“For too many people, work no longer pays,” von der Leyen told the European Parliament in an annual policy speech. “Dumping wages destroys the dignity of work, penalises the entrepreneur who pays decent wages and distorts fair competition in the Single Market,” she said.
The issue is politically tricky so the Commission is not trying to set a single EU minimum wage or to impose one minimum wage setting system for all of the 27 countries in the bloc.
Instead, it wants to ensure there is a collective bargaining for wages in place, that different national systems have clear and stable criteria, that trade unions and employers are involved in the process, that there are few exemptions and that there are monitoring mechanisms in place.
The agreements signed at the White House on Monday formalize the normalization of Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Now the countries will exchange embassies and ambassadors and to cooperate on a broad array of issues, including banking, education, trade and health issues.
Listen to Nathan Morley’s report
Mr Trump said it was an incredible day for the world: “Today, the world sees that they are choosing cooperation over conflict, friendship over enmity, prosperity over poverty and hope over despair,” Trump said. “They are choosing a future in which Arabs and Israelis, Muslims, Jews and Christians can live together, pray together and dream together, side by side, in harmony, community and peace.”
Speaking at the signing, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heralded “a new dawn of peace.”
Meanwhile, following the signing of normalization deals, there was a fresh round of violence between Palestinian militants in Gaza and Israel.
According to Israel Radio, militants fired two rockets into Israel on Tuesday night. One hit the coastal city of Ashdod, wounding two men.
In response, the Israeli military bombed sites in Gaza including a weapons factory, and a military compound used for rocket launching experiments by Hamas.
Leaders in the Palestinian territories accuse U.S. President Donald Trump of being biased in favour of Israel, and condemned the deals.
… Kourtoglou, AP
Cyprus: EU sanctions an option to halt … Nicos Anastasiades said the EU should weigh using “all … being taken against European Union member states, the European Union’s reaction … said after talks with European Council President Charles Michel in …
image captionUrsula von der Leyen replaced Jean-Claude Juncker in the EU’s top job in December
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has delivered her first State of the Union address, outlining her vision for the future of the European Union (EU).
The Commission drafts EU laws, enforces EU rules and has the power to impose fines on member states if necessary.
Here are five key areas Mrs von der Leyen touched on in her wide-ranging speech.
The EU chief spoke at length about the environment, and announced an ambitious plan to cut the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions.
She said the target was to reduce emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030 – up from an earlier goal of 40%.
“There is no more urgent need for acceleration than when it comes to the future of our fragile planet,” Mrs von der Leyen said.
“While much of the world’s activity froze during lockdowns and shutdowns, the planet continued to get dangerously hotter,” she added. “The 2030 target is ambitious, achievable, and beneficial.”
EU leaders will meet to agree on the target next month, but resistance is expected from some eastern European countries that largely rely on coal for their energy. Most states back such a target, however.
“I will insist that recovery plans don’t just bring us out of the crisis but also help us propel Europe forward in the world of tomorrow,” she said.
2) Coronavirus
Unsurprisingly, the EU’s response to the coronavirus pandemic featured prominently in the address.
“A virus a thousand times smaller than a grain of sand exposed how delicate life can be,” Mrs von der Leyen said. “The pandemic and the uncertainty that goes with it are not over and the recovery is still in its early stages.”
But Mrs von der Leyen praised the EU’s multi-million euro recovery package, which was agreed after four nights of talks, as a “chance to make change happen by design, and not by disaster”.
“We turned fear and division between member states into confidence in our union,” she said. “We showed what is possible when we trust each other.”
media captionEuropean Council President Charles Michel said the deal was a “pivotal moment”
The former German defence minister also announced that a global health summit would take place next year in Italy, and that the EU would build a new agency for biomedical research and development.
3) Brexit
While the UK’s departure from the EU only received a brief mention in the speech, it prompted the loudest applause from the European Parliament members in the audience.
“[Trade] talks have not progressed as we would have wished… and that leaves us very little time,” Mrs von der Leyen said.
“[The withdrawal agreement] cannot be unilaterally changed, disregarded or dis-applied. This a matter of law, trust and good faith,” she added.
media captionLeyen: UK and EU “jointly agreed” on withdrawal agreement
The UK government has said the bill is a “vital safety net” needed in the event that a trade agreement is not reached. But the government has also said it breaks international law, and the EU wants the legislation scrapped.
“The Withdrawal Agreement took three years to negotiate and we worked relentlessly on it. Line by line, word by word,” Mrs Von der Leyen said.
