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The Federal Government is the central government of the United States. It is divided into
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They got it. We fed them loans, knowing that much of the money would disappear corruptly. We turned away from atrocity in Chechnya lest we weaken the new Russian state. But most important, we went weak in the knees on missile defense. The prospect of American antiballistic missiles upset the Russians. And upsetting the Russians was something we simply were not to do.
The Russians cannot keep up with American technology. And they fear that an American missile shield will render obsolete their last remnant of greatness: their monster, nuclear-tipped missiles. So they insist that we adhere to a 1972 treaty signed with the defunct Soviet Union that prohibited either side from developing missile defenses. That the treaty is obsolete-it long predates the world of rogue states racing to acquire missile-launched weapons of mass destruction-does not concern the Russians. Withdraw from the treaty, they said, and you have destroyed the "strategic stability" on which the peace of the world depends.
The Clinton Administration took that threat seriously-so seriously that for eight years it equivocated on building an American ABM system. Finally, President Clinton promised to decide by June 2000. Come June, he punted.
Eight years, and no defense. But the bear was content.
Bear contentment was never a high priority for Ronald Reagan. He offered a different model for dealing with the Russians. The 1980s model went by the name of peace through strength. But it was more than that. It was judicious but unapologetic unilateralism. It was willingness-in the face of threats and bluster from foreign adversaries and nervous apprehension from domestic critics-to do what the U.S. needed to do for its own security. Regardless.
It was Reagan who famously proposed a missile shield, and even more famously refused to barter it away at the Reykjavik summit, an event many historians consider the turning point in the cold war. That marked the beginning of the Soviets' definitive realization that they were going to lose the arms race to the U.S.-and that neither threats nor cajoling would dissuade the U.S. from running it.
This decade starts with a return to the unabashed unilateralism of the 1980s. It began last year with a speech by George W. Bush proposing that the U.S. build weapons to meet American needs-and not to accommodate the complaints or gain the agreement of other countries. For 40 years the U.S. would not cut its offensive nuclear missiles except in conjunction with Soviet cuts. Bush's refreshing question was: Why？ We don't need Rnssians cutting our offensive weapons through arms-control treaties. And we don't need Russians telling us whether or not to build defensive weapons.
This was the genesis of the Bush Doctrine, now taking shape as the Administration takes power. Its motto is, we build to suit-ourselves. Accordingly, the President and the Secretary of Defense have been unequivocal about their determination to go ahead with a missile defense.
They staked their claim. And what happened？ Did the sky fall, as the Clinton Russian experts warned？ On the contrary. Convinced at last of American seriousness, the Russians immediately acquiesced. After just one month of Bush, Moscow has come forward with its very own missile-defense plan. The fact that it is not well sketched out and that it is in part designed to split the U.S. off from Europe is beside the point. The Russians have responded, as did the Soviets before them, to American firmness. Faced with reality, they accommodate it.
Who defines reality; there lies the difference between this Administration and the last. Clinton let Russian opposition define reality. Bush, like Reagan, understands that the U.S. can resha
What is the reason for much more damage over the next 20 years than during the last 20 years？
The content of the passage can be described as______.
Yet for all its fury, this season's burst of activity falls well within the bounds of past experience. What's surprising, say experts, is that the US and Florida haven't seen more major storms make landfall over the past few decades.
Despite the damage wrought by Charley and Frances, "we've been very fortunate," says William Gray, a tropical-meteorology specialist at Colorado State University who pioneered seasonal hurricane forecasting. He notes that since 1995, only 1 out of 7 major hurricanes spawned in the Atlantic have made landfall in the US, compared with the 100-year average of 1 in 3. The Florida peninsula alone saw 14 major hurricanes between 1926 and 1965. Since 1966, only three major storms have struck-Andrew, Charley, and Frances.
Now forecasters have their eyes on Ivan, which has devastated Grenada and Jamaica and at press time was bearing down on the Cayman Islands and Cuba with sustained winds near 155 miles an hour. Ivan has been blamed for 56 deaths in the Caribbean basin and, according to Red Cross estimates, 60,000 people on Grenada-two-thirds of the island's population-are homeless and 34 people have died. On Jamaica, where an estimated 500,000 people ignored warnings to evacuate, at least 11 were killed.
Several factors have converged to make this hurricane season one for the record books, researchers say.
For one thing, long-term cycles affecting the ocean and atmosphere are at play. Known as the Atlantic multidecadal signal, "these atmospheric conditions and warmer ocean temperatures can turn up for decades at a time," says Gerald Bell, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md. Currently, long-term patterns favor hurricane seasons that yield more tropical storms and hurricanes than normal. Conditions are similar to those that held sway from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s, another period of above-normal tropical cyclone activity.
Within those periods, he adds, storm activity season to season is affected by features such as El Nino episodes. Their long-range reach can generate wind patterns over the Atlantic that suppress the formation of hurricanes.
Forecasters see a weak E1 Nino beginning to build in the eastern tropical Pacific. But they add that it's unlikely to have much of an effect on this year's hurricane season. And if it remains weak, it could have little effect on next year's season.
In forecasting monthly activity for August, Dr. Gray says he and his colleagues missed unusually warm sea-surface temperatures in the eastern Atlantic, where hurricanes and tropical storms are born.
The team forecast above-average activity for the month, "but we could not have anticipated the unusually high amount of storm activity that occurred," he notes. August yielded eight named storms.
With the Atlantic basin in the midst of a long-term active phase for hurricanes, "undoubtedly [over] the next 20 years, we're likely to see much more damage than during the last 20 years," Gray says.
The reason: While hurricane activity is more or less readjusting to its long-term averages after a period of relative quiet, more people are placing themselves, their houses, yachts, and office high-rises in storm paths when they move to hurricane- prone states and their geologically fragile shorelines. In 1926, a hurricane struck Florida that-if it were to happen today-would cause $100 billion in damage, notes Roger Pielke Jr., with the Center
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