Well, of course, 1982 was a frustrating year, but then, doesn’t that make it a normal year? And now, we enter the big one, the crucial one: 1983, when we shall learn whether the Soviet Union, in its decadence, is to be, or not to be, in a winning situation.
There have been worse years—1978 for instance. That year, President Carter made his unilateral arms concessions to the Soviets; the fate of the Shah was sealed while the U.S. stood by, either wringing its collective hands or giving comfort to his enemies; the KGB installed a regime of its choice in Afghanistan, thus legitimizing a future invasion under the Brezhnev Doctrine; the Soviets installed puppet regimes in South Yemen and Ethiopia and air-lifted thousands of Cubans to Ethiopia and Angola. We live today, still, under the shadow of these events, which I called at the time “the year of passive appeasement.”
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