Archivo etiqueta «Guerra Fría»
By Peter Schneider, the author of Eduard’s Homecoming. This essay was translated by The Times from the German (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 13/08/11):
By the time I arrived in West Berlin, in 1962, the wall was a year old. The half-city was a hysterical, intellectually exciting place; the wall, whose construction began 50 years ago today, made it more so. From the East and West radio and TV stations you heard competing, mutually exclusive versions of every event. Worldviews counted more than facts. And there were spies everywhere. For fun, a journalist told me, he’d count the intelligence … Seguir leyendo
By Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at the National Interest and the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (LOS ANGELES TIMES, 12/08/11):
On Saturday, Germany will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the biggest and grimmest construction projects in history — the building of the Berlin Wall. Photographs of the wall, which overnight brutally severed streets, rail lines and families, have been on display in front of Berlin government buildings for several months. On Saturday, the memorial events will last all day and include a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the victims of the … Seguir leyendo
By Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower and an energy and international affairs expert and chairman emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute (THE WASHINGTON POST, 16/01/11):
I’ve always found it rather haunting to watch old footage of my grandfather, Dwight Eisenhower, giving his televised farewell address to the nation on Jan. 17, 1961. The 50-year-old film all but crackles with age as the president makes his earnest, uncoached speech. I was 9 years old at the time, and it wasn’t until years later that I understood the importance of his words or the lasting impact of his message.… Seguir leyendo
Por Francesc Granell, catedrático de la Universitat de Barcelona (EL PERIÓDICO, 07/11/09):
El 9 de noviembre de 1989 era jueves y yo me encontraba en Bruselas, como director que era entonces de la Dirección General de Desarrollo de la Comisión Europea, esperando volver a Barcelona al día siguiente, lo que hacía cada fin de semana. A última hora de la tarde, las autoridades de la República Democrática Alemana suprimían la restricción a viajar al Oeste y mis compañeros alemanes de trabajo estaban eufóricos, aun sin saber a ciencia cierta qué iba a suceder a partir de entonces.
Nadie podía … Seguir leyendo
By Gerard DeGroot, a professor of history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and the author of The Sixties Unplugged (THE WASHINGTON POST, 01/11/09):
During the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc was a dark place. To Westerners, that seemed true both literally (the lights often went out) and ideologically (the Iron Curtain blocked freedom’s beacon). The darkness made it difficult to see individuals; Poles, Hungarians and Czechs seemed a crowded multitude whose individualism had been crushed by the heavy hand of collectivism.
In 1989, the lights suddenly came on, and individuals emerged. Images changed overnight. Out went … Seguir leyendo
By Clay Risen, the managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and a 2009 Arthur F. Burns journalism fellow in Berlin (THE WASHINGTON POST, 01/11/09):
Peter and Angela Hofmann aren’t a typical German couple. For one thing, they met online, a rarity in this techno-wary country.
For another, the couple, both 55, moved this year from Berlin to rural Brandenburg state near the Polish border to open a pension, or bed and breakfast — a risky move in a down economy.
But most striking of all is where they come from: Peter, who was born near Dresden, is … Seguir leyendo
By Josef Joffe, editor of the German weekly Die Zeit and a senior fellow of the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies and an Abramowitz Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (THE WASHINGTON POST, 01/11/09):
Imagine waking up one fine Sunday morning to learn that they are laying down barbed wire in Washington. The coils cut off the western side of the District from Northeast and Southeast. Over the next three years, the steel wire is replaced by a wall of concrete 12 feet high. Now you are trapped, and if you’re on the wrong side, the Washington … Seguir leyendo
By Mary Elise Sarotte, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, a Bosch public policy fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and the author of 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (THE WASHINGTON POST, 01/11/09):
Once events make their passage from news of the day into history books, it is hard to imagine that they could have happened any other way. They’re history, after all. And 20 years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall seems like that kind of history — a world-changing event that we commemorate and celebrate, its heroes … Seguir leyendo
By Daniel Johnson, editor of Standpoint and author of White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War was Fought on the Chessboard (THE TIMES, 23/09/09):
In 1984, the Orwellian year in which Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov first sat down to play, chess was as Russian as vodka. The rematch that began this week in Spain marks the resumption of a duel between two names as evocative of Russia as Stolichnaya. But why should anyone who is neither a chess buff nor a Russophile still raise a glass to these old rivals?
I can think of at least … Seguir leyendo
Por José María Lassalle, secretario de Estudios del PP y diputado por Cantabria (EL PAÍS, 07/09/08):
Durante el macartismo, Estados Unidos padeció un clima político tan enrarecido y despiadado que estuvo a punto de hacer saltar sus centenarios goznes liberales. El pulso que la URSS planteó a los norteamericanos hizo que éstos percibieran el aliento de la amenaza soviética como una sombra paranoica que logró desestabilizar su estructura institucional y emocional. El macartismo los arrastró al borde del abismo, pero no logró que cayeran en él. Con todo, dejó sus secuelas y el desarrollo posterior de la Guerra Fría … Seguir leyendo
Por Fred Halliday, profesor de Relaciones Internacionales de la London School of Economics (LA VANGUARDIA, 01/09/05):
Recientes disturbios provocados en Jartum por la muerte en un accidente de helicóptero del vicepresidente John Garang, antiguo líder del movimiento guerrillero del sur del Sudán, traen a la mente uno de los problemas recurrentes de la política moderna en todos los continentes: la creencia de que la muerte de un personaje político en un accidente de avión, de automóvil o de otro tipo no puede ser nunca accidental, digan lo que digan las pruebas. El Gobierno sudanés, que ha formado coalición con … Seguir leyendo
By George F. Kennan, a diplomat, cold-war strategist and Russia scholar (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 28/10/92):
The claim heard in campaign rhetoric that the United States under Republican Party leadership “won the cold war” is intrinsically silly.
The suggestion that any Administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish. No great country has that sort of influence on the internal developments of any other one.
As early as the late 1940′s, some of us living in Russia saw that … Seguir leyendo
By Richard M. Nixon, the former President, recently completed Leaders, a book of profiles and reminiscences (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 30/09/90):
The debate over detente has become so charged with emotion that substance gives way to semantics.
To many Americans, detente has become a dirty word, virtually synonymous with appeasement. To most Europeans, it is a good word. To them it describes a period in the early and middle 1970′s when tensions between East and West were lessened and when there was more trade, more contact, some liberalization in Eastern Europe, and, above all, a reduced danger of … Seguir leyendo