Re: Bush the First's Administration and Margaret Thatcher Wanted to SLOW DOWN or STOP the Removal of the Berlin Wall. (Was: Why Isn't Hussein Attending the Berlin Wall Anniversary?)
Tom Sr.
> My contempt for this man has turned into hatred. He is no president. He's
> not even an American.
> Fuck him and everybody that voted for the un-American piece of shit and
> world embarrassment.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120251027
*Official Discusses Release Of Berlin Wall Documents*
November 9, 2009
Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, talks to host
Melissa Block about the release of secret documents concerning the
Berlin Wall. He says that neither Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa nor
the George H.W. Bush administration wanted it to come down, while the
Soviets and the Czechs were thinking of tearing it down themselves to
relieve the refugee problem.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
While ecstatic crowds poured across the border in Berlin 20 years ago,
a number of key world leaders were deeply anxious about the turn of
events: worried about the prospect of a unified Germany that they were
sure would follow. The nonprofit National Security Archives has just
published secret documents from the time. You can find them at
npr.org. And the archive's director Tom Blanton joins us to talk about
what those files show. Tom, welcome back.
Mr. TOM BLANTON (Director, National Security Archive): Hi, Melissa.
BLOCK: One of those documents is of a conversation between Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
This was a little bit more than a month before the fall of the wall
and Margaret Thatcher flat-out tells Gorbachev: Britain and Western
Europe are not interested in the unification of Germany.
Mr. BLANTON: She was anxious as all get-out. I mean, she really did
not want Germany to be reunified and so she was coming to Gorbachev to
say do whatever you can to stop it. You've got those troops in East
Germany. We want you to stop it. She actually tells the note-takers
stop taking notes. Of course, his name was Anatoly Chernyaev. He runs
out in the hallway and scribbles it down. And we have his diary today,
which is part of what we're publishing. It's fascinating because
Chernyaev later writes, you know, Thatcher wants to prevent Germany
from coming together, but she wants to do with our hands, that is to
say, not her own. The top leaders were really worried. I mean, here in
Washington, George Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft,
scribbles in one of his sort of daily diary entries: Gosh, you know we
might be better off if Germany stayed divided because at least then
we'd have a little more stability. They were all scared to death of
the unknown, what could happen.
BLOCK: Well, what was the fear of a unified, strong Germany?
Mr. BLANTON: I think from the American side, the fear was a Germany
that would go neutral, and therefore, no longer be part of the
alliances and would therefore be this big wild card in the middle of
Europe. I think for the Soviet Union, which had been invaded by
Germany under Hitler, the fear was for revanchist power in a way that
would start threatening all the neighbors. But what's fascination
about the anxiety is that the Germans themselves kind of take their
own fate into their hands. First, the East Germans pushing across the
wall that night and then voting for a unification but in a very
interesting, peaceful economic way. I mean, once of the historians who
was at a conference the other day said, you know, the Poles had the
pope but the Germans had the deutsche mark.
BLOCK: Let's talk a little bit more about the Bush administration's
position at the time. A couple of years earlier in 1987, Ronald
Reagan, of course, made his famous pronouncement - Mr. Gorbachev, tear
down this wall - and the impression would be that's exactly what the
Bush administration wanted: the wall to come down, Germany to
reunite.
Mr. BLANTON: That Reagan speech has risen to the level of myth. But it
was really, I think, directed more at a domestic audience. He was at a
weak point in his presidency after the Iran-Contra affair. So, he was
kind of taking back some of the old rhetoric, that morning-in-America
Reagan again. And I think American policy was real clear. Yes, we're
for a united Germany except getting there was a whole other matter.
And with the hallmark of the Bush administration, I think, during 1989
is worry, anxiety, insecurity. And you see it over and over in the
internal notes, the diaries where they say Gorbachev's out in front.
He's more popular than we are. He's got the initiative.
And they never seem to ask themselves, wow, all these initiatives.
Maybe that's in our best interest. Bush actually writes in his diary
in July 1989, after he met a bunch of dissidents in Eastern Europe,
says things are spinning out of control. I better get together with
Gorbachev and see if we can slow it down.
BLOCK: Hmm.
Mr. BLANTON: Interesting. U.S. policy was to slow down the change in
1989.
BLOCK: And within the Soviet Politburo at the time, what was the
thinking? Was this the logical extension of Gorbachev's policies of
glasnost and perestroika or was this going off in some wild direction
that they didn't think they could control?
Mr. BLANTON: I think logical extension - there's this wonderful moment
on November 3rd, 1989, where in the Politburo, the Foreign Minister
Shevardnadze says, you know, we ought to take that wall down
ourselves. There's not much response to it in the Politburo. They go
on and talk about other topics. But they'd already - Gorbachev at
least - had already decided to take down the barriers. He had this
idea about a common European home - wasn't exactly a concrete plan but
it was a vision. So, when the wall fell, there's actually some joy -
amazing, there's joy in Moscow, worry in Washington, high anxiety in
other capitals, too.
BLOCK: No worry though in Moscow that this would represent the end of
Soviet domination in Eastern Europe.
Mr. BLANTON: They didn't see it that way. Gorbachev didn't see it that
way. He saw it as part of what he kept calling the pan-European
process toward one common home - a lot of contradictions there. He
sure didn't see unification happening so quickly. He'd had a different
plan for it. But interesting that in Moscow there wasn't panic. They
didn't see it that way, the way we look back at it today in this kind
of golden glow and say, oh, that was the end of communism. We're kind
of imposing our view today, but at the time it was very different.
BLOCK: Tom Blanton, thanks for coming you.
Mr. BLANTON: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: Tom Blanton is director of the National Security Archive.
Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved
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Gandalf Grey
"Harold Turdton" <hal.i....@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:hal.i.burton-B868...@news.newsguy.com...
> I was borderline for a long time. I crossed the border
> long ago.