Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…n goes into effect. So we’ve now done the financial reunification of Germany. This is when there’s a London Declaration that’s inviting Eastern European countries to coordinate more closely with NATO. In return, Gorbachev gets a promise of a G7 summit meeting that’s going to fast-track aid to him, which it will do. And then Gorbachev agrees to German NATO membership. At this point, even bigger things are happening. Germany’s going to agree to its border with Poland. I’ll get there and explain. Germany provides 15 billion in Deutschmarks, including building all kinds of new apartment buildings for repatriated Soviet soldiers who are going home. Why are you doing that? Because you want those soldiers focused on buying furniture, not running a military coup. That’s what they’re doing. So the unification happens in mid-September 1990. Here’s the Polish borders. At the end of World War II, Stalin moved Poland 200 kilometers to the west, and it winds up taking a third of German territory by the time that’s all over. So the Germans don’t really want to sign all that away. In addition, as part of that, there were 12 million German refugees who were thrown out of wherever they were living to send them back to Germany, of whom 2 million died. So this is a big deal and it’s in living memory. Germany agrees to this, that the borders are done. German-Polish borders are set. Complicating factor: a month and a half before this unification treaty is signed, Saddam Hussein decides he’s going to invade Kuwait because he’s broke. He’s had a long war with Iran, huge debts, many owed to Kuwait, which he doesn’t want to pay back. So if you invade them, that solves that problem. Also, he would take over Kuwait’s very rich oil fields, and together that would make Iraq probably the swing producer of oil. So he thinks that’s a great idea. Except the Cold War’s over actually. The Russians are more than willing to cooperate with the United States. Gorbachev really needs more money, and he is willing to go along with getting Iraq out of Kuwait, but not with regime change in Iraq. Because think about it, Iraq is a very important debtor state to the Soviet Union. It owed them between $10–13 billion. That’s a lot of money for a broke creditor. But Gorbachev is being extraordinarily cooperative with Bush Sr. He sends Yevgeny Primakov on multiple missions to Baghdad. The first one, Primakov gets all Russian hostages out of Iraq. Then on the second trip, he gets all Westerners out, Americans included. Third trip, not so lucky. He’s there for the coalition force bombing. I don’t think he liked that very much. But imagine that bombing going on if there were Western human shields going down with every target. Russia took that card right off the table. Here’s some of the reasoning. Sergei Tarasenko was an aide to Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, and they understood that the United States was going to do something about this invasion of Kuwait. So the Russians thought, “It’ll be better if we force all of this to go through the UN, where Russia has a veto power.” He said, “Look, there was a division of roles.” It extends to China, the help that Russia provided. ught, “It’ll be better if we force all of this to go through the UN, where Russia has a veto power.” He said, “Look, there was a division of roles.” It extends to China, the help that Russia provided. “When the Americans asked us to work with the Chinese, we told the Chinese, ‘Think about it. You’re one of the big five with veto power. Doesn’t it suit your interest to funnel everything through the UN where you can put your foot down?’ And the Chinese came around to that idea.” However, the Russians had red lines. Here’s Anatoly Kovalev again, the deputy foreign minister. The red line is, American troops stay out of Iraq. No regime change in Iraq. You do that and you will tank the termination of the Cold War. And that would be the goal. Here’s Kovalev saying, “I advanced the basic principle that we must support the territorial integrity of Iraq. This was our sacred position. We must not permit a division of Iraq.” So if you wonder why the ground war ended after 100 hours, this is it. The big thing out there is war termination of the Cold War. That’s the big thing. Saddam Hussein is a minor event over there. Sorry, but he was. If it had tanked Cold War termination or upset the reunification of Germany, France and Britain might have been very happy, because François Mitterrand, who is the president of France, and Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain, were against German unification. They knew it would marginalize their own country. Germany’s going to be a bigger economy, which it is. François Mitterrand eventually found solace in expanding the European Community to the European Union when you’re incorporating all these Eastern Bloc countries into it. He plays a really important role in concluding the Maastricht Treaty that forms the European Union. But Margaret Thatcher just plain lost. She was just upset about the whole thing. She said, “Germany will be the Japan of Europe and worse than Japan.” I guess she hadn’t been to Japan lately. She said, “The Germans will get in peace what Hitler couldn’t get in war.” She wanted to leave Red Army troops in Germany for the duration. Imagine if that had been the case and now dealing with Putin… If he had troops in Germany, we would be in trouble. But Bush and Kohl worked around all of them. Bush said to Kohl at the end of it, “Look, I’m not going to beat my chest and dance on the Berlin Wall.” Both of them were very careful never to humiliate Gorbachev about the Soviet loss of the Cold War. Why? Because they knew that if they did that, he might fall from power sooner rather than later. Also, they were afraid that if they did that, the hardliners would come to power much more rapidly than they actually did. It was 20 years before Putin started consolidating his power. The newly independent countries of Eastern Europe needed those 20 years to integrate militarily, politically, economically with the West so that the cement could set before you got the Russians trying to destabilize them. So they bought them 20 years to do this. But there’s a cost to all this. Bush never got credit for his essential role in ending the Cold War on Western terms. So he was not reelected for a second term. o they bought them 20 years to do this. But there’s a cost to all this. Bush never got credit for his essential role in ending the Cold War on Western terms. So he was not reelected for a second term. Anyway, when it came time for Nobel Prizes and why the Cold War ended, Anatoly Adamishin, this Soviet Foreign Service officer, said, “Look, it’s difficult to deny the Soviet Union was the one that ended the Cold War.” And Edwin Meese, who was a counselor to Reagan and also his attorney general, said, “Look, the Cold War began because of Soviet policies and it ended in a sense because of Soviet policies.” The Nobel Prize Committee agreed. They awarded the prize to Gorbachev, not to Bush, for his role in liberating Eastern Europe. So when you’re thinking about this question of why Russia lost the Cold War, I hope you will come up with a more complicated answer than, “Well, Ronnie did it.” There are probably other causes at work as well. Anyway, thank you for your attention. That’s what I have for you this evening.…

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