♪ >> next on "the presidency," jeffrey engel gives scholars a preview of his manuscript in progress, "when the world seemed new: george h.w. bush and the end of the cold war." engel, director of the center for history at southern -- at southern methodist university, answers questions posed by his holies, the audience, and andrew card, who served as towards h w bush's deputy chief of staff. this event was hosted by the university of virginia's miller center. it is about two hours. >> this event is called a manuscript review. it was suggested about 10 years ago. nelson said, it is a great

conference, but you need something to tie the room together. why don't you have a leading scholar come in and present a manuscript in progress and really bring some of the leading scholars and practitioners who can critique that manuscript before it is too late? we have all been there when our book has come out and you participate in a panel and people always say, you should have done this, you should have done that. today, we do have one of the world's leading scholars, jeff engel, who i will say a word about first. jeff is presenting his manuscript very much in progress. the title is "when the world seemed new: george h.w. bush and ."e end of the cold war an associate professor of history and the director of the center for presidential history at southern methodist

university. he is the author of numerous books. includehe most recent "into the desert" and "the fall of the berlin wall." and we are really fortunate to have jeff with us. he is going to say a few words about his manuscript. he put a few chapters of it up online. i know that some of you had a chance to look at it. you really should get a practitioner, someone who knows a thing or two about how government actually works. we are fortunate to have just the right person in this case. that is andrew h. card. mr. card was the chief of staff to president george w. bush from 2006, an001 to april

extraordinary long tenure for a chief of staff, if i am not mistaken about my history. he also has experience with bush i. he was his deputy chief of staff and secretary of transportation for george h.w. bush. currently the executive director in the office of the provost at texas a&m university. thank goodness that johnny mann ziel was finally picked in the draft because i was worried that we were going to lose a commentator, to be honest. should get a leading scholar from history and a leading scholar from another discipline. and we have those scholars with us today as well. david farber is a professor of modern american history at temple university.

he is author of a lot of books, and even more very influential articles. some of his most recent books are "everybody ought to be rich. " "rise and fall of modern american conservatism." thank you for joining us today, david. commenting last, but certainly not least, is melani mcalister, who is an associate professor of american studies, international affairs, and media and public affairs and she is also the ,hair of her department american studies, at george washington university. epici is the author of encounters, culture, media, and the u.s. interest in the middle east since 1945. she is also the coeditor with

marie griffin of "religion and politics in the contemporary united states." ira, i know you are watching like a hawk, this webcast, along with several other people. think, are fulfilling not only our obligation to dream dream panel for your idea of a manuscript review. without further a do, i am going to hand things over to jeff. take it away. >> thank you, brian. it is traditional, at this particular moment, to say how pleased the speaker is to be here. i have to admit that last night was the nfl draft and i was only expecting my way to be winging my way to a new city at this point. but there is also around two and i have hope up, so

still. let me begin by thanking brian and evan mccormick and everyone here for this tremendous opportunity. it is a wonderful opportunity for me to get important feedback at the precise moment when it is most useful, i think. i also want to say that it is wonderful to be here at the miller center again because this is one of the institutions that is a model for how the academy of policymaking can come together and work together and move forward together. having just founded a new center can tellry at smu, i you a number of times where an issue came up, and idea came up, and we say, how does the miller center do it? because they do it well. >> [inaudible] >> we should courtney on that. -- coordinate on that. theme also take -- thank

panel for taking the time out. i am going to do two things in my brief commentary. i am told to speak for about 10 minutes or so. my wife says i cannot clear my throat in 10 minutes, so we will see how far i get on this. first am i will give you a little bit of discussion about what the book is about, how the book is set up, the methodologies involved and the areas i am trying to cover. then i will tell you a little bit about george w. bush -- george h.w. bush. the book tries to do several things at once. it is simultaneously a study of u.s. foreign-policy during the tumultuous end of the cold war. a is also simultaneously group biography, looking primarily at george h.w. bush. for the rest of the talk, whenever i mention president bush, i am referring to 41. and those around him, and those around him, the collective biography of america national security's decision-making

during this period. it also tries to situate american policymaking within a broader international milia. -- milieu. , we go overin 1989s that occurred during through 1991 that were not generated by the united states. the united states was reactive during these times. one of the arguments that i make is that this is the essence of policymakingh's and his foreign-policy as a whole was to be cautious and reactive, realistically reactive overly being too exuberant in reacting to foreign events. because there were dramatic foreign events going on through this period. it is important to recall all that occurred during the four years of the bush residency. this has to include the end of the cold war with ensuing events

such as the fall of the berlin wall, the breakup of the soviet empire, the breakup of the soviet union itself. we also have events on the other side. we have things like tiananmen square, which was ultimately met by repression and force. we also have a democratic invasion of panama. we also have the gulf war. we also have independence going on in south africa. not only the gulf war, but further difficulties in the middle east vis-à-vis ethnic cleansing. speaking of ethnic cleansing, we have the beginning of the tragedy that was post-cold war yugoslavia. looking at these events, it is astounding to think that all of them occurred within the same 4 years. i would make the argument that more accord -- more occurred during president bush's tenure

in u.s. office then faced any other president in u.s. history, with the exception of maybe fdr during the height of world war ii. during east -- during each of these events, president bush and his staff adopted what i like to call hippocratic democracy. that is thomas first, do no harm. a world was, to their minds, going in the proper direction. democracy was on the rise. markets were on the rise. the soviet union and communism work fairly on the decline. -- were clearly on the decline. what would happen when this decline occurred was something no one could put their finger on. bob gates, who went on to become secretary of dispense -- of defense, was deputy national security advisor and gates who had trained as an historian, was fond of going around the white house and telling everybody that he could that never in human

history had a massive empire collapsed without a major war ensuing. consequently, when people in the white house saw the soviet union begin to collapse, they feared the next step in that logical chain. at every step, it ministration would approach their difficulties by thinking to themselves not what can we do, but how can we promote stability? , which we keep things are already going in the right direction, continuing to go in the right direction without speeding them up to the point where they derail or perhaps doing something to stop the process of change, which is going in the right direction? time and time again, i come back to a quote uttered by otto von bismarck decades before. who said, and i will quote directly, "the stream of time

flows inexorably along. by plunging my hand into it, i am merely doing my duty. i do not expect, thereby, to change its course." what he is telling us here is that the move is moving in a direction. toicymakers might attend change things, but they are never going to change the current. a are never going to change the flow. this is something which president bush, though i never heard him quote bismarck, something that he believed in a lady that the world was going in the right direction and that the only thing that he could do as president of the united states was to make sure that we continued on that path without hitting the rocks along the way. in fact, to give you a singular example of this, president bush was pilloried in the press during the initial aftermath of the fall of the berlin wall. which was covered on national television to great acclaim, which people around the world saw celebrations occurring

that no one particularly ever imagined even weeks before could have occurred peacefully. at president bush invited, one point, reporters into the office to witness him watching these events on tv as he was watching them in real-time. he was leaning back at his desk stall says toie him, you just do not seem excited. the culmination of the entire half-century cold war effort, we seem excited. not he responded in a very important way. he said, "well, i guess i am not just an excitable guy." actually the truth of why he was trying to lay down his excitement. later on, he did point out that one of the great things about dynamic change is that it is all moving in our direction. he did not want to change

direction. in fact, he knew something which the other reporters in the room did not, which was that he had spent the previous night and hours on the telephone with margaret thatcher, cole, and gorbachev, who pleaded with him not to do anything. the great concern for all of these leaders at the time was that this excitement of the crowd would get out of hand. that violence would ensue. that no one could control this incredible change. each of them had in the back of their minds a singular example of violence -- of celebration going too far and being turned into violence by those who thought it had gone too far, which, of course, was tiananmen square, which only happened once before. at the time, president bush and , let us notggested go too far in celebrating those who are democratizing from the streets up.

