From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (147 page)

Bush and his advisers took office skeptical of Reagan's rapprochement with Moscow and eager to maintain close relations with China, but the shocking events in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 made it impossible to do so. Demonstrations that began innocently in December 1984 at Beijing University in protest against cutting off the electricity at 11:00
P.M
. exploded over the next few years into a full-fledged, nationwide protest on the part of increasingly Westernized students seeking greater democracy and intellectual freedom from a regime determined to maintain the status quo. By 1989, the protests had spread to two hundred cities. In May, an increasingly nervous government imposed martial law. In early June, as the demonstrations swelled in Beijing, it sent tanks and units of the People's Liberation Army into Tiananmen Square to quell the protest. While a stunned world watched on television, the army brutally suppressed the demonstrators, some of them carrying plaster Statues of Liberty, killing as many as three thousand, wounding perhaps ten thousand more. A few U.S. commentators rationalized that the army was not trained to deal with domestic disturbance or that television had blown the events out of proportion, but Americans and other peoples worldwide were outraged by the naked display of military power.
¹¹⁰

An administration caught completely off guard responded haltingly and with some confusion. Bush like everyone else was appalled by the bloodshed, but he also feared the regional impact of a destabilized China and valued U.S.-Chinese commercial ties. While he formally protested, an elitist president more comfortable with order than with democracy did not feel and therefore could not voice the anger felt throughout the world. The United States imposed tough sanctions, cutting off military ties, stopping arms sales, and working with other nations to deny China much-needed credits from the World Bank and other international lending institutions. The sanctions infuriated the Chinese without in any way slowing their crackdown on dissenters. The administration's statements and actions failed to stifle rising domestic protest against its China policy and indeed brought down on the president criticism from both liberals and conservatives.
¹¹¹

The dynamics of Sino-American relations changed completely after Tiananmen. The Bush administration never quite resolved the dilemma of how to take a firm stand on principle without compromising interests deemed vital. It doggedly persisted in trying to repair relations with the Chinese government, sending Scowcroft on two missions to Beijing.
The first, in July 1989, was shrouded in secrecy greater than Kissinger's legendary 1971 trip. Its purpose was to make clear U.S. dismay at Tiananmen, and Scowcroft engaged in some tough talk. But his mere presence made plain U.S. eagerness to get back to normal, and his ill-chosen words in a banquet toast—reported worldwide on Cable News Network—seemed to endorse the Chinese position.
¹¹²

At home the changes were equally significant. Throughout the 1970s, China policy had been the exclusive preserve of the White House; after Tiananmen new players got into the act. The forty-three thousand Chinese students in the United States organized a remarkably effective lobby to prevent their forced return to China. Democratic senator George Mitchell of Maine and representative Nancy Pelosi of California took a keen interest in China, on occasion getting support from conservatives like Jesse Helms. Pelosi sponsored a bill exempting the students from a regulation that required them to return home after a year. Misjudging congressional support and preferring that the students return to China, the administration at first did not take the legislation seriously, then tried to kill it. The bill passed the House unanimously, the Senate by voice vote. The White House attempted to stand up for executive prerogative without abandoning principle by vetoing it but giving the students the same privileges by executive order. The administration's domestic foes were not appeased, and Beijing refused to "swallow this bitter pill."
¹¹³

A new and difficult era in U.S.-Chinese relations had begun. Architects of the old policy like Kissinger and Nixon continued to tout the old themes, but their rationale collapsed with the Berlin Wall and Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. With the Soviet Union no longer a threat, China lost its strategic centrality. In addition, the fall of the Eastern European dominoes made the Beijing government especially sensitive to the slightest U.S. intrusion into its internal affairs. The Bush administration persisted in trying to repair the widening rift, rationalizing that it was important to keep China from spreading nuclear weapons to other countries, an unpersuasive argument that seemed to reward China's bad behavior. The United States first eased and then removed most of the sanctions but got precious little in return. Scowcroft's second visit, in December 1989, provoked angry protest in the United States against what the
Washington Post
called appeasement of the "repressive and bloodstained Chinese government."
¹¹⁴
The following year, the Chinese students and Congress
proposed using the Jackson-Vanik amendment to condition China's most-favored-nation status on its human rights record. Without sufficient votes in the Senate to override a certain Bush veto, the first effort died, but the debate signaled the beginning of a bitter annual struggle that would vex relations with China and provoke heated controversy in Washington to the end of the century.

