Malta Summit

6 Key excerpts on "Malta Summit"

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  Post Wall, Post Square

  Rebuilding the World after 1989

  • Kristina Spohr(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • William Collins

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4

  Securing Germany in the Post-Wall World

  T he 3rd of December 1989. It was almost incredible. George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, sitting together in Malta, relaxed and joking, in a joint press conference at the end of their summit meeting. This was a month after the fall of Wall and barely a week after Kohl’s surprise announcement of his Ten-Point Plan in the Bundestag.

  Happy days: Bush and Gorbachev on the Maxim Gorky

  ‘We stand at the threshold of a brand-new era of US–Soviet relations,’ Bush declared. ‘And it is within our grasp to contribute, each in our own way, to overcoming the division of Europe and ending military confrontation there.’ The president was optimistic that together they could ‘realise a lasting peace and transform East–West relations to one of enduring cooperation’. This, said Bush, was ‘the future that Chairman Gorbachev and I began right here in Malta’.[1]

  The Soviet leader fully agreed. ‘We stated, both of us, that the world leaves one epoch of Cold War and enters another epoch. This is just the beginning. We’re just at the very beginning of our long road to a long-lasting peaceful period.’ Looking ahead he stated bluntly: ‘the new era calls for a new approach … many things that were characteristic of the Cold War should be abandoned’. Among them ‘force, the arms race, mistrust, psychological and ideological struggle … All that should be things of the past.’[2]

  At Malta, there were no new treaties, not even a communiqué. But the message of the summit was clear – symbolised in this first ever joint press conference of superpower leaders. The Cold War, which had defined international relations for over forty years, seemed to be a thing of the past.

  *

  A full year had elapsed since these two men last met, at Governors Island, New York, in 1988 when Reagan was still president. Then Bush had assured Gorbachev that he hoped to build on what had been achieved in US–Soviet relations but would need ‘a little time’ to review the issues. That ‘little time’ had turned into twelve months, during which the world had been turned on its head.[3]

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  A New Theory and Practice of Diplomacy

  New Perspectives on Diplomacy

  • (Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • I.B. Tauris

    (Publisher)

  For example, in the midst of the crisis of US-Soviet détente, Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter decided to meet in Vienna to sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II, and Reagan and Gorbachev chose neutral Geneva, almost equidistant from their respective capitals, for their first tentative summit in 1985. While the definitions of summitry are limited to the time that the leaders actually spend together, it is important to underline that summits – as the emblematic case of the Reagan–Gorbachev summits show – are not isolated events. As Hans Morgenthau pointed out, ‘As instruments for the negotiated settlement of outstanding issues, summit meetings are a supplement to ordinary diplomatic procedures … they follow ordinary diplomatic negotiations as they are followed by them, each laying the groundwork for the other.’ 4 As will emerge in the case of the opening to China, at times the process is not ‘ordinary’ in the sense outlined above, but the significance of the process and of the preparatory work is crucial notwithstanding. Moreover, the broader context in which summit meetings take place is essential to understanding the meaning and impact of the negotiations. In the cases analysed in this chapter, the broader context of the Cold War had created a profoundly adversarial relationship between both the United States and China, and the United States and the Soviet Union. In the early 1970s, détente gradually mitigated such antagonism, but in radically different ways. While as a consequence of the 1972 summit, China slowly but inexorably moved into a tacit alliance with the United States, the renewed relationship with the Soviet Union only lasted a few years, soon replummeting into hostility in the early 1980s

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  Russian Politics and Presidential Power

  Transformational Leadership from Gorbachev to Putin

  • Donald R. Kelley(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • CQ Press

    (Publisher)

  In 1988, Gorbachev made it clear that the Brezhnev Doctrine no longer applied, and in July 1989, speaking before the Council of Europe, he confirmed that each of the satellite nations would be permitted to choose its own course of reforms. That opened the floodgates to the end of communism in Eastern Europe as each nation sought its own path to democratic reforms and disengagement from the Warsaw Treaty. The Berlin Wall came down, setting the stage for the eventual reunification of Germany, which Gorbachev openly supported. 12 Only weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev met with the new U.S. president, George H. W. Bush, in a hastily arranged summit in Malta. The meeting produced an informal declaration by both sides that the cold war was over, although none of the other countries that had been a part of the opposing alliance systems took part. Malta was chosen because it was the site of a February 1945 meeting between U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill, both on their way to the Yalta Conference at which the outlines of the coming cold war became increasingly apparent. Forty-four years later, Malta, long neutral in the cold war, was to host the end of the confrontation. Over the next two years, both the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance, the soviet-led economic bloc, and the Warsaw Treaty Organization, the Eastern counterpart to NATO, were formally dissolved. Soviet troops were withdrawn from the Warsaw Treaty area as quickly as they could be resettled at home. In November 1990, both the United States and the USSR signed the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, which sought to reduce and to place future limits on nonnuclear armaments, although considerable dispute would later arise over implementation and compliance. Later that year, the USSR joined Western nations in condemning the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, setting the stage for United Nations–sanctioned military action