4) Technology
The Commission’s president called for more investment in technology so the EU could keep pace with the US and China.
“We want to lead the way, the European way, to the Digital Age: based on our values, our strength, our global ambitions,” she said.
Mrs Von der Leyen said that 20% of the €750bn coronavirus recovery package would be invested in digital projects, with a further €8bn spent on the next generation of supercomputers.
She called for a “twin green and digital transition” at a time when “the global competitive landscape is fundamentally changing”.
5) Migration
Five years on from the 2015 migrant crisis, Mrs von der Leyen said it had caused “many deep divisions” within the EU and “some of those scars [are] still healing today”.
“If we are all ready to make compromises we can find a solution,” she told the audience. “Migration is a European challenge and all of Europe must do its part.”
media captionThe BBC’s Jean Mackenzie spent time speaking to people at the camp just six months ago and reflects on her experiences there
“The images of the Moria camp are a painful reminder of the need for Europe to come together,” Mrs von der Leyen said.
“Next week, the Commission will put forward its New Pact on Migration,” she added. “We will take a human and humane approach. Saving lives at sea is not optional.”
… trade off the coasts of western Europe.
Only one passenger, Stephen Hopkins … .
Motivated by religion
Around half of the passengers were English Protestant Separatists … sympathetic to the Saints’ religious goals, but most were not …
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans on Wednesday (16 September) to target a 55% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of a broader European Green Deal programme aimed at reaching “climate neutrality” by mid-century.
“For us, the 2030 target is ambitious, it’s achievable and it is beneficial for Europe,” von der Leyen said as she unveiled the EU’s new climate proposals before the European Parliament in her first State of the Union address since she became Commission President in 2019.
“We can do it!” she said, borrowing a famous phrase used by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during the height of the 2015 migration crisis.
“Our impact assessment clearly shows that our economy and industry can manage this,” she continued, saying EU countries have already managed to reduce emissions by 25% since 1990 while growing the economy by more than 60%.
The difference today, she said, is that Europe now has the technology, the expertise and the financial firepower necessary to make it happen, with a €1.8 trillion EU budget and recovery fund that was agreed by EU leaders in July for the years 2021-2027.
“We are world leaders in green finance and we are the largest issuer of green bonds worldwide,” von der Leyen pointed out, announcing that 30% of the EU’s €750 billion recovery fund will be raised through green bonds.
“We have it all. Now it’s our responsibility to implement it and to make it happen,” she added, telling Parliamentarians: “This is our mission”.
The announcement on the EU’s new 2030 climate target was widely expected after reports emerged last week that the Commission President would announce them in her speech.
A leaked policy document, published by EURACTIV earlier this week, shows new measures at EU level will span every sector of the economy, ranging from agriculture to energy and transport. The proposal will be officially unveiled on Thursday (17 September) with a view to adopting the 55% target proposal before the end of the year.
Root-and-branch policy review
But meeting the 55% goal also represents “a significant investment challenge,” the Commission warns in the draft document, saying investments in clean energy will have to increase by “around €350 billion per year” in order to achieve the new 2030 objective.
And while many business groups are supportive of the new 55% emissions goal, others are more guarded about raising the bloc’s climate ambitions.
In July, a group of six Eastern EU countries wrote a letter to the Commission, calling on the EU executive to propose “realistic” climate goals that take into account “the real social, environmental and economic costs” of the transition.
Von der Leyen acknowledged those concerns, saying: “I recognise that this increase from 40 to 55 is too much for some and not enough for others. But our impact assessment clearly shows that our economy and industry can manage this,” she told MEPs.
“Meeting this new target will reduce our energy import dependency, will create millions of extra jobs and more than halve air pollution,” von der Leyen argued, announcing a root-and-branch review of EU climate and energy legislation “by next summer” with a view to aligning EU laws with the new 55% goal.
This will include a revision of directives on renewables, energy efficiency, as well as a reform of the energy taxation directive and the bloc’s carbon market, the Emissions Trading Scheme.
“A new European Bauhaus”
But the European Green Deal involves much more than just cutting emissions, von der Leyen said. It’s also “a new cultural project for Europe,” she added, saying an upcoming EU “renovation wave” will focus on making buildings less wasteful, less expensive and more sustainable.
“We know that the construction sector can even be turned from a carbon source into a carbon sink if organic materials like wood and smart technologies like AI are being used,” said the former German defence minister.
