What was the reaction here to that phrase in Bushs 2002 State of the Union address?] …
We’d had a few hours advance warning; you never get more than that for a State of the Union speech. So when I heard him actually say the words “axis of evil,” it took me back many years to Moscow, when I was in the embassy there in the early 1980s. I heard Reagan characterize the Soviet Union as “the evil empire.” Reactions to the phrase “evil empire” were very similar to the reactions that have been to “axis of evil.” I think with the passage of time, when we look back now on “evil empire,” most people would say it actually played some kind of role in encouraging the transformation of the old totalitarian Soviet Union to a reasonably democratic Russia of today. I remember thinking at the time of these memories: I wonder whether a similar fate will befall “axis of evil.” [Will it be] excoriated when first renounced by the outside world, but with the passage of time, seen to have played some kind of benevolent role? Who knows? [What advice did you send back to London following this spee