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  The Moscow Summit, 1988

  Reagan And Gorbachev In Negotiation

  • Joseph G. Whelan(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  171

  The General Secretary portrayed the principal achievements at the Moscow meeting as being the “continuation of a dialogue” that “now envelops all key problems of world policy,” together with “a demonstration that this dialogue has become infused with a sense of realism” that insures its durability as a process. He regretted that “more could not have been achieved,” but he tempered this negative judgment with the observation that “politics is the art of the possible.” In his view the visit had also enabled the President to gain a better understanding of Soviet society, and he praised him for his “sense of realism.”172

  Recall that even before the Moscow meeting, Gorbachev had acknowledged in his interview with The Washington Post that, “The winds of the Cold War are being replaced by the winds of hope.” Whether true or not, the very discussion of such possibilities by Soviet and American negotiators indicated what was described as the “sweeping transformation” that was taking place in Soviet-American relations. What the summit represented in Gorbachev’s mind was, therefore, a further codification of that change. For, as Gorbachev told his Post interviewers, “the most important political result in the recent period of improvement in our relations is the regular and very productive political dialogue that we have been having.” “The important thing,” he added, optimistically, “is that if the dialogue continues, it will lead to specific achievements.173

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  Gorbachev's Gamble

  Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War

  • Andrei Grachev(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  53 At the press conference Gorbachev announced to the journalists that the USSR no longer regarded the US as its adversary.

  Observed from the outside by other political leaders, the Malta Summit appeared to be an indisputable triumph for Gorbachev. According to Jacques Attali, the reaction of Mitterrand was unequivocal: ‘George Bush confirmed his support for Gorbachev’s policies and expressed his intention to integrate the USSR into the international community.’ As for the position of Gorbachev himself, according to the French President, ‘he has never looked so strong. He’s managed to dominate the Party leadership and progressively eliminate his political enemies.’54

  Yet Gorbachev’s psychological triumph at Malta unfortunately came too late. If he felt finally rewarded for his efforts (and patience), his satisfaction had a bitter taste; in order to reach this place he had invested an enormous amount of effort and taken numerous unilateral steps. As a result he had wasted an important part of what probably was his most valuable asset, his window of time to prove to the people of his country that his project was worth following and would bring rewards.

  Finally recognized as the ‘intimate partner’ of the West, he was no longer in a position adequately to fulfil this role, due to the progressive weakening of his internal position. While less and less in control of events at home because of the accelerating deterioration of the economic situation, he was increasingly dependent on Western help. In this new political environment, the initial function of foreign policy was transformed: once Gorbachev’s political trump card and the most effective way to promote the ‘new political thinking’, it increasingly had become perestroika’s last resort. Consequently the diplomatic sphere, which until then had largely been exempt from internal political battles, unexpectedly turned into a front line. ‘In the summer of 1989 the Supreme Soviet without a single opposing vote ratified my nomination to the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs,’ Shevardnadze writes bitterly, ‘but in October 1990 a number of People’s Deputies accused me of causing damage to the national interest.’55

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  The Reagan Reversal

  Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War

  • Beth A. Fischer(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • University of Missouri

    (Publisher)

  “Spheres of influence are a thing of the past,” the president declared. “Together we have a particular responsibility to contribute to political solutions to [regional conflicts]…. History displays tragic evidence that it is these conflicts which can set off the sparks leading to worldwide conflagration.” The president recommended periodic consultations among senior experts in order to discuss regional disputes. “The objectives of this political dialogue will be to help avoid miscalculation, reduce the risk of U.S.-Soviet confrontation, and help the people in areas of conflict to find peaceful solutions,” he asserted. 48 The Geneva Summit Meeting, November 1985 Although the Geneva summit meeting is often seen as the beginning of the end of the cold war, it was actually the culmination of the new Soviet policy that Reagan had introduced in January 1984. The Geneva summit embodied the administration's commitment to dialogue, cooperation, and understanding. Moreover, it took place only eight months after Gorbachev had become leader of the Soviet Union. He had not yet introduced glasnost and perestroika, and no one could foresee at that time how revolutionary the new Soviet leader would prove to be. The American approach to the Geneva summit meeting, therefore, could not have been merely a response to changes in Soviet policies. As already noted, the Reagan administration had been very evasive about a summit conference prior to 1984. In 1985, however, it was President Reagan who initiated the Geneva summit. On March 10, 1985, the Kremlin announced that Konstantin Chernenko had passed away. Within hours of learning that Gorbachev would be the new Soviet leader, the Reagan administration invited him to a summit meeting. No preconditions were attached. There was no agreed-upon agenda. There was no certainty that any concrete agreement would result from the conference. In fact, the administration did not yet know what Gorbachev's policy positions would be

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