“We need to give our systemic change its own distinct aesthetics to match style with sustainability,” von der Leyen said, announcing the creation of “a new European Bauhaus” where architects, artists, students, engineers, designers, will work together to give the European Green Deal a distinctive look and feel.
BRUSSELS — A top European Union official strongly denounced the stigmatization of LGBT people by authorities in Poland, saying on Wednesday that “LGBT-free zones” that have been declared in parts of the country have no place in the EU.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in her first State of the Union address, said that “LGBT-free zones,” are “humanity-free zones.”
“They have no place in our Union,” von der Leyen said, adding that the commission would soon put forward a strategy to strengthen LGBT rights in Europe.
She did not mention Poland by name, but did not need to.
About one-third of Poles now live in communities that have passed resolutions declaring their opposition to the promotion of LGBT rights. The resolutions carry no binding legal powers, but they are seen by critics as discriminatory. Most were approved in the conservative eastern and southern areas of Poland.
In one such example, a resolution passed last year by the legislature of Malopolska, the region surrounding the Polish city of Krakow, expressed “firm opposition to the emerging public activities aimed at promoting the ideology of LGBT movements.”
The resolution said such activities “interfere with the social order” and were “oriented at the annihilation of values shaped by the centuries-old heritage of Christianity.”
Similar assertions are often expressed at the highest levels of government in Poland and by the powerful Catholic church.
Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the right-wing Law and Justice party that has governed Poland since 2015, recently called the LGBT rights movement “a threat to the very foundations of our civilization.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda won reelection in July after a campaign in which he called the LGBT movement an “ideology” more dangerous than communism.
In her European Parliament address on Wednesday, von der Leyen countered such rhetoric.
“I will not rest when it comes to building a union of equality,” von der Leyen said. “A Union where you can be who you are and love who you want – without fear of recrimination or discrimination.”
“Because being yourself is not your ideology,” she said. “It’s your identity. And no one can ever take it away.”
COVID-19 effects on children – Joining the heads of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), at a press conference on Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus outlined that since the start of the COVID pandemic, understanding its effects on children has been a priority.
“Nine months into the pandemic, many questions remain, but we are starting to have a clearer picture. We know that children and adolescents can be infected and can infect others”, he said.
“We know that this virus can kill children, but that children tend to have a milder infection and there are very few severe cases and deaths from COVID-19 among children and adolescents.”
According to WHO data, less than 10 per cent of reported cases and less than 0.2 per cent of deaths are in people under the age of 20. However, additional research is needed into the factors that put children and adolescents at an increased risk.
In addition, the potential long-term health effects in those who have been infected remains unknown.
Referring to closure of schools around the world, which has hit millions of children, impacting not only their education but also a range of other important services, the WHO Director-General said that the decision to close schools should be a last resort, temporary and only at a local level in areas with intense transmission.
The time during which schools are closed should be used for putting in place measures to prevent and respond to transmission when schools reopen.
“Keeping children safe and at school is not a job for schools alone, or governments alone or families alone. It’s a job for all of us, working together,” added Mr. Tedros.
“With the right combination of measures, we can keep our kids safe and teach them that health and education are two of the most precious commodities in life,” he added.
A classroom is disinfected in Minia governorate, Egypt, as schools prepare to reopen after COVID-19 closures.
Guidance on reopening schools, while keeping children and communities safe
Although children have largely been spared many of the most severe health effects of the virus, they have suffered in other ways, said Director-General Tedros, adding that closure of schools hit millions of children globally.
Based on latest scientific evidence, the guidance provides practical advice for schools in areas with no cases, sporadic cases, clusters of cases or community transmission. They were developed with input from the Technical Advisory Group of Experts on Educational Institutions and COVID-19, established by the three UN agencies in June.
Schools provide critical, diverse services
Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General, also highlighted the importance of school, not only for teaching, but also for providing health, protection and – at times – nutrition services.
“The longer schools remain closed, the more damaging the consequences, especially for children from more disadvantaged backgrounds … therefore, supporting safe reopening of schools must be a priority for us all”, she said.
In addition to safely reopening schools, attention must focus on ensuring that no one is left behind, Ms. Azoulay added, cautioning that in some countries, children are missing from classes, amid fears that many – especially girls – may not ever return to schools.
Alongside, ensuring flow of information and adequate communication between teachers, school administrators and families; and defining new rules and protocols, including on roles of and trainings for teachers, managing school schedules, revising learning content, and providing remedial support for learning losses are equally important, she said.
