George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

a Nazi resurgence seeking to enslave Britain within the coils of the EEC. Conor Cruise
O'Brien, Peregrine Worthshorne and various Tory propagandists coined the phrase of an
emergent "Fourth Reich" which would now threaten Europe and the world. The Anglo-
Saxon oligarchs were truly dismayed, and it is in this hysteria that we must seek the roots
of the Gulf crisis and the war against Iraq.
But in the meantime, the collapse of the old Pankow regime in East Berlin meant that
Bush had urgent issues to discuss with Gorbachov. The two agreed to meet on ships in
Malta during the first week of December.
Bush talked about his summit plans in a special televised address before Thanksgiving,
1989. He tried to claim credit for the terminal crisis of communism, citing his own
inaugural address: "The day of the dictator is over." But mainly he sought to reassure
Gorbachov: "...we will give him our assurance that America welcomes this reform not as
an adversary seeking advantage but as a people offering support." "...I will assure him
that there is no greater advocate of perestroika than the president of the United States."
Bush also had to protect his flank from criticism from Europeans and domestic critics
who had warned that the Malta meeting contained the threat of an attempted new Yalta of
the superpowers at the expense of Europe. "We are not meeting to determine the future of
Europe," Bush promised. [fn 11]
It is reported that, here again, Bush was so secretive about this summit until it was
announced that he did not consult with his staffs. If he had, the nature of Mediterranean
winter storms might have influenced a decision to meet elsewhere. The result was the
famous sea-sick summit, during which Bush, whose self-image as a bold sea dog in the
tradition of Sir Francis Drake required that he spend the night on a heaving US warship,
required treatment for acute mal de mer. Bush's vomiting syndrome, which was to
become so dramatic in Japan, was beginning. He had perhaps not been so tempest-tossed
since his nautical outing with Don Aronow back in 1983.
At the Malta-Yalta table, Bush and Gorbachov haggled over the "architecture" of the new
Europe. Gorbachov wanted NATO to be dissolved as the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist,
but this was something Bush and the British refused to grant. Bush explained that
Germany was best bound within NATO in order to avoid the potential for independent
initiatives that neither Moscow nor Washington wanted. A free hand for each empire
within its respective sphere was reaffirmed, as suggested by the symmetry of Bush's
assault on Panama during the Romanian crisis that liquidated Ceausescu, but left a neocommunist
government of old Comintern types like Iliescu and Roman in power. Bush
would also support the Kremlin against both Armenia and Azerbaijan when hostilities
and massacres broke out between these regions during the following month. Bush's
reciprocal services to Gorbachov included a monstrous diplomatic first: just as the
communist regime in East Germany was in its death agony, Bush despatched James
Baker to Potsdam to meet with the East German "reform communist" leader, Modrow.
No US Secretary of State had ever set foot in the DDR during its entire history after
1949, but now, in the last days of the Pankow communist regime, Baker would go there.
His visit was an insult to those East Germans who had marched for freedom, always