinctively rather than rationally) the moment when they needed to "hold onto their winnings."
The West at that moment had just lived through an internal crisis, caused in part by foreign policy failures. Europe and the U.S. were undergoing a wave of civil rights struggles, the catalyst for which was America's loss in Vietnam, and that of France in ...
