was this the meaning of the visit of Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate June 12, 1987 , during which demanded that Gorbachev demonstrated the seriousness of its intentions and broke down the Berlin Wall.
And in May 1988 spoke before the statue of Lenin in Moscow University the most vibrant defense of the free society has never given to the people Soviet. During that trip he visited the ancient monastery of Danilov and extolled the value of religious freedom. American Embassy, \u200b\u200bassured a group of dissidents on the day of freedom was close. All these initiatives were intended to force Gorbachev's hand.
First, Gorbachev agreed to a profound unilateral reduction of Soviet forces in Europe. Beginning in May 1988, Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Shortly thereafter, Soviet soldiers began to withdraw even from Angola, Cambodia and Ethiopia. In Eastern Europe, left the race to freedom and the Berlin Wall came down.
Throughout that time, Gorbachev's great achievement, for which will be remembered by history, was to not use force, as was his predecessors had done before the popular uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Now Gorbachev and his government not only allowed the dissolution of the empire, but began to speak just as the Reagan .
In October 1989 the Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov announced that the Soviet Union would not interfere with the internal politics of the Eastern Bloc nations. "The Brezhnev Doctrine is dead," Gerasimov said. With reporters who asked him what would have been replaced, Gerasimov said, "You know Frank Sinatra's song My Way? Here, Hungary and Poland are proceeding in this way. We have the Sinatra doctrine". The same Reagan could have used better words. Finally, the revolution spread to the Soviet Union itself.
Gorbachev, who had completely lost control of events, she found herself excluded from
power. The Soviet Union voted in favor of herself. Would have been problems of adjustment to new conditions, but the liberated people knew that these problems are clearly preferable to life in slavery.
Even some of those who had been critical of Reagan were forced to admit that its policies had been right.
Henry Kissinger said that while Bush was to attend the final disintegration of the Soviet empire, "is Ronald Reagan's presidency was to mark the turning point. "Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state, said reset decided by Reagan, whom he had opposed, had led to the collapse of communism. These conclusions are widely shared in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
When Czech President Vaclav Havel has visited Washington in May 1997, I asked him if the defense strategy and Reagan's diplomacy had been crucial to the end of the Cold War. Havel replied in the affirmative, adding that "both Reagan and Gorbachev should be attributed to merit "because Soviet Communism, as sooner or later destined to collapse," without them we would have taken much longer. "Havel's words are indisputable. But Reagan and Gorbachev won has lost. If Gorbachev was the trigger, Reagan was the one who pushed him. For the third time in the twentieth century, the United States fought and won in a world war. In the Cold War, Reagan was our Churchill: it was his vision and his leadership to lead us to victory.
0 comments:
Post a Comment