in us not go too far celebrating reformers because those reformers have enemies and those enemies, i.e. those in control of the communist state, have tanks and guns and we can see -- and we have seen what can happen when they get pushed too far. ultimately, the great fear of the administration was that those conservatives in the communist world would react to gorbachev, tried to push the world forward through reform. of course, we see this coming true in august of 1991. point, with a very low likelihood of success, the fear that that could generate into civil war and ethnic violence and the like. i argue that there are only two moments when president bush essentially took off the hippocratic gloves, if you will, and decided to push forward with initiatives. the first was reunification of germany. he believed that the reunification of germany was

necessary in order to keep future stability in europe. having nato in europe allowed americans to also stay in europe. he believed firmly that the only thing that had truly cap the peace was the american president. he pushed hard for reunification on the terms they needed, which was keeping germany in nato. the second one was the gulf war. this strikes me as a moment where we see the end of the cold war. first, thethings, soviets coming along with the international community in a way they had never done before, working with britain and france and the united states on a central issue of importance to all of them, the security of the middle east. secondly, this is the one where president bush begins to lay out what the world would look like after the cold war. has been first time he

willing to admit that the cold war is over. and then we come to the final point which i will make today which is what the world order came to mean. in many ways, this is a phrase that has been deemed by historians as being somewhat hollow, that there was nothing the within bush's new world order. i think this is the central idea that is driven the administration, that change is moving in the right direction. if we look at the tenet of the new world order, it was not to suggest that the world was going to be perfect, but rather better. more just, more free, more secure, not just free and secure , but more so. ultimately, that the world would be able to take the opportunity itch had been afforded before the cold war even occurred. vision for thes post-cold war world was something that had never been created because of the cold war.

with that, i want to thank my commandeers once more and let them begin to pillory me. thank you. [applause] >> my name is andy card and i am an engineer by training, a politician by disease, and not an academic. i am barely called a practitioner, but i have been blessed to be invited to read just a manuscript -- to read jeff's manuscript and i found it to be very good. i think it is mistitled. it is more of a biography than it is just a description of the end of the cold war. but i loved the biographical information and i do think it is instructive to understanding bush the george h.w.

man that he is. so i loved the trip down memory lane and i loved reading about the most respected individuals i have met in my experience in government and politics, and that is george h.w. bush. that theso say instructive part of the book is the relationships that jeff has shown the president developed over a long. of time -- over a long period of who hadpecially those to counsel him as he dealt with challenging experiences. he discovered the value of wisdom and it was not wisdom that came from him. it was wisdom that he invited from other people. that is part of what jeff has put together. collectionn that the of advisors that were helping a processbush manage

that was really not part of the political catalyst -- the political calculus when they entered into government long before president bush became president. i do not think they anticipated that the soviet union would change the but the wisdom that they had in understanding it and dealing with it was invaluable. developthat was how you relationships that ended up being very important. i did find that there was some tendency to forget that the rest of the world was functioning or not functioning and amerco was functioning or not functioning at the same time. the president had to wrestle with unbelievably fabulous opportunities. i do agree that he came at that opportunity with a desire not to manage it, but to invite its

continuance. and so it was phenomenally restraining for any leader to say, this is going in the right direction. i do not need to put my hand on the tiller every moment. that ship is headed in the right direction. i could have an emotional response that might cause the tiller to turn the wrong way. and i do not want that to happen . having said that, i want to know where the shoals are. if the ship is heading into the shoals, i would like somebody to tell me so i can pull the tiller a little bit and see if we can avoid the shoals. i think that description is really personified with james a. powellhe third and colin , who helped bring a breath of experience and observations and helped make a difference. and there were others as well. some the president did not want

to invite to be around him at first. i like how jeff describes each -- thed relationship strained relationship with the former secretary of state, who was quite prominent and is still quite prominent in the dialogue of dynamic change in the world. think, that wisdom, i was facilitated in dealing with people who shared that view. believe, bush, i do was that the cost of change -- cusp of change of philosophy in the white house at the same time that he was on the cusp of , ifge with the world powers you will. and it does not look very dramatic going from reagan to bush. i am not sure it was really dramatic, but it was a change.

his views were very different than his predecessor's views, george schultz. the views of the foreign-policy community when president reagan was dealing with the opportunity for change that had already started to emerge from gorbachev and that comes through in just too.-- in jeff's book, the seeds of change were actually planted overseas by others and he wondered how well-fertilized they would be or when they would be watered or when they would produce beautiful flowers or whether it would produce weeds. the seeds themselves were not our seeds. i think they were invited by our government and how our by, andnt functions of, for the people and how our economy thrives through entrepreneurship and creativity and the courage to take risks.

those were things that were lacking in the soviet union. and i think gorbachev recognized they were lacking and he needed to make changes so he helped to identify the seeds that should be planted and where they should be planted. we had to make sure did not -- that somebody did not round up the seeds. i think that is what president bush did very well and he did it by having the benefit of counsel from lots of different people who did not all share the same view, except the same commitment. i think that was of great benefit to the president and i think that is reflected in the early stages of the book. the challenge that i have reading this book as it is maturing, i do feel as if i am anxious to turn on the radio -- and this dates me -- but i used up love listening to paul harvey

, "the rest of the story." i want to know what the rest of the story is. i think there is something still missing in the book. i would suggest the relationship that margaret thatcher was going through in her own caucus, in her own country. also had an impact on the debate that took place in washington dc and in other capitals, especially in europe. especially when you consider that europe was trying to give itself a position -- definition as an entity rather than the sovereign definition of its members. that was a strained time in the relationship between the british and the french -- wait a minute, it is always a strained relationship. but it was particularly strained at this time. the british were reluctant to be part of the full definition and the french were demanding that their definition be the definition. that was a dynamic that impacted

some of the discussions about changes that were taking place in the soviet union and how we should respond to those changes. there was also the economic opportunity that was perceived by europe before it was perceived by the united states. some of the opportunities for change in the soviet union. and so i think there were other interests at play as the soviet union was struggling to deal with the reform that really was not invited, it was imposed. but it was invited, i think, for a normal reason and a noble expectation. at the time, most of us in the united states were cynical of the person who presented the reform. is there a mock rebellion -- reason forn

gorbachev to do what he is doing? history has shown that it was more noble. but he came from a machavellian vellity so i'm sure machia guided a lot of people around him and some of those layers are still on the stage and looking him to give them another opportunity and i think that we are witnessing that now. you touched a little bit on what was happening in the soviet union or in russia. they seldom call it russia at the time, but there was still an influence within the soviet union. while i will reflect on our own the board of am on the museum of the american revolution, which is a brand-new museum being constructed in philadelphia. i love going to the board

meetings because great historians come and tell us about our own revolution and i learn something every time. george washington was not winning every battle. in fact, he lost most battles as they were building up to the opportunity at yorktown. my friends in massachusetts were hanging tough. it were going to be in it until the bitter end no matter what. people in pennsylvania were saying, wait a minute. we want to be with the winner. some people in virginia started to think, hey, maybe we want to be with the winner too. in south carolina, they figured they were not going to be the winner so they were looking to get on the other side. i suspect a lot like that was happening in the soviet union as gorbachev is wrestling with the reforms that he wants to put in place. obviously, we know that the coup attempt had an impact on the relationship that gorbachev had with not only the soviet union, but with russia.

