Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency 20140712

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 worlds 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 the end of the cold war. Jeff is an associate professor of history and the director of the center for president ial history at Southern Methodist university. He is the author of numerous books. Two of the most recent include 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. Ira said, 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 january 2001 to april 2006, an 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. Mr. Card is currently the executive director in the office of the provost at texas a m university. Thank goodness that johnny mann zeal manziel was finally picked in the draft because i was worried that we were going to lose a commentator, to be honest. Ira said, you 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. And 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 chair of her department, american studies, at George Washington university. Melani is the author of epic 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. So we, i think, are fulfilling not only our obligation to dream mentors, but a 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 three coming up, so i have hope 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 for history at smu, i can tell 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. Let me also take thank the 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. Foreignpolicy during the tumultuous end of the cold war. It is also simultaneously a 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. Him and those around him, and those around him, the collective biography of America National securitys decisionmaking during this period. It also tries to situate american policymaking within a broader international milia. Milieu. Time and again, we go over events that occurred during 1989 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 president bushs policymaking and his foreignpolicy as a whole was to be cautious and reactive, realistically reactive without being too overly 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 visavis ethnic cleansing. Speaking of ethnic cleansing, we have the beginning of the tragedy that was postcold 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 bushs 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 . How can we keep things, which 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. Policymakers might attend to 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. An aftermath 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. And president bush invited, at one point, reporters into the office to witness him watching these events on tv as he was watching them in realtime. He was leaning back at his desk and cbs leslie stall says to him, you just do not seem excited. The culmination of the entire halfcentury cold war effort, we won and you do not seem excited. He responded in a very important way. He said, well, i guess i am not just an excitable guy. That was not 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 his staff suggested, let us not go too far in celebrating those who are democratizing from the streets up. Let us not go too far in 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 remove gorbachev, tried to push the world forward through reform. Of course, we see this coming true in august of 1991. At that 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. We see two things, first, the 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. It is the first time he has been 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 bushs 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 which had been afforded it before the cold war even occurred. President bushs vision for the postcold 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 jeffs 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 what made george h. W. Bush the 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. I will also say that the 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 time, especially those who had 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. I think that is part of what jeff has put together. He has shown that the collection of advisors that were helping president bush manage a process 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. I think that was how you develop 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. Baker the third and colin powell, 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 strained relationship the 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. And yet that wisdom, i think, was facilitated in dealing with people who shared that view. President bush, i do believe, 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 change with the world powers, if 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 predecessors views, george schultz. The views of the foreignpolicy 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 book in jeffs book, too. The seeds of change were actually planted overseas by others and he wondered how wellfertilized 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 government functions of, by, and 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 machiavellian reason for gorbachev to do what he is doing . History has shown that it was more noble. But he came from a machiavellian society so im sure machiavelli guided a lot of people around him and some of those layers are still on the stage and looking for 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 revolution, i am on the board of the museum of the american revolution, which is a brandnew 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. That was an 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 then historians acknowledge. He was cognizant of the ease germans and the czechoslovakians 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. Increasingly sensitive to it. In larry eagle brooks 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 tween between some of the 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 schultzreagan 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. President 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. But i am ready for paul harveys 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 foreignpolicy front, but he also got the americans with disabilities act passed, the Clean Air Act passed, negotiation the First Agreement to reduce ozonedepleting 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 oneterm president in the history of our country. [inaudible] it may be somebody with other 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. Jeff brings to this roddick a tremendous breadth of understanding regarding American International relations at the cost of the 1980s and 1990s. 