“When we deal with education, the decisions we make today will impact tomorrow’s world,” said the UNESCO Director-General.
A global education emergency
However, with half the global student population still unable to return to schools, and almost a third of the world’s pupils unable to access remote learning, the situation is “nothing short of a global education emergency”, said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director.
“We know that closing schools for prolonged periods of time can have devastating consequences for children,” she added, outlining their increased exposure risk of physical, sexual, or emotional violence.
The situation is even more concerning given the results from a recent UNICEF survey which found that almost a fourth of the 158 countries questioned, on their school reopening plans, had not set a date to allow schoolchildren back to the classrooms.
“For the most marginalized, missing out on school – even if only for a few weeks – can lead to negative outcomes that last a lifetime,” warned Ms. Fore.
She called on governments to prioritize reopening schools, when restrictions are lifted, and to focus on all the things that children need – learning, protection, and physical and mental health – and ensure the best interest of every child is put first.
And when governments decide to keep schools closed, they must scale up remote learning opportunities for all children, especially the most marginalized.
“Find innovative ways – including online, TV and radio – to keep children learning, no matter what”, stressed Ms. Fore.
Before he was a journalist and a novelist, before he was a globe-trotting war correspondent and a historian with an eye for ordinary people that led extraordinary lives, Scott Anderson was a child of the Cold War. His father worked for the State Department, which took the Anderson family to South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia. All three countries were located on the new fault lines of the geopolitical struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, anti-communism and communism, the “Yanks” and the “Reds.”
As a kid, Anderson watched his father grow disillusioned with his country’s crusade against communism and the folly of the Vietnam War. But Anderson himself didn’t fully grasp the contradictions, hubris, and stupidity of the American empire’s obsession with anti-communism until the spring of 1984, when he watched a young woman’s body dumped and retrieved with grim efficiency by a group of soldiers on a side street in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. At the time, the Reagan administration was backing the right-wing Salvadoran government in its war against leftist rebels, yet another front in the anti-communism campaign. The incident planted a simple question in Anderson’s mind: How had it come to this?
In his absorbing new book The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War — A Tragedy in Three Acts, Anderson answers that question by zeroing in on a critical juncture in time, the dawn of the Cold War from 1944 to 1956, and on four spooks who not just witnessed but shaped history during that period of time. It would be too on the nose to say Anderson’s book reads like Graham Greene’s classic The Quiet American, but Anderson masterfully weaves together the lives of Frank Wisner, a genteel Southerner who climbs the ranks of the CIA only to fall into despair and take his own life after the U.S.’s betrayal of revolutionaries in eastern Europe; Ed Lansdale, a CIA legend who has been called “the American James Bond” and the “T.E. Lawrence of Asia”; Peter Sichel, a German Jewish refugee who traded currency on the black market to fund covert U.S. operations across Europe; and Michael Burke, a black-ops specialist who directed commando operations behind the Iron Curtain. Each man would meet a different fate, but taken together they capture in vivid detail the early days of the CIA and the origins of the Cold War.
But The Quiet Americans book is more than a real-life le Carré tale. By focusing on the post-World War II period and the critical early days of the Cold War, Anderson’s story raises questions about the rise of American empire and how the trajectory of the 20th and 21st century could have looked so much differently. “If FDR had lived even another year, probably what happened in Eastern Europe would have looked quite a bit different,” Anderson tells Rolling Stone, referring to the upheaval on the European continent after World War II. “I think that Stalin would have responded to FDR. Again, this is a great what if?”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Rolling Stone: I’ve read so many end-of-the-Cold-War stories and end-of-World-War-Two stories. But with this time period from 1944 to 1956, I found myself absorbing the history as much as the characters and their stories. How did you come to zero in on this period in not just American history but world history? Scott Anderson: As I say at the beginning of the book, I’m very much a product of the Cold War. It was something I spent a lot of time thinking about growing up. And then seeing the residue of it in war reporting in the ’80s and ’90s. When did it all start to go south? When did all this get locked into place where there was this stalemate that went on forever and that I think is currently damaging to an American standing around the world?
I was reading some books about FDR while World War II was going and this idea that this was going to be the end of the age of empires, the dismantling of the British and the French empires, and that America was going to be this this kind of beacon of freedom and the spreader of democracy around the world. And then by the early ’50s, with the CIA knocking over the regimes in Guatemala and in Iran, there was an incredible turnaround in this 12-year period.