undercurrent, along with the time that gorbachev was bringing his view of reform to the people of the soviet union and to the countries. satellite countries were definitely trying to decide who is the winner. there was a dynamic there that i think president bush managed better than historian technology knowledge.storians ac he was cognizant of the ease germans and the czechoslovakian's and the balkans. he was cognizant to what their challenges were as they try to deal with the unsettled relationships that they had either like or not like. -- liked or not liked. who is the winner going to be? do they have been -- do they have the courage to wait until

there is a winner? or do they want to wait to see who emerges? that was a challenging time for president bush and his team. .ncreasingly sensitive to it 's larry eagle brook experience, it was very helpful to deal with these dynamics in the extended family. i would say that you have a great start. you told the story of how president bush became so grounded in his responsibilities and expectations. i think you have developed a great understanding for us to know why the players that president bush brought around him would gather to be around him and what the relevance was. i think you have given a good description of how europe was starting to observe what was happening. i do not think you have gone enough into the relationship some of theween

french and british leaders that actually did impact the dialogue that took place in diplomatic circles and nato and how nato was responding at the same time, because there were real skeptics within nato. and schultz-reagan expectation was more optimistic. the bush team coming in was more pessimistic as they made the change from a reagan philosophy to a bush philosophy, which was not supposed to be a dramatic change. but it was definitely a change. bush, i think, benefited from having been in the reagan administration and had an understanding of what their observations were, but he also had the benefit of people who were out and had been observing and had different

expectations with how to deal with them. i think that dynamic is interesting. harvey'sready for paul rest of the story. i want this to be a productive effort rather than destructive. i would like to see the book published and i think it will have an appeal far beyond the academic community. i also would remind you that president bush, number 41, was truly remarkable in that not only did he have to deal with the things that jeff talked about that we all can remember on the path -- on the foreign-policy front, but he also got the americans with disabilities act passed, the clean air act passed, negotiation the first agreement to reduce ozone-depleting gases. he took tremendous effort to make changes in how congress work. he got a budget deal done and he did that all in one term. i think it was the most reductive -- i think he was the most productive one-term president in the history of our

country. [inaudible] othermay be somebody with initials. thank you. [applause] >> that is the proverbial tough act to follow. thank you so much to the miller center for inviting me here and to jeff for giving us the opportunity to talk about his manuscript. roddick as to this tremendous breadth of understanding regarding american international relations at the cost of the 1980's and 1990's. reading through this portion of the manuscript, i felt quite confident that jeff knows in depth the key individuals and events that compromise the history he wants to explain. i learned a great deal from this manuscript about president bush and how -- and i understood how an extraordinary man faced a

challenge with his nation. in the pages of this manuscript, president bush is normally , but the broad history read at a critical accounting of his decision-making and the limits of his worldview that he cautiously and prudently oversaw the american government's response to the end of the soviet union, the restructuring of europe. told us before that his project attempts to bring together three key narratives. one, the ark of president bush's leadership in ending the cold war. the second is the relationship between president bush and gorbachev. the third is the tale of a group of world leaders that played key roles in the unfolding of the last years of the cold war. wrote that it is

history from above, a history in which leadership matters. because it is a story of leadership as much as how jeff explores the tale -- and i am kind of following up on andy's comments. history,presidential the politics figure far left and international policy. through discussions with president bush and several other key figures as well as an extra ordinary scouring of the white house and our cable -- and archival material, jeff delivers a portrait. decency shiness through in this history and so does his caution. he was the tortoise to gorbachev's hare, which he calls it -- hippocratic diplomacy. complexted to the unfolding of events that

comprise the end of the cold war. what does not much appear in these pages is the bush that his critics saw. there were for the citizens of bush's ideological limits in chapter 7. but not a distance understanding of bush that one might expect from a historian so well first -- so well-versed. for example, he was a practitioner of free-market economics and lived in a world in which economic success was normative and expected, but by no means the be-all, end-all. president bush had little or no social, in the political, and economic conventions in which he inherited the -- he inherited. the accepted social hierarchies of all kinds.

was created to benefit some and limit the life courses of others. engel, in the relatively few point oflls bush's view moderate progressivism. what does that mean in a broad historian -- historical context? that he would cooperate between international labor and business? that he would advocate progress for women's roles in society? is, toh and engel's work some extent, on problem that ties. -- unproblematized. ,ome of them i would think quite hard-nosed and aggressive, are unquestioned. the buyer -- the biographical

detail unveils just work. -- jeff's work. demonstrative of worldview and social position and the historical markers are left unexplored here. .eff calls bush a company man it is a telling phrase, but a largely unexplained term. bush is a leader and not a middle manager. he works well in certain kinds of organizations but is uninterested in solving a great many other sorts of problems. he is a great patriot, but his interest in using american power abroad is reflective of a particularized generation of american interests. those are largely left undefined here. did though president bush not articulate those values, i think jeff has to do more inductive reasoning to explain those views and get at those issues.

how such a beleaguered and energetic will to power and a strategy ins to an international arena in the late 1980's and 1990's is largely left unsaid. sometimes i think he needs to not take president bush at his word and think about how his actions and policies demonstrate what bush meant when he used words like "freedom." in more concrete terms, i think that jeff might make bush more vivid by giving us a sense of how he made decisions and process the massive flow of information that came at him. the pocket portraits of james baker and a few other of bush's key advisers are well told. i can tell, at least in the section that we have, the cia, the nsa and the state department rarely appear in these pages.

why understanding is that president bush was a firm believer in the products produced i the taliban's community and was a regular consumer of such briefings. we do not see that material here. maybe it will come later in the manuscript. in the page i read that in the pages i read, he relied on his own feelings in pursuing international policies. this vision of bush might be true, i do not know, but i would think that agents in the executive branches would be channeling information to the white house and i wonder why this info did not reach bush or i dos simply dismisses it. not know it i would think it would figure more prominently in the white house. jeff is dedicated to arguing that leadership matters and that different leaders do things for their own reasons. i have little sense in the pages that president bush is the head of the executive branch who sits atop a mountain resentingtion different bureaucracies,

administrations, political views and agendas. residential decision-making under bush seems extraordinarily circumscribed and based on little and." information. in contrast, the book produced by the miller center on the bush presidency that was just , in thed by cornell essay by arthur lemieux spero -- sparrow argued that the bush administration's success was in measure a part of their policy process. i know jeff is writing for a broad audience and that demands a focus on the president and his tight circle of leaders. after goodwin's great lincoln biography with its genius term, "a team of rivals," we were looking at a way to encapsulate how the presidency work. i think jeff can do more in

explaining how the company man orchestrated such a fine foreign-policy team and how he was able to receive the kind of advice he did. while issues of administration can be dull, they can also be fascinating. demonstrative of the jury to which good administration are the lifeblood of decision-making. i have a feeling that as historians look back at the bush administrative processes will be a key aspect of the modern presence. bush i think will stand out for that set of talents. right, i think we need to know where the white house failed to deliver key information or insight. in other words, what did the system failed to produce and what kind of advisers were unable to make themselves heard in the white house? leadership is a critically important aspect of the history

of the cold war. raider attention to how bush led his white house into the unavoidable fog of policymaking would strengthen the analytic power of this work. how littleised by attention jeff gives to congress, public opinion, or the political context in which bush operates. he gives readers about five pages on such matters, but the treatment is fairly cursory. is it indicative of the kind of leader was was? -- bush was? or what? not much he is interested in accounting for the behavior of crowds, but the near absence of the american people as actors in their own right or subjects of president bush's concerns is striking. president bush was clearly not president clinton, interested in

interacting with individual americans of all kinds. the presidentat made of his duties to the dimos he was charged with leading. onally, i want to comment the foray into international history. he spends it -- he spends a great many pages writing about the parallel histories of other nationstates approaching the ending of the cold war. china and chinese leaders figure prominently in the manuscript sections i read. a main reason the manuscript has a many pages is that jeff, in tour de force job of research and writing, gives his readers long narratives with how the end of the cold war appeared to those nations. that greatly expands the breath of jeff's story and even his explanations of how american policymakers must act to -- must act.

