Word: first
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Baker's ideas for recasting the structures of U.S.-European cooperation -- dubbed "Bakerstroika" by British pundits -- were a first cut at answering a question implicit in the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the end of the cold war: as the Soviet military threat shrinks, what does Europe need with the U.S.? The decline of Soviet power, the growing vitality of the European Community and the rush to reunify Germany require the U.S. to contemplate European ties based less on fear of Moscow's intentions and more on healthy economic and political competition...
...borders and set minimum human-rights standards. But a single country's veto blocks decisions there, making it an awkward vehicle for asserting U.S. leadership in Europe. The European Community, on its part, cannot accept the U.S. as a member. That leaves NATO, where the U.S. has long been first among equals, as the heavy lifter in Baker's refurbished Atlantic house. By encouraging the alliance to become the main forum for setting Western defense policy, Baker wants to upgrade NATO to be the key transatlantic body, even after reductions in defense budgets and troop levels have undercut the group...
...call us at 2 or 3 a.m.," says Eastern Europe bureau chief John Borrell, who over the past few months has come to view sleep as a hobby that he once had time for. "In soft, soothing tones that the Metternich school of diplomacy would doubtless endorse, they first apologize profusely for waking you and then tell you that the editors need to know, generally instantly, something like the GNP of each Warsaw Pact country. The secret, which they have mastered, is to be smooth and nonchalant...
...Thomas Francis McGuane III that struggle began at the age of ten when a disagreement with a boyhood chum over the description of a sunset ended in a fistfight. "It was my first literary skirmish," he says. Born and raised in Michigan, McGuane was introduced to the outdoors and a stern Irish work ethic by his father, an auto-parts manufacturer. McGuane early on developed an "adventurous image" of what a writer should be from Horatio Hornblower novels and books about World War II. "I saw myself on the deck of an Amazon steamer or something," he recalls. At Michigan...
...drink in nine years, also credits his healthier frame of mind to the life-affirming influence of his wife Laurie, who is the mother of their daughter Annie, 9. An expert horsewoman in her own right, Laurie helps McGuane deal with his correspondence and critiques his first drafts. If she admits to noticing a change in her husband over the past few years, it is simply that he has become "less cynical...