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A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Cold War Is Not Coming to An End (1989-06-19)
About this film
Broadcast live. Much had happened behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains: perestroika and glasnost, the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, a loosening of controls in China followed by Tiananmen Square. Does it all add up to an end to the Cold War? Mr. Buckley leads off for the skeptics: "Make no mistake about it: I and my colleagues greatly welcome the extent to which economic reality and spiritual yuppiness and Stinger missiles have put pressure on the Soviet government.... But can we persuade ourselves to believe that if Winston Churchill were here tonight-it was he, you will remember, who declared the Cold War-that he would say that this is, on existing evidence, coming to an end?" Mr. Solarz conies right back: "There may be some who find Mr. Buckley's prognostications of gloom and doom persuasive. But I suspect that there are others-such as Mr. Buckley's political heroes like Margaret Thatcher, who has said that the Cold War is already over, and Ronald Reagan, who was last seen kissing babies in Red Square-who would find them somewhat strange." This sizzling exchange takes us back to the early days of Lenin's rule and forward to the evolving Sino-Soviet rapprochement; we go from per…
Directors & creators
Southern Educational Communications Association
Subjects
public broadcasting, AAPB, William F. Buckley Jr., Stephen Solarz, Richard Perle, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Lenin, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Cold War, Perestroika, Glasnost, Tiananmen Square, Soviet-Afghan War, INF Treaty, Iron Curtain, Bamboo Curtain, Sino-Soviet relations
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