such an international perspective has become the fashion in the writing of diplomatic and international relations history for good reason. madebroad history has clear that the united states policymakers act in a world bound by different interests, which makes the american position in the world both clear in its distinctions and similarities to other powers both great and small. this internationalizing project has its strengths and the pages our spends the accounts on compelling. i also see a weakness in this approach. i think i am following a little bit of what andy card said. jeff almost never laid these parallel histories the u.s. policymaking. president bush's understanding of the strategic environment in which you must operate. rather than give readers a lengthy accounts of different nations and different leaders' historical understandings and

trajectories, it would be more useful if he told us what bush administration officials did and did not know about these foreign leaders' views. instead, he just shows them as concurrent events happening in the bush administration. perhaps what these foreign leaders understood and did not understand about the united states and the white house would better understand the interaction between those nations and the bush-led white house. it would do more to analyze what the white house under stood and did not understood -- understand in the political context in which those leaders feel they must act. historicale lack of accounting by engel about international affairs is striking. the process of policymaking and the information of ideological

understanding is quite often missing from this kaleidoscopic history. his parallel stories are informative, but given that the core story here is how the bush white house managed the end of the cold war, i think an opportunity is missed. i wonder if you are pages on the historical trajectory of other nationstates and more pages on how the white house under bush perceived these key nations and how they perceive the united states might make for a sharper analytical approach to the role of sharper leadership in the role of the leadership in bringing the cold war to an end. to some extent, i hope you see that my critical concerns here are just a way to see that i have read the manuscript and have earned my reputation here. many thanks to the miller center to read this. i cannot wait to see the rest of this manuscript. thank you very much. [applause]

>> wow. i got friday afternoon at 1:00, huh? [laughter] it is great to be here. i am really happy to be a part of this discussion. thank you so much for letting me be a part of it. had --me jeffrey might might have had something to do with this and i am very happy to have had the opportunity to get to read this manuscript as it is. little lesst -- a than half of the final manuscript. one of the great things is that you can stand up and say that all of this will be taken care of in the last happy -- in the last half. i really enjoyed the book as it stands now. one of the things i appreciated is that it took careful attention to the characters, the people around bush in particular. he has a lot of short biographies of important policy makers. i have seen this in other histories too.

feelimes it can have the of early vaudeville, where a character comes in and speaks for a minute and then a crook pulled them off and another one comes in. and that does happen here. it helps us understand what the bush white house looked like and what people brought to the discussions. large questionly and three more specific ones that i would like to talk about. what you ask jeffrey thought about some of the recent scholarship on the cold war that asks us to think about the cold war as something that happens in the third world. a lot of the scholarship that has followed from that argues, as you do, that the cold war is ast-west, soviet union-u.s. conflict, but that

china is central. and i know that the iraq war is coming in the manuscript and i cannot wait to read that. but i wonder -- several times in the manuscript, you talked about the proxy wars happening elsewhere. has argued that when we think about the wars that are happening elsewhere, we need to think of the cold war as a factor, but not as a puppet master for what else is going on in the world. bringing the cold war and -- bringing other places into our thinking of the cold war seems to complicate the narrative of what else is going wars,the world, the proxy but also to think about -- but also to how we think about the cold war itself. i have been doing research on south africa and as we think about what is going on in the 1980's, we can think of south africa as something that was understood, the events in south

africa and the slow end to apartheid was something that was understood by reagan and was also something else altogether. when you talk about the cold war and reagan's relationship to it, south africa is barely mentioned. of course, you cannot do everything. i know that. 1984-1989, soon-to-be president bush's developing of his thinking of foreign policy, including the revolts in south africa, the state of emergency for five years. in 1989, the desegregation of public facilities in south africa. mandela in that year. he was released in 1990. theanc is on band and appeal of apartheid laws in 1991. we know the elections were a couple of years later. so the end of the cold war does involve the slowing down and the end of u.s. support for but it also involves

a great many other things. the u.s., nonetheless, is central to that whole conversation. alsouth africa, it is central to thinking about the cold war. i would like to hear from you, whether you agree with the take on the importance of the cold war as a story of the global south. in other words, what other parts of the story might you have told if there was enough time and how does the goal itself figure in before iraq or simultaneously to it? i have three more specific questions. i think david quoted the line in the introduction when you say the story you are telling is not a story of crowds. yet i want to ask, where are the social movements in this story? there was a great moment. it was brief, in one part of the

manuscript, talking about the movement against medium-range missiles in europe and the nuclear movement. but there is very little talking about social events in the united states, those which may have shaped the world in which president bush had to make decisions. sometimes, and i suspect a little of this, that u.s. diplomatic historians might allow that other countries have social movements, but mostly the u.s. has tv. aboutre will be a lot social movements in china and eastern europe, but in the united states, liberals in particular are involved in anti-apartheid activism and activism against the contras in the 1980's. liberals and conservatives involved deeply in human rights activism vis-à-vis eastern europe and the soviet union. and that activism really does shape the response to gorbachev

in the ways in which his popularity becomes such an issue for the bush white house. so there is a great moment when jeffrey talks about his reaction to the day after the 1983 movie, which i also remember very well, that scared everyone to death about nuclear war. but there is no mention of one million people showing up in central park the year before to protest nuclear war as well as nuclear weapons. the potential of nuclear war and nuclear power. the embrace some of of gorbachev, both in the u.s. and europe, has to do with an activist and activated social movement, one that links human rights issues going on in eastern europe with anti-nuclear activism. these folks are coming together and they are so excited about gorbachev and the possibility of the end of the cold war. maybe the disappointment with

the pause. this deep disappointment with the pause where the bush administration comes in and says, we are going to think a lot now for the first five months. , but beautifully described the disappointment that the ablic felt maybe is not just disappointment about presidential leadership in general or how people are supposed to take advantage of the 100 days, but a whole realm of people who were really hoping for change, who had been out there protesting, watching television show for sure, but making a social movement. the anti-nuclear movement and the human rights movement wereimes overlap, but they all paying great attention to what was happening and i would like to hear more about those crowds. point is that i think that americans' feelings about

the cold war, what we have goes through the end of 1989, so that is what we are talking about, aboutmericans' feelings the cold war were a little bit more nuanced. more popular opinion then the story jeffrey tells. he is great on the reagan versus bush white house, opinions about gorbachev and the soviet union and reagan being so optimistic and hopeful and bush coming in more careful and where he -- and wary. ,nd the advisers around him very similarly. when the americans were thinking about the potential end of the mentions thatrey there is a popular wariness about the soviet union. that you might like gorbachev, but they are still wary about the soviet union so they have some doubts about what the u.s. should do in terms of disarmament.