Did you have any of these globe-trotting larger than life characters in mind when you picked this time period? I always want to write history that focuses on people who are at the front lines or the players in the field rather than the generals or diplomats. When you’re talking about the Cold War, the people on the front lines were spies, which kind of works out. I’d rather write about spies than accountants. I’d heard of Wisner and I’d heard of Ed Lansdale. If you read much at all about Vietnam stuff, Lansdale is pretty prominent. But the other two [Sichel and Burke] I’d never heard of. I looked at, I don’t know, 20, 25 different CIA agents through this period. And invariably there were a lot of guys who did cool stuff for a while, but then went to the State Department or were sitting in the embassy somewhere. Or I couldn’t find any paper trail for them. And I really needed that.
And so out of all these people I looked at, I ended up with exactly these four. With Peter Sichel, he’s kind of like finding the proverbial chest of letters in the attic sort of thing. He’s still alive, still incredibly sharp, the last surviving member of this generation of the early CIA guys. And had been very prominent. In fact, I probably did eight or nine interviews with him. So he was a real find. It was kind of a treasure hunt.
What I found so fascinating about Frank Wisner is his evolution over the course of the book, from a true believer and early CIA booster to, in the case of Eisenhower and the “new look” policy, a cautionary voice or a skeptic. The guy asked, “Is this right policy? What are we getting ourselves into?” I don’t think you could put Wisner in a novel. He starts out as this gung ho guy, the Mighty Wurlitzer he creates, and he just wants to start fires everywhere. He’s this deeply emotional guy and he really takes this stuff personally. And I think he just sees coming over his desk the endless list of disasters and agents disappearing and being executed, he really did change.
The incredible irony with the Hungarian Revolution is here, finally, is the thing that he’s been fighting for the last 10 years. And just the irony that he’s in Europe when it happens, he goes down to the border. He sees all the refugees pouring across the border. And has a complete emotional collapse that he never really recovers from.
Along with Lansdale, he is probably the best known because he was so prominent in the early CIA. And most people think of him as just like I said earlier, this is rabid right wing anti-communist, but the Eisenhower people scared him. And by then he had seen all these operations just fail. And I think he started thinking we have to approach this in a different way. And, of course, he wasn’t listened to.
You bring an interesting background and experience to in this case a work of history, being a journalist, foreign correspondent, war correspondent who has written extensively from the places that you also write about decades, generations earlier in this book and obviously in your book Lawrence in Arabia. How do those things interplay? I suspect that even more than the war reporting the fact I grew up overseas and I didn’t spend any time in the States until I was a teenager, in a funny way, gave me not an outsider’s perspective but a semi-outsider’s perspective on this country.
In thinking of war, I can think back to the very first war I went to, which was in 1983 in Beirut, and it was just before the Marine barracks there got blown up. I was there about a month before that. The American troops on the ground were getting shot at already. A few had been killed. And I remember standing out in front of the American embassy in Beirut that had been destroyed a few months earlier with a massive truck bomb. There was a 19 year old soldier — about my age — sitting on top of a tank in front of the American embassy. We just got talking and he said, “Can I ask you a question? Why are we here?”
He had no clue why they were there or what in fact their mission was. Not to take anything away from him but I doubt he could have found Beirut on a map. He was just some kid out of Kansas or something. And I’ve seen that again and again with American troops around the world that they really don’t understand why they’re where they are or what they’re supposed to be doing. Again, it goes back to this notion that we’re coming in to liberate people. And I think these poor bastards in the field are constantly surprised why the locals are putting IEDs on them or shooting at them. That’s not true with the British and the French and former imperialists. They seem to have a much better sense of well, we’re here, if the French go in to Indonesia to knock some heads because of an insurgency or a guerrilla war going on, they kind of know they’re doing it for their own self-interest or their country’s self-interest and they have this kind of imperial mandate to do it. And I think British likewise. But Americans, they just don’t think that way. The rest of the world thinks of them that way. But they don’t.