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 portrayed, but the broad history read at a critical accounting of his decisionmaking and the limits of his worldview that he cautiously and prudently oversaw the american governments response to the end of the soviet union, the restructuring of europe. Up front, jeff told us before that his project attempts to bring together three key narratives. One, the ark of president bushs 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. Overall, jeff 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 andys comments. Not only president ial history, 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. President bushs decency shines through in this history and so does his caution. He was the tortoise to gorbachevs hare, which he calls it hippocratic diplomacy. Wellsuited to the complex 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 bushs ideological limits in chapter 7. But not a distance understanding of bush that one might expect from a historian so well first so wellversed. For example, he was a practitioner of freemarket economics and lived in a world in which economic success was normative and expected, but by no means the beall, endall. President bush had little or no interest in the social, political, and economic conventions in which he inherited the he inherited. The accepted social hierarchies of all kinds. That the world was created to benefit some and limit the life courses of others. Engel, in the relatively few pages, calls bushs point of 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 womens roles in society . The bush and engels work is, to some extent, on problem that ties. Unproblematized. Some of them i would think, quite hardnosed and aggressive, are unquestioned. The buyer the biographical detail unveils just work. Jeffs work. Demonstrative of worldview and social position and the historical markers are left unexplored here. Jeff 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. Even though president bush did 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 leadership goes to a strategy in an International Arena in the late 1980s and 1990s 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 bushs key advisers are well told. As far as 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 talibans 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 it was simply dismisses it. I do 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 i read that president bush is the head of the executive branch who sits atop a mountain of information resenting different bureaucracies, administrations, political views and agendas. Residential decisionmaking 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 published by cornell, in the essay by Arthur Lemieux spero Bartholomew Sparrow argued that the Bush Administrations 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 goodwins 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 foreignpolicy 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. And i think demonstrative of the jury to which Good Administration are the lifeblood of decisionmaking. I have a feeling that as historians look back at the Bush White House, administrative processes will be a key aspect of the modern presence. Bush i think will stand out for that set of talents. While spero is 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. I was surprised by how little 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 . Jeff says he is not much 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 bushs concerns is striking. President bush was clearly not president clinton, interested in interacting with individual americans of all kinds. I do wonder what the president made of his duties to the dimos he was charged with leading. Finally, i want to comment on 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 so many pages is that jeff, in a 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 jeffs 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. Such broad history has made 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 jeff spends the accounts on our 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 bushs 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 bushled 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. Here too the lack of historical 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. I presume jeffrey might had 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. He read about a little less 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. Sometimes it can have the feel 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. I have one fairly large question and three more specific ones that i would like to talk about. One is to ask jeffrey what you 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 not just an eastwest, soviet unionu. 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. Some fellowship 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 cold war in or bringing other places into our thinking of the cold war seems to complicate the narrative of what else is going on in the world, the proxy wars, 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 1980s, 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 reagans relationship to it, south africa is barely mentioned. Of course, you cannot do everything. I know that. But from 19841989, soontobe president bushs 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. The anc is on band and the 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 apartheid, but it also involves a great many other things. The u. S. , nonetheless, is central to that whole conversation. In south africa, it is also 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 mediumrange 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. I think 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. So there will be a lot about social movements in china and Eastern Europe, but in the United States, liberals in particular are involved in antiapartheid activism and activism against the contras in the 1980s. Liberals and conservatives involved deeply in human rights activism visavis 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. I think that some of the embrace 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 antinuclear 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. It is beautifully described, but the disappointment that the public felt maybe is not just a disappointment about president ial 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 Antinuclear Movement and the Human Rights Movement sometimes overlap, but they were all paying great attention to what was