i think people fear about the cold war, though it is phrased as being wary of the soviet union, in practice, it is also deep where in this -- deep war iness and anger and fear about the threats that the cold war raised. nuclear war is a real fear. people were really worried about it in the 1980's. the money is being spent on weapons in times of serious economic crisis. people are worried. of tension ind public opinion that i would like to see unpack a little bit more. reagan and bush white house's might have been neatly divided. many people were divided against themselves. the complexity of what people felt about the dangers of the soviet union, but also the dangers of the nuclear buildup, -- need ainvolve greater level of nuance and unpacking that.

there is too much of a sense of the cold war going from duck and cover to 1989 was not too much change in how the american public thought about it. in fact, i think we see enormous change and complexity that i would like to hear a little bit more about. , so the middle east. i am really interested in how you are going to talk about the iraq war. i am interested in thinking about what the bush white house comes in with and how prepared they are or are not for dealing with what happens in kuwait and ultimately the onset and pursuit of the first iraq war. what was then called the second persian gulf war. reagan had paid a lot of attention to the middle east for very good reason. i will mention the 1982 israeli

invasion of lebanon and the ensuing bombing of the marine barracks in 1983, which was an extra ordinary disaster for u.s. -- u.s. foreign policy an ongoing attention to the iran-iraq war, dual containment aayed a real role in how number of policymakers are thinking about the region and the necessity of "containing iraq as a regional power" when the u.s. goes into iraq in the war in 1990-1991. i would like to know whether the bush policymakers come in with that on their agenda in some way and to what degree and how prepared are they for what is going to happen in iraq just a after, well, right during

the middle of the end of the cold war with the soviet union. i bring to the overall manuscript and what is going to come in the next half. i will agree this is an extraordinary manuscript. i did say this to several people coming in. i am not only not a presidential biographer, i usually approach presidential biographies with a certain amount of dread. i did approach this one was some question about how fascinating it would be to read knowing it was important. it was fascinating. it was hard to put down. love the international history component and bringing those long but fascinating chapters about what else is going on in the world separate from how the u.s. sought -- saw it.

accommodation of paying close attention to the policymaker leaders in the united states and the rest of the world has led to what is one of the most promising manuscripts for iinking about this period could imagine, and i am really looking forward to the book. [applause] ff we are going to give jes a chance to respond and then we will take questions from our distinguished audience. we will give jeff more time to think about his six pages of notes. this moment to thank a couple of people as we wrap up this conference. evan mccormick, stand up. [applause] i can assure you none of us would be here without evan.

i also want to thank read forbes, who coordinated all of the food, drink, logistics of the conference. i want to thank rob and the a.v., web staff. the ultimate compliment to rob is you have not even seen him yet everything has worked very smoothly. thanks very much. now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. >> thank you. you should offer your comments as well. i know you read it as well. >> i will give you 15 more seconds. i feel the way melonie does about most presidential biographies. three things happened for me in the pages i was able to read that have never happened before with a presidential biography. i laughed. i cried and i wanted to know

more. that is my basic take on what i have read so far. beautifullys written and cannot wait to see the final version. >> he told me earlier he cried when he had to pick it up. [laughter] obviously, i am in an awkward position because these are such wonderful comments. it would be easy to simply say it is all going to be explained in the pages to come, so let me cut to the chase and say that is all going to be explained in pages to come. in particular, i want to explain to everyone that what people were offered was about 40% of the manuscript. is about another 10% that has is aboutten -- there another 10% that has been written. or these folks had to read was essentially the early spring of

1989, so a lot is about to happen. i am grateful for david. i need to ensure there is a thoughtful analysis of how decision-making and intelligence is used by the white house. especially that is useful going forward because i believe there are crises about to explode which will give opportunity to see how the white house uses information. it is hopeful to go back with your comments and think about not only the previous discussions to show how bush is integrating information up to the spring of 1989, but to keep a keen eye on that as i go forward. i will preview something i have written, that you have not seen -- but you have not seen, which is the discussion of tiananmen square. have a an area where i real criticism of the president's handling of events for informational reasons that

is different from the way he handled soviet affairs. for soviet affairs come i think bush was very good about integrating intelligence information. he did a better job showing that going forward. for china, the president considered himself to be his own expert and understood china, he thought, as well or better than anybody. had served as de facto ambassador to china and had a relationship with chinese leaders up to this point. it was interesting to me policymakers, bush-baker in particular, the only area where james baker inserts himself in tiananmen square did things blow up in tiananmen square and james baker says i am focused on the soviet union and leaves it to others and the president to deal with. he admits this in

his memoirs because the president was the expert on china and the was trying to deal with complex issues on the other side of the world. for all these people dealing with china, things go south in china. there are protests that seem optimistic to get repressed -- but then get repressed. in administration views them in terms of what is going on throughout the rest of the world. baker says the people are marching just like they are in eastern europe. i go into great detail to show they were not. yes, they were marching and carrying banners saying freedom and democracy. both eastern europeans and chinese protesters were smart enough to put the signs in english to be read by an international argument. that i argued the chinese students had a very different conception of what freedom meant and what change they wanted to bring about. that nuance was not seen by the administration, which is in impacting their worldview.

i would argue no matter the perception of what the chinese are testers were doing, i think the bush administration have adopted the same approach to china, which was to say yes, it is horrible and horrific, but the stream of history is still moving forward, so let's make sure we do not cut china off as opposed to bringing it in. this is something i want to explore. i am glad you brought my attention to that. one other point i will make and then leave it open to discussion question of what is the domestic scene and how is that affecting u.s. policy. i think you make a brilliant insight, which is u.s. foreign-policy people are really good at and have thought a lot about domestic affairs and other countries but not in their own. that is really smart. i have to pay attention to that

because it is 100% true. that is something that needs to be paid attention to. you raise the interest -- subject of the global south. i suspect i will become remarkably unpopular to say the argument the global south drove least is notat the appear with the bush record. here is a case in point where a lot of events are going on. south africa is a tremendous example. there's unprecedented change, and the administration martha says everything is going our way -- largely says everything is going our way so let's focus on gorbachev. if we can just get the center of the world right, europe, everything else will unfold and be nirvana throughout the developing world. here is a case where i do not see the global south laying a particular role with the way the

bush administration dealt with things. administration, that seems to be the way i am reading their discussions. i think after that i should throw it open. >> great. we will start with jim. i am taking notes. signal even while someone is talking and i will get to you. if everyone could identify themselves before they ask the question. >> jim hirschberg from washington university. one for jeff. huge believer in international history and using international sources. amazing materials are now open on mitterrand and thatcher. i'm curious if you can identify any lingering mystery in your

research you want to solve. what would that be? the main new of going for unusual sources that could lead in that direction -- there may be unusual sources that could lead in that direction. bush'srew, issues of h w personality that you would not find in documents that i think are relevant. you were very close. i'm curious your opinion. one had to do with his attitude about the cold war when he first became president. by general sense is in terms of thatology and personality, george h.w. bush and jimmy carter would have been most comfortable had they switched positions as president. h w bushpope -- george was very comfortable waging the cold war. jimmy carter wanted to end the cold war and had to adjust to

becoming a cold warrior. i was curious if that was your sense watching him. he was built to wage the cold war. he had to psychologically overcome that in the period jeff started writing about. the second had to do with the ,reatest foreign-policy failure aside from his admitted successes. that was his decision not to intervene to limit the war in the former yugoslavia at a time when the u.s. had maximum credibility after its defeat of iraq and a squandering that credibility using the excuse of letting europeans handle it even when it was evident they could not. i wondered to what extent those were genuine policy considerations and to what extent they were psychological exhaustion and distraction after the stress of waging the iraq the,s well as dealing with