You write about the Red Scare and the very profound effect it had on U.S. foreign policy and on the institutions and people in The Quiet Americans. We all know who Roy Cohn is, Joe McCarthy, the black lists in Hollywood. But how did the Red Scare seep into America’s actions abroad? Out of the four people I write about, two of them were direct victims of the Red Scare. Frank Wisner and Peter Sichel were both at different times investigated for their possible leftist connections. And in Frank Wisner’s case, because of a relationship he’d had with this Romanian woman during the war and who then maybe had gone on to pass information to the Soviets afterwards. J. Edgar Hoover hated Frank Wisner. At one point, right when Eisenhower was coming to the presidency, it looked like Wisner was probably going to be chosen to be the next CIA director like clockwork right after the election, Hoover reopened investigation into Wisner, something that had been going on now for seven years. Until Wisner died in ’65, it was always hanging over his head. McCarthy gets all the credit because they named the era after him, but he was by and large J. Edgar Hoover’s front man.
So what you saw was the Red Scare play out on an international level or the level of foreign policy in two really significant ways. One was obvious: When you are in the height of the Red Scare, there’s no downside to if you in the CIA to launch an operation that was going to fail or that or that would overthrow a democratic regime. You can only run into trouble if it looks like you’re obstructing the American advance against the communists.
The great irony of the CIA’s covert operations around the world in the ’40s and ’50s was that the most successful aspects of it were the soft power ones — Radio Free Europe, Voice of America. This kind of battle for hearts and minds started in Europe as this kind of intellectual counter movement against the communists overseas. There was a program where we’d sent hundreds of thousands of books overseas and had these open libraries. They were sponsoring Langston Hughes and putting on Porgy and Bess in Berlin. It actually had a huge cultural effect. And all that disappeared during the Red Scare.
When I finished the book, I feel like there are many ways to describe it, but on one sort of more abstract level, I almost came away feeling like it was sort of counterintuitive in the history of American empire or at least a sort of American interventionism and meddling overseas. And that there was a moment, a sort of a crossroads, where the U.S. didn’t go down this path that it did. Did you set out to do that? I felt it kind of came about pretty organically. To my mind, there are two great turning points or potential turning points that where things could have gone the other way. One being FDR dying like three weeks before the end of the war. I do think that if FDR had lived even another year, probably what happened in Eastern Europe would have looked quite a bit different. I think that Stalin would have responded to FDR. Again, this is a great what if? I think he would have been more equipped to deal with what was happening in Eastern Europe. Where I think Truman was just like a deer in headlights. So for about two years, he still seemed to labor under this idea that Oh, maybe we can deal with the Soviets. Maybe our wartime alliance can still be repaired until finally in 1947, he comes out with the Truman Doctrine, he starts the CIA, but at that point it’s too late. All of Eastern Europe is essentially sewn up at that point.
I think the other great turning point is around the time of Stalin’s death and the Hungarian Revolution. There are probably three or four times, culminating in the Hungarian Revolution, when the Kremlin was sending out peace feelers to the West. They were the ones who started talking about peaceful coexistence. And every time, the Eisenhower administration, led by John Foster Dulles, spurned them. And so I think that’s the second great turning point to me, and you really see it in the Hungarian Revolution where, on one day, Khrushchev decides, We have to let Hungary go. We can’t fight back. We’re going to liberalize all of Eastern Europe. Basically, he was talking about what Gorbachev did 33 years later. And then in one day, he flips around and thinks to himself, “Well, if the Americans were going to do anything about Hungary, they would have done it by now.” Then from that time, you see Khrushchev changing and he becomes more and more hard line. And so the Cold War goes on for another 33 years.
Another key turning point in the future course of Middle Eastern history is the overthrow of Mosadegh in Iran, which you write about. I always come back to the what if with Iran. If we had not done that, what would Iran look like today? The astonishing thing to me is I’ve spent a lot of time in the Middle East is, you know, you look at old pictures of Iran or Egypt or, you know, anywhere in the Middle East, Iraq from the 1950s and they’re very westernized. America had huge influence in the 1950s in that region, as it did in a lot of other regions around the world.
All of that was squandered by the overthrow of Mosadegh, and the fact that for a number of years after the coup there the CIA bragged about their role. You know, this is a great triumph. And it was really probably not until like the mid-’70s when they said Oh, you know what? Maybe we shouldn’t be bragging about this so much. And then, of course, the shah is overthrown, you have a Islamic fundamentalist regime come in, and now, throughout that part of the world, though this is complicated by Israel, of course, you’ve seen this incredible swing back to this Islamic fundamentalism everywhere. Even in American satellites like Egypt, you would never have seen a woman in a burqa in Cairo 15, 20 years ago. You see it all the time now.
These things tend to have a second life and it’s a bad life from the standpoint of American power and prestige. History is weird, how a certain event comes along and how, only in hindsight, you can see what a crucial turning point it probably was.