happening and i would like to hear more about those crowds. My second 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, that americans feelings about 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. And the advisers around him, very similarly. When the americans were thinking about the potential end of the cold war, jeffrey mentions that there is a popular wariness about the soviet union. Polls show 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 wariness 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 1980s. The money is being spent on weapons in times of serious economic crisis. People are worried. There is a kind of tension in Public Opinion that i would like to see unpack a little bit more. That the reagan and Bush White Houses 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, seemed to involve need a 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. Finally, 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 iraniraq war, dual containment played a real role in how a 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 19901991. So i would like to know whether the Bush Administration policymakers come in with the middle east on their agenda in some way. And how prepared are they for what is going to happen in a after duringear the middle of the end of the cold war. These are some questions that i bring to the overall manuscript and what is going to come in the next half. Did say this to several people coming in. This with aproach certain amount of dread. I knew it would be important. It was fascinating. It was hard to put down. Dutifully written. And actually, i did love the International History component, ae ringing in of the along but fascinating chapters about what else is going on in the world, separate from how the u. S. Thought. The combination of paying close attention to the policymaking leaders in the United States and the context and the rest of the world has led to what i think is one of the most promising manuscripts for thinking about could imagine. I am really looking forward to the book. [applause] ok. We will give jeff a chance to respond. Then we will take we have at least 45 minutes to take questions from our distinguished audience. We will open it up and give jeff a little more time to think about his six pages of notes. Is that it . This momento take to thank a couple people as we wrap up this conference. First and foremost, evan, stand up. Evan. [applause] i can assure you, none of us would be here without evan. I also want to thank reed forbes, who coordinated all of the food and drink and logistics of the conference. V. Ant to thank rob and the a and thehe web staff, ultimate complement to rob is you have not even seen him. Everything is work for a smoothly. Tanks very much. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. Thank you. You should offer your comments, too. I will give you 15 more seconds. I feel the way melanie does about most residential eye out fees. Thegs happen for me in pages that i was able to read that have never happened before with a president ial biography. I laughed. Cried i wanted to know more. Take on is my basic what i have read so far. I think it is beautifully written and i cant wait to see the final version. I should mention that he told me earlier that he cried when he had to pick it up. [laughter] obviously, i am in an awkward position. These are such wonderful and synthetic, thoughtful comments. It would be very easy to simply say, it will all be explained. Pages to come. Let me cut to the chase and say, that is all going to be explained in pages to come. To explainar, i want to everyone here that what people here were offered was about 40 of the manuscript. There is another 10 that has been written. The place where we are, these kind folks had to read, is essentially the early spring of 1989. A lot is about to happen. I am really grateful in particular for davids point that i need to ensure that there is a thoughtful analysis of how decisionmaking in intelligence is used by the white house. I believe that there are for ices are about to explode, which will give opportunities to see how the white house uses information. It is helpful to go back with your comments and think about the previous discussions to show how bush is integrating information and also keep a keen eye on that as i go forward. I will make it just a preview of something that i have written that you have not seen, which is the discussion of tiananmen square. I have an area where real criticism of the president s handling of the events for informational reasons that is different from the way he handled soviet affairs. For soviet affairs, bush was very good about integrating intelligence information. For china, the president considers himself to be his own china expert and understood china, he thought, as well as anybody, better than anybody in many cases. He served as de facto ambassador to china. It is very interesting to me that a policy maker, bush baker in particular, this is the only area where james baker inserts himself into tiananmen square, and this is a little hyperbolic in description, but things blow up in james baker essentially says, i am focused on the soviet union. Others and the president to deal with it. He admits this in his memoirs, baker does. He said the president was expert on china and i 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 and then get repressed. For the most part, the administration views them in terms of what is going on in the rest of the world. Baker in particular says, look, these people are marching like they are in Eastern Europe. I go into great detail to show that no, they actually were not. Yes, they were marching and humanng banners for democracy, and Eastern Europeans and chinese were smart enough to put the signs in english so they could be read by an international audience, but i argue the chinese had a different conception of what freedom meant and what reforms they were looking for and the change they wanted to bring about. That nuance was not seen by the administration, which is significant, i think, in their worldview. I would argue that no matter what the perception of what chinese protesters were doing these of the european vis a vis european protesters, the administration adopted the same policy. Tiananmen was terrible and defies description, but the stream of history is moving forward. Lets make sure we dont cut china off. This is something i want to explore and i am really glad you brought my attention to that. I think the crisis is a great way to see that. One other point i will make and then i will lead it at leave it open to discussion is really this question of that milley raises, what is the domestic theme and how is that affecting u. S. Policy . It is extraordinarily brilliant