Bush entered office also unprepared for the revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in the
annus mirabilis
1989. He believed that Reagan had gone too far both in his early belligerence toward the Soviet Union and his later cozying up to Gorbachev. He feared that his predecessor's anti-nuclearism might denude U.S. defenses. He was suspicious of Gorbachev's intentions and worried that he might fail and be replaced by a hard-liner. The administration thus took office clinging to traditional Cold War views and prepared to contain a still unpredictable and possibly dangerous adversary.
¹¹⁵
Some adjustments were made by the spring. In a speech at Texas A&M University drafted by NSC staffer and Soviet specialist Condoleezza Rice, Bush proposed going "beyond containment." A subsequent NSC paper laid out conditions under which the United States would "welcome the Soviet Union back into the world order." Privately, however, the administration remained skeptical. And even its "beyond containment" approach was not sufficiently imaginative for the truly earthshaking events of the next twelve months.
¹¹⁶

The Eastern European upheaval had little precedent in world history. Since 1948, the governments of that region had been controlled by local Communists beholden to the Soviet Union and tightly tied to Moscow through the Warsaw Pact and bilateral economic agreements. When they deviated, as with Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Kremlin swiftly and forcefully brought them into line. Gorbachev's grand design envisioned reform-minded Eastern European Communists instituting
perestroika
-like changes on their own, retaining voluntary ties with the Soviet Union, and leading all of Europe into a new era of interdependence and cooperation. His December 1988 speech to the United Nations—he called it a "Fulton in reverse," referring back to Churchill's 1946 Missouri speech—sent clear signals that conservative leaders could not count on Soviet protection and must adapt to survive.
¹¹⁷
In fact, by the end of 1989, while the Kremlin stood by and watched, most of those
leaders had been replaced by non-Communists operating in democratic governments and looking west rather than east. The Eastern Europeans themselves were mainly responsible for this remarkable transformation. Gorbachev played a crucial role by doing nothing; U.S. involvement was incidental.
¹¹⁸

Fittingly, the beginning of the end of the Cold War took place in Poland, where Soviet-American conflict had started. General Wojciech Jaruzelski was the East European leader Gorbachev most trusted and the first to enact reforms, but the result was not what either intended. Faced with rising discontent from martial law and economic stagnation, Jaruzelski in April 1989 legalized Solidarity and agreed to free elections. In the June voting, the first in Eastern Europe since the onset of the Cold War, anti-Communists won a resounding victory. With Gorbachev's blessing, a coalition government was formed in which the Communists reluctantly agreed to participate. A member of Solidarity was elected prime minister. Incredibly, the Communists had surrendered power and the Soviet Union did nothing.
¹¹⁹

The shocking changes in Poland opened the floodgates to Eastern Europe. Hungary went still further, the Communists there reinventing themselves as social democrats, the first time a Communist party had voluntarily junked its ideology. In October 1989, on the anniversary of the 1956 uprising, Hungary declared itself a republic. Apparently with Soviet concurrence, the Budapest government also opened its borders, permitting the flight of thousands of disgruntled East Germans. Mass demonstrations in East Germany following an October Gorbachev visit forced out the recalcitrant hard-liner Eric Honeker. On November 9, his successor opened the Berlin Wall to passage without exit visas. Events quickly spun out of control. Citizens from the two Berlins embraced amidst the pop of fireworks and jubilant shouts of "The Wall is gone." Exultant youth danced on top of that most despised symbol of Cold War repression. Enterprising Berliners tore away at the structure with hand tools, saving pieces for souvenirs and, in the best tradition of capitalism, selling them to tourists. In neighboring Czechoslovakia, demonstrations led to a general strike. The Communist government first tried to suppress the uprising with force, then scrambled to adapt, then in the face of massive popular unrest simply resigned. On December 29, the parliament elected dissident poet Václav Havel prime minister, the process of radical change
in Czechoslovakia occurring so smoothly that it was called the Velvet Revolution. Only in Bulgaria and Romania did the Communist governments fulfill Gorbachev's vision by instituting reforms to retain power.
¹²⁰

