Page 107 - Gorbachev News Today

I found as i did a lot of foreign travel for reagan that i met people. i always wanted to go to the funerals, you know, and so much so that jim baker said you die hell fly. id go to all these different funerals. and there id see the different leaders. i made the first contact for the united states officially, or for reagan with gorbachev, for example. i was over there when russian premier chernenko died. and i went and met gorbachev, got a feel for him, wrote the cable myself to reagan telling h...

Prepared all of this for me to say. i just want to talk to you. about the responsibility and the opportunity that we have before us. and i thought, wow, that was really something. and gorbachev relaxed. and you could see the weight come from his shoulders too. and then they just talked. >> im especially glad we had this meeting and we did gain a deeper understanding of each others views. we set the stage for progress across a broad range of issues. >> he understood the pressures on mikhail gorba...

To helping bring that about. he truthfully might have said of that event that all his life had been a preparation for that moment. >> what i like to remind people is that there is no precedent in history for the collapse of a great empire without a major war. and the period 1989 to 1991 was one of the most momentous, historically, i think, since world war ii. and some day george bush will get the credit he deserves for having managed that. >> bush developed a very close relationship with gorbach...

Unemotional, didnt care. and i cared deeply. but subsequently gorbachev had said that if wed had done it differently he didnt know how his military would react, whether theyd finally say enough is enough, or theyd say well teach this new gorbachev and take over and have a military confrontation. in east germany, poland, they had troops all through there. so it was better to work with the diplomacy of it all, which we did. helped have it very smooth. cold war ended without a shot being fired. >> ...

He truthfully might have said of that event that all his life had been a preparation for that moment. >> what i like to remind people is that there is no precedent in history for the collapse of a great empire without a major war. and the period 1989 to 1991 was one of the most momentous, historically, i think, since world war ii. and some day george bush will get the credit he deserves for having managed that. >> bush developed a very close relationship with gorbachev. >> he always made gorbach...

Going to talk about anything else? and when he was done with that interview, it was, you know, respectful and all of that. >> yeah. >> but he did no more interviews. cancelled the other interviews after that. so it was not all sweetness and nice. >> you and dan rather, right, on that same subject. but let me say, george h.w. bush, like all presidents, things happen to them and its not their fault and it gets bad press. for instance, he met gorbachev in the mediterranean during what was like a hu...

Worked with gorbachev for his time in office. and, as a result, we left a situation that was very, very good. now, there are a lot of people now saying, weve got to get out of this treaty, got to get out of that treaty. bad, terrible mistakes, which we will regret, because they dont make sense. while the soviets have been cheating on the inf treaty, so lets get out of the treaty. good. you do that and guess what, the soviets arent cheating anymore, because theres no treaty to cheat. doesnt make ...

Short years that he was president. i am biased, of course, but i think he was the best one-term president we ever had and among the most underappreciated of all of our presidents. and i think history is correcting that. when you look at what happened on his watch, the cold war that we had fought for 40 years ended. and ended peacefully because of the ajoint way he handled it. he was criticized for not in effect dancing on the wall. he said, wait a minute, were not going to do that. weve got a lo...

Said what was this conversation? this is extraordinary that in the last waning moments of the soviet union, gorbachev called you. and typical of george bush, he hadnt thought much of it. hes such a humble man that hed really not seen the significance of that. >> gorbachev called him to say good-bye, and to say how much it meant to him that theyd had this relationship over the last couple of years and offered to help in any way. and president bush said my horseshoe pit is always open, mikhail, co...

Know, kind of patrician mentality that said to him, look, i dont have to pander. i dont have to go with the flow. i know i have an internal core. >> i think youre exactly right, fareed. he knew who he was. there was also a strong sense of modesty. he didnt have to go through his life bragging or proving things to other people. at 18, he showed his courage by volunteering to fly in world war ii. and you mentioned, i think, the two most extraordinary moments in the foreign policy of his tenure. th...