process of change in europe -- the process of change in europe, as opposed to legitimate a lessee changes -- policy changes. >> in brief, interestingly enough, the biggest mystery and question i had we just got solved. i say we because there is a large team of people working since before 2004 to bring new documents out of the bush library. the archivists have done heroic work and need to be applauded for it to bring out new documents. moree point we had documents requested for declassification review and all of the other presidential libraries combined. that made us feel good. we just started to get them out. i just got a huge transfer

documents a couple of months ago. one of the things in their was something that had gotten under my skin which was the minutes of the first national security meeting after saddam hussein invaded in august of 1991 -- 1990. this was tro playing -- troubling because all of the other minutes of the war have been released and the first was still not. i thought it was particularly unfair because president bush and others quote in their memoirs from this meeting, and ambassador has. a long discussion of what the meeting was like. it subsequently turns out he was in new york at the time, which should tell us about something about memory -- something about memory. if you want to say what is happened at the meeting, that is one thing. if you're going to have a quote, that does not seem a good baseball. we finally got it. all he can tell you is void, was

that classified for a reason. truly horrific things are said about american allies at this moment of great crisis. it is probably good the wikileaks people did not get it first. that mystery was solved. there was another part to your question. what war did president bush want to be engaged in? he is not someone who likes war. cold war or hot war. i think his makeup, partly because he went to war as a teenager, gee, this is not good, cold or hot, so he was not a

warrior president at all. i don't think he was relishing , i wish ier's role could have been there for that. i think he was going to be very careful with the role he was assigned so it did not create a cold war or a hot war. he was a very good listener. most presidents i find are not good listeners. he was a very good listener. he was slow to respond. sometimes frustratingly slow, but he was very contemplative. he was quiet in his response. it was not a bombastic response, even in meetings where others were being very bombastic. he kind of allowed the bombast to come out. it sat there, and then he would

calmly respond to it, which was really quite effective. with regard to foreign-policy i am goinggoslavia, to almost agree with you. not quite as a failure but as really tough. i think the president was influenced by two people i mentioned earlier who had a parochial view of yugoslavia. because they had served their. brits schoolcraft and larry eagleburger. they were very influential in the debate that took place with larry and the deputy committee and brent and the national security committee. i don't want to say they were invested in the jury all goofy -- in the geography and how that had been defined. by perception is they did not recognize how tribal yugoslavia was.

most of the challenges in yugoslavia at the time resulted in the tribes deciding to organize rather than the nation trying to organize. yugoslavia was held together because of the date hater -- of a dictator. it was a country created after the world war. it was held together by tito and how he did his job. ike the worlds l order not to change. they like the boundaries, and national boundaries -- the national boundaries to be as dealhave been so we can with whatever institutions are chosen to lead within those boundaries. when yugoslavia started to implode because the strong leader was no longer leading, they said we have to maintain those boundaries, maintain those borders. i think it failed to recognize

boundariestribal that room or historic -- that were more historic or faith-based, and grassroots politics was driving the response rather than top-down politics. y think both brent and larr were predisposed to say it was easier when we dealt with the top-down folks. there was a predisposition not get to -- not to get involved in the tribal warfare taking place. some of it was hot. most of it was not. let's let the europeans deal with it because they understand the tribes better than we do. i don't want to say it is those two personalities that helped influence the president not to get overly engaged in yugoslavia, but i suspect those two personalities did influence the president. >> [indiscernible] how much can you carry on your plate?

hadident george w. bush more on his plate than any one term president, a lot on his he was aluding -- president that did not have either house of congress with him. he had a challenge delete -- dealing with whatever solution is offering. them was a loud, serious, and frequently contrarian echo he had to deal with. any first-time president is focused on the opportunity to be a two-term president. time,as building over the especially when yugoslavia was starting to implode. >> let me follow up on this. i think it touches on something you were mentioning, david. here is an area where one can interrogate the constrained limits and structures that bound bush's worldview because the

nationstate is one of those structures. it was difficult at the end of the cold war. the new world order was about nationstates treating each other well. it is one of the reasons why the nicely with understanding what the united states response should be. terrorists were not the prevalent issue in bush's worldview. >> [indiscernible] will hitchcock at the miller center in the history department. before we came in, we had an opportunity to talk to secretary card about his expenses as chief of staff. raised in the conversation was the kaleidoscope of burdens on the president at any time. i think each of your commentators in different and sophisticated ways has brought some attention and criticism to

what you have done so far by suggesting there is much more on the plate of george h.w. bush than foreign policy. of course, that is your subject, that is your focus. here is my question. i think i know what you have to say. for the purposes of discussion about the methodology you are pursuing, i want to ask if we can write a good presidential a study of presidential leadership without taking into account domestic politics, congressional relations, economic policy, the legislative agenda the president is pursuing at the same time he's trying to end the cold war, the question not only a public opinion but the constant changing of public opinion, the pursuit of a second term. these are issues not peripheral. they are fundamental. i think they would probably occupy as much time if you went through the clock of a given presidential day as foreign relations does.

you're writing principally on the way president bush handled foreign policy at the end of the cold war. and how are you going to figure how will you find a way to address these criticisms? this is not the first time you're going to hear -- this is not the last time you're going to hear this line of criticism, what about the other half of the job? >> it is a problem. i think the sacrifice of the domestic is what i have been forced to make, though i need to do a better job making sure it tonot a 100% sacrifice include the international side. i think one could write a full study of the presidency domestic and foreign, something on eisenhower for example would be good. we do need a book on eisenhower. i think one could do that, but

you would not have enough pages even with the most generous of editors to do the same for the international scene. i think i have a good fit in that this was a president where was a criticism of him bound in truth who cared significantly if not primarily about foreign policy, certainly during major crises. to focus on follis -- foreign policy for him makes more sense for bush than it would for others. this is difficult. this study originally set out to be a full soup to nuts george bush foreign policy. fdr asallek's bush on the model. it is a nice paperweight. from 1933 toa-z,

1945 covering all foreign-policy issues. two things occurred. i realized the voluminous data we have for everything around the world was going to make a , iflar study of bush there's going to be an international component, voluminous to the point of impossible. secondly, this i have to thank my editor for, the was a moment where we were discussing how to square the circle because i still wanted to do everything. he said what do you care about? said thecold war -- i cold war. i think i am trying to have a narrative structure that offers the international view and clearly needs to do more on the domestic front. but i could not do it without

needing a divorce lawyer probably. i could not do that. ie in less than 4000 pages -- cannot do that in less than 4000 pages. he has done it effectively with one tiny instance for gorbachev. gorbachev's visit to the united nations and his speech and popularity in new york city, the , itds coming out wonderfully orchestrated public relations tour for america and the world to witness. it did change the perception of the world about gorbachev and made him a rallying figure. we could say he wants to do the right thing. the general secretary of the soviet union expected he was going to have ongoing communications

implemented for months. but earthquake happened in armenia. cadence.ted his you will find thousands of examples for president bush where there were hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, lee atwater dying, his mother getting sick, kennebunkport gang hit by the perfect storm --getting hit by the perfect storm. there were lots of distractions that came in the midst of responsibility. volumes toot enough be read by anybody. >> i can tell you a very personal one. not only the destruction of the house in kennebunkport, but also towards the end of the administration, president, mrs. bush, and the dog all develop a thyroid problem simultaneously.