insight. Policy people are really good and ive thought a lot about the mystic affairs and other countries. That is released march. I have to Pay Attention to that. South, the importance there. I will become remarkably unpopular in 10 seconds to say that the argument that it drove not appearr, does within the bush record. Here is a case in point where lots of events are going on. So south africa is an example. There are undue unbelievable changes in south africa and the administration largely says, see . Everything is going our way throughout the world. Now lets focus on gorbachev. If we can get the center of the world right, which is europe, Everything Else will unfold. There will be nirvana throughout the developing world. Here is the case where i do not see the global south playing a particular role within the way the Bush Administration dealt with it. Bush administration, that seems to be the way i am reading their discussions. I think after that, i should probably throw it open. Great. Put your hands up. Notes. King signal to me, even while someone is talking. We will get around to you. If everybody would simply identify themselves before they ask a question Jim Hirschberg from George Washington university. A question for jeffrey and two small questions for andrew. One for jeff. Huge believer in International History and using international sources. Amazing materials are now open others. W as well as im curious if you can identify anyone lingering mystery in your research so far that you most want to solve. What would that be . There may be possibilities and going for unusual sources that could lead in that direction. My question for andrew, both involve issues of h w bushs personality that he would not find in documents, but i think are very relevant. Abouta certain impression bush from observation. You were close. Your opinion. One had to do with his attitude about the cold war when he became president. The psychology and personality that george h. W. Bush and jimmy carter would have been most comfortable had they switched positions as president. Was veryw. Bush comfortable waging the cold war and it took psychological adjustment to really become comfortable. I get it. This is all over and it is a new world. Jimmy carter wanted to end the cold war and had to adjust it, becoming a resolute cold warrior. I am curious if that was your sense watching him closely. He was built to wage the cold war and he really had a psychologically overcome that in the period just started writing about. The second has to do with the greatest foreignpolicy failure. Aside from his admitted successes. I dont know whether jeffrey will get to this in his book. I presume he will. That was his decision not to the war in then former yugoslavia at a time when the u. S. Had maximum credibility after its defeat of a rack iraq and squandering that. Lets let the europeans handle it. It was clear they were bungling and not able to handle it. I wondered to what extent those were legitimate policy considerations. To what extent was it psychological exhaustion and distraction after the stress of waging the iraq war as well as simply dealing with the process of change in europe, as opposed to legitimate policy arguments that were being made. Thank you. Going to say and he could go first. Andy could go first. The biggest mystery and question i had, we just got solved. I say we because there is a large team of people that are working very hard and have been before that, to bring new documents out of the bush library. The National Archives have done her row ework. They really need to be lauded and applauded for it. We had more documents requested for declassification review than all the other president ial libraries combined. That made us feel good. We started to really get them out. One of the mysteries, i just got a huge group of documents a few months ago, one of the things that was in there was something that had really gotten under my skin, which was the minutes of the first National Security Council Meeting after Saddam Hussein invaded in august of 1991. This was troubling because all the other minutes from the war had already been released. The first one still was not. I thought it was particularly unfair because president bush and others wrote in their memoirs from this meeting and and the u. N. Ambassador rice for example, has a long discussion of what the meeting was like. It turns out he was in new york at the time. It tells us something about memory. It was really unfair to me that other people could quote it and we couldnt. If you cant have a quote, that doesnt seem good. We finally got it. Wasi can tell you is, boy, that classified for a reason. I can go into great detail, which i wont now, about the truly horrific things that are said about American Allies at this moment of great crisis. It is probably good that the not go without first. That mystery was solved. There was another part to your question. Andy, please. Vis a vis president bushs capacity, what war did he want to be engaged in . He is really not someone who likes war. No. Cold war or hot war. That his makeup, partly because he went to war as a teenager, gee, this is not good, cold or hot. He was not a warrior president at all. I dont think that he was relishing jimmy carters role. I wish i could have been there for that. I think he was actually going to be very careful with the role that he was assigned so he didnt create a cold war or a hot war. I think he was a very good listener. Most president s, i find, arent good listeners. He was a very good listener. He was slow to respond and sometimes frustratingly slow. But he was very contemplative. In hisactually quiet response. It was not a bombastic response. Even in meetings where others were being very bombastic, he kind of allowed the bombastic to come out. It sat there. He calmly responded to it, which was really quite effective. With regard to the Foreign Policy, the failure that you cite, which was yugoslavia, i am going to almost agree with you. Not quite as a failure, but as really tough. But i think the president was influenced by two people, who i mentioned earlier, who had a parochial view of yugoslavia. They had served there. Influential in the debates that took place with larry and the Deputies Committee and with brent in the National Security committee. I dont want to say that they were invested in the geography had beenat geography defined, but my perception was they did not recognize just how , andtribal yugoslavia was yet, most of the challenges in yugoslavia at the time resulted deciding tos organize rather than the nation trying to organize. Yugoslavia was held together because of a did tater dictator. It was a country created after the world war. It was held together by tito and how he did his