Former Presidential Advisor And Others Reminisce Over End of Cold War

By Ravi Bhatia – Talk Radio News Service

Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, reflected on the final days of the Cold War at a discussion hosted by the German Marshall Fund at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on Monday.

“We wanted to encourage the liberalizing regimes, especially in Poland and in Hungary,” he said. “But we wanted to do it at a pace which would not bring about Soviet reaction as happened in Germany in ‘53, Hungary in ‘56, Czechoslovakia in ‘68. We didn’t know exactly what that was, but we were sort of feeling our way. How much should we encourage Eastern Europe? How much should we be cautious?”

Scowcroft spoke in a panel that included Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former Foreign Minister of the Republic of Germany, and Robert Kimmitt, former United States Ambassador to Germany. BBC World News Washington Correspondent Katty Kay presided over the discussion, which was held in honor of the upcoming 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred on Nov. 9, 1989.

A barrier separating Eastern and Western Germany, the Berlin Wall symbolized the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Soviet Union-dominated Eastern Bloc. The fall of the wall tends to be synonymous with the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989] believed one can reform socialism,” said Genscher. “Later, he had to learn that you could not reform socialism, you could only overcome socialism. That happened in 1989.”