this causes the secret service much consternation because that is not supposed to happen. tos was time-consuming figure out how to regulate the president's health. he and those around him complained for several months that he was more fatigued as they tried to get the medicine right. they had to inspect the water. why is the dog sick? that is going to appear. but i don't think i will have a chapter on the thyroid. [laughter] >> rebecca? you?are >> rebecca brubaker, one of the miller center fellows from this year. i have a two-part question. i appreciated your analogy at the beginning of this idea that bush thought history was flowing in the right direction and his the flowo manage around the rocks rather than diverting or stopping it.

beyond the two times you mentioned where he dipped his hand in that flow to guide third wherethere a he wished he had dipped his hand in and did not? you have talked about yugoslavia. may be a related question. was there any point near the end of his presidency where he started to question whether that flow was headed in a better direction as opposed to just a different direction, to maybe a more volatile and dangerous world? did the optimism for the direction of the flow only stay with him? >thank you -- always stay with him? >> there was a lot happening in africa. the president knew what was happening because he would get reports. if it wase frustrated too much to deal with and the defense department saying don't look to us.

please do not look to us. you had big families. you had disruptive governments. you have the throes of the end of the relationship with the soviet union that was the lifeline for some of these governments in africa. there was a lot to pay attention to in africa. the president was predisposed to want to pay a lot of attention to it. but he had to exercise great discipline and set priorities because a jim baker could not be preoccupied with some of these distractions that were not distractions for the people who were hungry. he would have to send people over to help and make things happen. but there was a lot going on. president bush, because he had been probably the best trained president ever, he would bring -- i want to pay

attention, i should know what what is going on. he did want to know what was going on but had to be restrained and say somebody else is going to have to pay attention to this and give me regular reports. if it reaches the next threshold, ring my bell. >> i think somalia is a good president doeshe decide to do something. the story one hears about the president's ultimate decision-making is a very private one about somalia. i should caution this by saying i have no documentary evidence for this story, but i have heard it separately and individually from so many different people. when everybody is telling the same thing, it starts to ring true. i would love to know if you remember the same or differently. smalley is building -- somalia is building. reports have been crossing the president's desk for months.

this is late in the game for the administration. ultimately, the president is upstairs watching television. there are images of starving children. the announcer says, can't somebody do something? and he says, i can do something. more important to, i have a moral imperative to do something. he presents the idea to the national security staff. they say, are you crazy? what is the exit strategy? he says the exit strategy is feeding children. i think that is a moment that he discards the hippocratic, but it is also very late in the game. [indiscernible] copeland, department of politics, university of virginia. jeff, i'm going to come at you from a clinical science point of view. i have heard a lot of

interesting descriptions of what has been happening. but i kind of want a causal story. i want to know where you fit in the causal debates about the end of the cold war. as i see it, there are three or four big ones. there is a straightforward gorbachev and the politburo realized they were over spending on military. they had to reduce military spending or they would be a defunct great power. pushed them into ground with their own arms buildup and star wars. that was a causal story that forced the end of the cold war reluctantly on the soviet union and very much in favor of what the u.s. got out of it. a second story is the opposite. newachev as a liberal or ideologically different soviet leader who has got this vision, this quasi-liberal vision for how he wants the soviet union to change and become a more

integrated part of the world community. even though he and his numerous claims he is a leninist, that is the story. i don't buy it, obviously. the third story i'm sympathetic to is the soviet regime, even before gorbachev but especially they gorbachev, realized needed the trade and technology the west could offer if they were going to revitalize the economic structure of the soviet union and make it a viable superpower long-term. military was important. you have to reduce arms spending. the more importantly is to revitalize the economic base so the soviet union could become an important player into the 21st century. otherwise, they felt they would economically decline and therefore politically and militarily the no longer viable. i guess the fourth is more personalistic of personalities. i've have only read three

chapters of your manuscript, the ones i saw online. i sense you are in the fourth camp, but i'm not sure what the causal story is other than they liked each other or grew to trust one another. the story to political scientist like myself would want to ask is, what conditions allowed the trust to develop, especially with reagan who was very much an anti-soviet individual? how does that trust develop? what are the material or cultural circumstances hanging over these leaders that allowed their personalities to play such an important role at this critical time? story ofdescriptive their personalities talking to one another and having trust build does not tell me what i really want to know, which is the causal reasons why they were able to do it and kissinger and nixon were not able to do it? er able to do it

but why were these individuals able to do it? i would like to look at the causal conditions under which this would work. >> but me give you two initial short responses and a longer one. the first is i have never been prouder not to be a political scientist. >> [indiscernible] [laughter] >> it is a narrative approach. you can interpret it how you want. [laughter] the second is i don't know why you are uncomfortable with the notion ronald reagan single-handedly did this. andw him take his shirt off take down the law. this is where we see a disciplinary distinction. there is an element of chaos i think is significant at the end. this is one of the tensions in the book. george bush has his name on the title. but gorbachev is really the most

important person in this. gorbachevsoft -- recognizes the system needs to change. that they need to open the system and adopt a more western ways because socialism is not working, and we should never forget gorbachev did not want to soviet union to end. worn portly, he was an avowed socialist. he was saying, how can i save the system not discarded. he wanted to open the system to integrate. even during evolve the short time he is in office, really only six years where this occurs for him. he begins with the notion we need to change the system and integrate reforms and open things in the soviet union. but i don't think it is until 1988, to 1989 human speech is

the best indication of this when he begins to speak of his vision , one whererld order the soviet union is more couldated with the west this is where he begins the rhetoric that does not appear until june of 1989 of a common or can home -- european home. this scares the americans because they realize if the europeans are building a home, we don't have a winning, we are not in it. they use the architectural metaphor frequently to say this is the central problem gorbachev is posing for us. something significant happens. catalyst andthe people began to run with it. gorbachev never envisioned losing control the way he did. gorbachev was adamant we were not going to use

force to impose intro -- reimpose control and was explicit you should not use , and don't forget we have a lot of soviet troops on eastern german soil. the story i would tell is one of the decaying soviet union, gorbachev willing to make changes, and then this change speeding up and catalyzing in ways he could not predict. >> it was not just president bush's personality. it was the complementary with an e personality of jim baker. gorbachev could deal with the president respectfully and infrequently. jim baker had very good relations. they got along well. that created a climate that encouraged gorbachev that this might work.

i think gorbachev was trying to reform the soviet union, not dissolve it. i think he ended up being a believer he could do more for his people if he were to have a more open society. i think he became a believer. i don't think it would have happened with one personality. i think you had to have two personalities at least on each side. our ambassador was a cynic. he did not think it would work at the beginning. the president was getting lots of different views. i think jim baker relationship ended up being very constructive as well. >> here's another case were personalities in individual moments mattered. it is crucial, this relationship between chevron nazi and jim baker is important.

gorbachev asks him to be foreign minister and he says i don't know anything about foreign policy. he said you will approach this with fresh eyes. baker since these wonderful private communications to the white house for their eyes only. baker says you would not believe how honest this guy is being with us, that they are afraid and don't know where things are going. they are afraid of their own they don't get things moving fast enough and afraid of conservatives if they move too fast. shevardnadze was open about it.

