Carol J. Williams is a retired foreign correspondent with 30 years' reporting abroad for the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press. She has reported from more than 80 countries, with a focus on USSR/Russia and Eastern Europe.
What we feared during the last decade when autocrats and populists took power in democratic countries like ours has come to pass and surpass our worst nightmares.
Congressional Republicans could be relied for the past century to attack Kremlin perfidy and Communist propaganda. Now Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan and John McCain are rolling in their graves.
If Putin could have one wish granted, it would be for the demise of NATO. Since its formation in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has succeeded where the Kremlin-controlled Warsaw Pact failed.
Two words pop into my head every time I hear House members –
from both parties – thank the impeachment inquiry witnesses for their decorated
military service: Bone spurs.
Thirty years ago this week: Over three tumultuous days, 4 million East Germans – a quarter of the population -- flooded into West Berlin to a joyous reception. But expectations of a more peaceful and collaborative world have been dampened by new threats.
As a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times covering the aftermath of the coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, I was in Kiev on August 24, 1991, when Ukraine declared independence. No one expected the transformation to be overnight. But neither did anyone envision the tortured path the nation has tread for almost three decades.
I suddenly realized how lucky we are to have it at all. If the poet who created the story and the composer who set it to music 40 years later had ever actually met, they would probably have disliked each other enough to make collaboration impossible.
While both Trump and Democrats have been politicizing the trade issue, the President not bashing China and Democrats voting in favor of his USMCA are encouraging. I sense a growing realization that trade wars are not good for the economy.