Bush handled these events with admirable dexterity, but, as with China, it was hard to find the right balance between promoting freedom and sustaining order. The administration responded with predictable—and appropriate—caution to the first signs of upheaval in Poland and Hungary. Conditioned by recent history, U.S. officials feared provoking revolts inside the Eastern European countries that would force Soviet leaders to act. Correctly recognizing that the key to change was Soviet acquiescence, U.S. officials saw their principal role as making it easy for Gorbachev to do this. There would be no gloating or celebration. "We're not there . . . to poke a stick in the eyes of Mr. Gorbachev," Bush told Poles during a June visit, but to "encourage the very kind of reforms he is championing, and more reforms." Underestimating the power of the revolutionary forces, the president during his Polish visit appeared more at ease with Jaruzelski than with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. In Hungary, among Communists and reformers, he seemed to favor the former. When the Wall came down to thunderous cheers from across the world, the official U.S. response seemed out of touch. "I am not an emotional kind of guy," the president confessed.
¹²¹

German unification was the key event of the end of the Cold War, and here the United States played a vital role. The major push came from the Germans themselves—
Wir sind ein Volk
(we are one people) was their battle cry. The flight of fifty thousand East Germans each month and the impending collapse of the East German economy underscored the need for action. Other Europeans retained vivid memories of World War II and feared the economic clout of a reunited Germany. "Except for the Germans," a Dutch official observed, "no one in Europe wants reunification."
¹²²
The Soviet Union was especially nervous but unable to put on the brakes. His power slipping at home and his prestige and influence abroad, Gorbachev had lost the initiative. He desperately sought concessions to make the inevitable palatable, first proposing German neutrality, then insisting that a united Germany not be in NATO.

The U.S. government was divided, but Bush took the lead and in one of the more decisive moments of his presidency committed the United States to a unified Germany in NATO. He was sensitive to Soviet concerns. As a
means of "giving cover" to Gorbachev, Baker developed a "Two-plus-Four" scheme in which the two Germanys would work out arrangements on internal matters and then negotiate with the four postwar occupying powers on external matters. While the Germans pushed relentlessly toward unification, Baker and Bush at an April 1990 summit with Gorbachev agreed that the Red Army might remain in East Germany during a transitional period, offered aid for its redeployment to the USSR, and gave assurances on German boundaries, making unification acceptable. While complaining about being pushed out of Europe, Gorbachev acquiesced. Unification was set for October 1990.
¹²³

A crisis in Lithuania in 1990 posed the most difficult test in the emerging contest between freedom and order. As Eastern Europe escaped from the Soviet yoke, sentiment for independence mounted in Lithuania, since 1940 one of three Baltic States under Moscow's control. Already shaken by the Eastern European revolutions and fearful of a disastrous domino effect among the restive nationalities that made up the vast Soviet republic, Gorbachev firmly resisted the breakup of the union. Ignoring the Soviet leader, Lithuania declared its independence in March. The USSR responded with all means short of force, conducting menacing military maneuvers and imposing economic sanctions. The crisis posed a major dilemma for Washington. The United States had never recognized Soviet absorption of the Baltic States, the object of various "captive nation" resolutions passed with great fanfare by Congress in the early Cold War. Ethnic groups clamored for Baltic freedom. On the other hand, U.S. officials recognized the dangers to world order posed by a breakup or collapse of the Soviet Union, especially in the handling of nuclear weapons. Bush needed Gorbachev's support to consummate the German settlement. Recalling Hungary in 1956, the administration hesitated, in Condoleezza Rice's words, to "light a match in a gas-filled room."
¹²⁴
Thus it contented itself with mild protests and ceased even those when Gorbachev warned that U.S. intrusion hindered his ability to resolve the crisis. Lithuanians protested another Munich; Congress agitated for Lithuanian freedom. In June, the Soviets and Lithuanians worked out a shaky stopgap solution.