>> you might say the fundamental driving force is what many people have suggested, soviet decline that kicked him in the -- kicked in in the late 1960's. the the realization in 1980's that this was worse than the 1960's with zero percent growth. the fear of relative decline and the need to integrate the soviet toon is pushing gorbachev take steps that become more radical, including domestic reforms that lead to what you are talking about, this instability in 1989 that was not present in 1985 or even foreseen. in 1989, eastern europe and mystic instability -- domestic instability. one of the causal factors i see in both of your responses is

without this fundamental relative decline and understanding of the soviets that unless we do something big we are going to be a superpower , am i hearing you right? that is pushing an avowed leninist-socialist to make what look like liberal reforms, but he is doing it in an instrumental way to overcome this decline problem that is so pervasive. >> i believe in gorbachev's you also haveion a relationship with a polish poet calling attention to what has happened in poland, the soviet union. to say glasnost and peer stryker are taking root hadhe soviet union and you margaret thatcher with ronald reagan shining spotlights that

had others in the soviet union to say wait a minute, this is not a monolithic soviet union -gorbachev game. there is a lot of pressure coming from poland, czechoslovakia, and other places. things are happening. the pope is giving permission for it to happen. me, the best way to understand it with these crosscurrents is i think what gorbachev launched more than anything else was an intellectual revolution in his country. the moment you say we are going to allow not only reform and change but rather reform and change not centralized to moscow and on the factory floor, that allows people to question. tot is where things begin catalyze and others begin to take this and run with it as

well. i think at the heart, it is the explanation you are describing, a recognition of soviet decline and the decision to make structural and intellectual changes. none of which has anything to do with the united states. i think if there is one pernicious, evil lie in history driving u.s. foreign policy and terrible directions in the 21st century, it is the notion that we spent the soviets into the ground. anybody watching on c-span, we did not. [laughter] [indiscernible] i think there is a fifth explanation, gorbachev centered, for the end of the cold war. i have two comments and a question centering on the new world order. systemline of the soviet .as gorbachev centered

his retrospective comments on what he thought was going on, he called the end of the soviet union, he called the soviet experiment a dead end in the social revolution. that is pretty much a direct quote. sovietized i think ideology as it played out had no chance of being realized in a rapidly globalizing world, that the soviet union was isolating itself. he says the soviet union's forced -- foreign policy was setting itself up against the rest of humankind. it is a combination of gorbachev's true believer faith, oftentimes true believers are the greatest apostates, this ideology was going nowhere and had no chance of going anywhere. on the other side, it is not so

but american foreign-policy the emergence of this global society which appeared to be reversible. -- irreversible. gorbachev admits that. that led him to the decision we can stay outside or join it. if we join it, we have to join it on the world's terms. we have to join the world bank and imf. we have to become part of it. the other comment has to do with mr. card's interpretation of events in yugoslavia. some of you may know has been the subject of great debate among historians. was it tribalism? opinion isurrent running in the opposite direction that it was not tribalism. that is the politicians that screwed things up.

if the politics of the local leaders, europeans, americans have been more at drake -- a droit, probably this sad episode could have been avoided. the vision thing, there is the famous press conference in cairo in which the president's remarks are to be due to jet lag when he is asked to define what the new world order is. it comes out a jumble. howuestion is, systematically did the administration think about the new world order? was its thinking more coherent than on display in that press conference? i think the new world order, and gorbachev was the first one to use the term that i am aware of -- >> the 1920's. >> in this context.

>> it goes back centuries before. >> in this context. >> i don't think it was contrived. i think it is more describing the result. the team at the white house was looking to create a new world order. they were trying to deal with a world that has changed that represented a new world order, so i am not sure this was a creating a newf order. i it was a creative map, think someone would have been very involved in it. it might have been johnson the sununu who loved to create new solutions for problems that did not exist. [laughter] >> in a few minutes left, i want to turn to david and meloni and

see if you would like to make additional comments, press jeff comments.pect of the i think he has responded very forthrightly and constructively to your comments. give you a chance to follow-up and have an exchange if you want. >> there are students writing their dissertations. was fun to think about is the what is fun to-- think about is the john were problems. you hear him wrestling with the genre problems of what goes on the page and what does not. trying to do three things at once is something dissertat ors should not do that once. it will be interesting how he weaves them together. i'm still concerned that not conceding the degree to which president bush and his team are wrestling with many issues at once, even if just a paragraph here or a sentence there, you

are denying your readership the ability to understand the world they faced, which is not a singular, linear world that proceeds alphabetically. >> grade-point. thank you -- grade-point. -- a great point. >> you're writing a greater synthesis. it is a tricky genre problem. i am hearing you still wrestle with that. >> i want to come back to my middle east question and push you on that more, what you the bushd to administration to have gone in preparing for. >> there was already good work done with the new administration on what america's national security aims should be at this point. had a key role in directing and writing much of that is director for the middle east -- as director for the

middle east. the argument they came out of those documents was the united states needs to ensure there is no senior power dominant in the gulf -- single power dominant in the south. move southy, iraq's gives the fear there will be a dominant power. one of the interesting things that occurred in the debate that was recently declassified are the number of people, dick cheney in particular, who argue in that meeting that maybe it does not matter saddam hussein has gotten all that oil from kuwait because he is got to sell it. and we want it. as long as he is selling on the global market, what is the problem if it is kuwaiti or iraqi oil? is a convoluted meeting. people are throwing out ideas. crisis,the moment of

people begin to step back and take a look at their assumptions and move forward. one of the most interesting things we discovered in the new documents is just what a raw deal april glaspie got. she was the u.s. ambassador to iraq. she gets called into a meeting with saddam hussein days before the invasion. this is a very rare thing. the u.s. ambassador never got to talk to saddam hussein. he does not talk to people that lived. he explains we have these long-standing grievances. she says we cannot comment on disputes. people have subsequently said that gave him the green light. the truth is i have 13 different cables from the white house and state department in the days leading up to that saying make sure you tell saddam hussein we don't comment on border disputes because we don't comment on border disputes. there are 3000 around the world.

if we commented on everyone, we would have to stick our noses everywhere. she delivered the message we don't comment on border disputes, but we will be against any use of force. we are always against the use of force, diplomatic solutions are the way to go. that part gets forgotten. there are any number of cables that say president bush was scheduled to speak with saddam hussein by telephone the evening of the invasion. course, the call never occurs. talking points prepared for him also include the language that we will not comment on border disputes. that is the message we are sticking with. don't use force. i think she gets a raw deal in this. demonstrates their primary concern for the middle east is let's not have this be an issue. let's make sure the middle east is calm enough to get the oil out because the rest of the world is going on. as long as there is no one dominant power, that is all we care about.

i don't see differences in the documents with the reagan administration over the middle east. for want to thank jeff giving us a draft manuscript that has initiated a rich conversation. i want to thank the panelists for taking advantage of the opportunities in that manuscript to conduct this terrific discussion about writing presidential history and the administration of h.w. bush. >> i am deeply grateful. thank you. [applause] you are watching american history tv every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. week, american history tv's series marks the 150th anniversary of the conflict by

bringing you lectures, discussions, and battlefield visits. 1864, as ago in july of confederate army of about 12,000 under the command of general early nearly invaded washington, d.c. next, marc leepson takes us on a tour a battlefields to tell the story of the battle of monocacy where the confederates were delayed by union forces in their approach to the capital and the battle of fort stevens were general early probe the defenses of the heavily fortified city before deciding to turn back. >> consider what could have happened with an entire core of loose,but loose -- let lean and hungry confederate troops. the treasury was therefore the looting. they could have burned the capital. the navy department had a