The US went to great lengths to prevent a Soviet backlash as the Berlin Wall fell, playing down the joyous occasion as “just another step” toward the crumbling of communism in Eastern Europe, said retired general Brent Scowcroft, the top White House adviser at the time.
While the world celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, the White House was concerned that the rapidly unfolding events could prompt then general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev into a crackdown on the reformist movement in Eastern Europe, said Scowcroft, who was then-US president George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser.
“What we were all worried about was that if we gloated over what was happening, it could produce a reaction from the Soviet Union. So we wanted to downplay the whole issue as a step forward for everybody, but not gloat,” Scowcroft said.
In an exclusive interview to mark the 20-year anniversary of the historic event, Scowcroft, 84, provided a view from inside the White House on the Wall’s collapse, the debate about reunifying Germany and the lessons learned since the end of the Cold War.
As change swept through Eastern Europe, there was a great deal of concern that Gorbachev would be backed into a corner or forced out of office by hardliners in Moscow, moves that could have reversed the Kremlin’s support for reform, he said.
“Almost immediately we started to worry because Gorbachev indicated a great sense of unease of what was going on,” Scowcroft said. “That made us worry. So it was sort of a mixed reaction.”
After the Berlin Wall came down, talk shifted quickly toward discussion of unifying Germany. The Bush administration would back then German chancellor Helmut Kohl’s plan to reunify against the wishes of allies Britain and France, following a hefty debate among Bush’s advisers.
Then-US secretary of state James Baker favored the idea. Scowcroft acknowledges he was one of the skeptics.
“I was nervous about the whole thing and didn’t want us to get out in front on issues of German unification because it was such a sensitive subject and the Germans themselves were divided about it, and I knew that the British and French were opposed to it — not to mention the Russians,” Scowcroft said.
The following December, Bush and his advisers met with Kohl to hear the German leader’s plans to reunify. It was then that Bush decided to get behind unification, ending the internal White House deliberations.
“That was it and I think it turned out to be absolutely on the mark,” said Scowcroft, who today runs the Washington-based international business consulting firm he founded.
He will be part of the US delegation headed to Berlin this month to mark the demise of the Berlin Wall.
Bush had sought assurances that Kohl was committed to unifying Germany under NATO. Gorbachev wanted a neutral Germany. Scowcroft said he was worried Kohl would yield to Gorbachev’s demands and unite Germany at “any price,” while marginalizing the US desire to keep Germany in the alliance.
“I was concerned that he might, not out of any evil design, but just because his responsibility was Germany and he might feel he had to pay any price for a unified Germany,” Scowcroft said.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism marked not only the transformation of Europe, but it was also a transition for the US into the world’s only superpower, with all the benefits and burdens.
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