4 hours agoGeorge H. W. Bush, German reunification architect
Periskopi(8 years ago)
(8 years ago)Helmut Kohl, the longest-lived German Chancellor and one of Germany's main architects of reunification in 1989, has once named George H. W. Bush as a “fate” for Germany. Granted, it was the diplomatic capacity of the former American president, who died yesterday at the age of 94, who helped bring down communist rule. [...]
Understandably, it was the diplomatic capacity of the former American president, who died yesterday at the age of 94, who helped bring down communist rule in East Germany. He was also the first leader to use the term “reunification”.
In 1989, during the fall of government in East Germany, Bush had established friendly relations with Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union.
He backed Kohli's ambition to unite the two Germanys in the face of strong countering by French Prime Minister Francois Mitterrand and the British, Margaret Thattcher.
A day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bush called Kohli to wish him luck for the days and months to come.
Although it affected the development and spread of human rights, he refused to declare <x0fitt” on the Cold War because such comments could cause a harsh reaction from Soviet extremists.
In the months that followed the fall of the Wall, Bush calmed Gorbachev by plotting the diplomatic process that would enable reunification in 1990.
