Thirty years ago this month, George Bush met Mikhail Gorbachev off the Mediterranean island nation of Malta for their first face-to-face meeting as leaders of their respective countries. The challenge before them at that time was to begin unwinding the Cold War – a task made more complex by rapidly unfolding events across Central and...
Inside the White House, there were no sirens, no announcements of change, except for the relentless ticking of the wire service machines as the story started to emerge: the first few cautious citizens, mostly students, began to chip away at the Berlin Wall. And the story was issued. As the press is want to do, even the first stories out of Berlin speculated that the wall was coming down.
Roger B. Porter Three decades ago the country was governed by sharply divided government. A newly elected President, George H.W. Bush, faced larger congressional majorities of the opposing political party than those faced by any other elected American president. He offered in his Inaugural Address an extended hand and began working with the Congress on...
September 2, 2019 marks 75 years to the day that naval aviator LTJG George Bush was shot down over the Pacific island of Chi Chi Jima — during a bombing run on the island’s radio station that had been intercepting U.S. military transmissions and warning Japanese forces throughout the region of impending U.S. operations. That...
Poland and Hungary – July 1989 “Western Vision of the Future” Note: Thirty years ago this month, President Bush embarked on historic visits to Poland and Hungary prior to attending the G-7 (Group of Seven) summit in Paris. The President and his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft recounted the significance of these visits in their...
Thirty years ago, Chinese troops stormed Tiananmen Square in Beijing, ruthlessly dispersing what remained of tens of thousands of demonstrators who had been occupying it – and demanding political reforms – for more than a month. In the United States, the outrage to this event was sharp and widespread. President George Bush and his National...
Thirty years ago, on May 29, 1989, President George H.W. Bush led NATO to adopt his proposals to begin the unwinding of the cold war with the Soviet Union. Although the summit meeting six months later between George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev at Malta – which took place in December of 1989 – is usually celebrated as being the milestone date for the end of the cold war, Malta would never have happened without the events that came together in Brussels over Memorial Day Week in 1989.
