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A Third Superpower?
| Article
# : |
13444 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1987 |
4,037 Words |
| Author
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Lucio Lami
Lucio Lami, special correspondent for the Italian newspaper Il
Giornale, is a well-known political columnist and war
correspondent with worldwide experience. He has written
essays and books on history and is the winner of the Max David
Award for Special Correspondents. |
Dear Allies,
I belong to that generation of Europeans that was taught at school to love you. This love has never lessened, although my deeper understanding of the historical relationship between our two countries has sometimes forced me to face up to somewhat disconcerting events. I am deeply conscious of the superiority of the free West over the dictatorships of the East and of the principle that democracy, even your version of it, is nevertheless the least evil of all political systems.
Fortified by these convictions, I have spent a great deal of my time and of my professional life studying the opposite camp, the Eastern bloc, in an attempt to understand why it is so resistant to the call of freedom. In the last eight years I have traveled continually, often in disguise, along the borders of the Soviet empire, in the most war-ravaged parts of the world: Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Laos, Iran, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa, Lebanon - along that line that has seen the successful expansion of the USSR and your repeated defeats.
It may sound paradoxical, but this pilgrimage among the guerrillas and the so-called refugee camps, instead of strengthening my convictions, has caused me to have serious doubts about the future of the West and even to question the nature of our friendship.
I, and many Europeans like myself, refuse to side with those pacifists who would like to block the installation of American missiles in Europe, with shouts of "better Red than dead." We ask ourselves with anguish which American president would ever find
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