job. Worldiplomats like the order not to change, so they boundaries, the national boundaries, to be as they have been, so we can deal with whatever institutions are chosen to lead within those boundaries. When yugoslavia started to implode, because the strong ,eader is no longer leading they said, no. We have to maintain those boundaries, maintain those borders. I think they failed to recognize the strong tribal, and i use tribal with almost any definition you can come up with, but there were very tribal boundaries that were more historic, faithbased, whatever, and grassroots politics was driving the response rather than topdown politics. Both brent and larry were predisposed to say, it was much easier when we dealt with the topdown folks. There was a predisposition not to get engaged in the tribal warfare that was taking place. Some of it was fought. Most of it was not. It was political. Lets let the europeans deal with it because they understand the tribes better than we do. I dont want to say that it was those two personalities that probably helped influence the president not to get overly engaged in yugoslavia, but i suspect that those two personalities did influence the president. [inaudible] well, how much can you carry on your plate . Bush had george w. Probably more on his later than any one term president. An awful lot on his plate, including he did not have either house of congress with him. He had a lot of challenges just to deal with whatever solution he was offering, whether it was a domestic or Foreign Policy. It was a loud and serious and frequently contrarian echo. He had to deal with that. Firstterm time, any president is also focused a little bit on the opportunity to be a twoterm president. Time,as building over the especially when yugoslavia was starting to implode. Let me follow up on this because i think id i agree with everything you said and i think it touches on something you were mentioning, david. Here is an area where i think one can really interrogate the constraint limits and the structures that bound the bushs worldview. The nationstate really is one of those structures. It was rated the cult at the end of the cold war the new world order was all about the United Nations and nationstates treating each other well, which is one of the reasons why the to in iraq works so well understand what the United States response should be. Was not the tension prevalent issue in bushs worldview. [inaudible] here at the Miller Center, history department. Before we came in, we had a nice opportunity to talk to secretary card about his experiences as chief of staff. One of the things in our conversation was just the le wasust the kaleidoscope of burden that fell on the president. I think that jeff, each of your commentators in teeth in different ways and sophisticated ways has brought some criticism to what you have done so far by suggesting there is much more on the plate of george h. W. Bush van Foreign Policy. Of course, that is your subject and that is your focus, but here is my question. I think i know what you are going to say. You have to say this. For the purposes of discussion about the methodology you are pursuing, i want to ask if we really can write a good president ial study, a study of president ial leadership, without taking into account domestic politics, congressional relations, economic policy, the legislative agenda that the president is pursuing at the same time that he is trying to end the cold war, the question of not only Public Opinion, but the constant changing of Public Opinion, the pursuit of a second term. These are issues that are not peripheral. They are absolutely fundamental, and i think they would probably occupy as much time, if you went through the clock, i would of a given president ial day, as Foreign Relations does. Obviously, you are writing principally on the way president bush handled Foreign Policy at the end of the cold war, but how are you going to figure out a way, not to completely i guess, how will you find a way to address these criticisms . This is in the first time you will hear this is not the last time you will hear this line of criticism, what about the other half of the job . Well, this is a problem. They mind, i think sacrifice of the domestic is what i have been forced to make. I need to do a better job making sure it is not a complete, 100 sacrifice. I think one could write a full study of a presidency, domestic and foreign, something on eisenhower would be good [laughter] we do need a good book on eisenhower. That, bute could do you would simply not have enough pages, it seems to me, even with the most generous of editors. You would not have enough pages to do the same for the international scene. I think i have a good benefit here and that this was a president who clearly, this was a criticism of him, but it is also a criticism that was bound in the truth, who cared significantly about Foreign Policy, certainly during major crises. On the Foreign Policy for him makes more sense for bush than it would for others during this period. This is difficult. Evolutionention, the of the study and study originally set out to be not a george bush Foreign Policy. I had a book on fdr as the model sitting right above my computer so i could take it out. This is no longer the model. It is a nice paperweight. It goes from a to z. It covers all foreignpolicy issues. Two things occurred. First, the data that we have for everything around the world was simply going to make a similar study of bush, if there is going to be an international component, that much more voluminous to the point of perhaps impossible. I have toand this thank my editor for, there was a moment where we were discussing how to square the circle. I still wanted to do everything. He said, what do you really care about . I said, i care about the end of the cold war. He said, done. Focus on the end of the cold war. My impression also involves china and areas around the world that are not necessarily put in the story, which is often told of germany to the east. Have a structure that offers the International View and clearly needs to do more on the domestic front, but i dont know that one could do i could not do without really really into without needing a divorce lawyer, probably. I could not do that. The in less than 4000 pages. I would not read that. I agree with jeff. He has done it effectively for one tiny instance with gorbachev. Visit to the United Nations, his speech, his popularity in new york city, the crowds coming out. A wonderfully orchestrated Public Relations to or for america and the world to witness. It did change the perception of the world about gorbachev and made him kind of a rallying figure that we could say, he wants to do the right thing. The generalthat secretary of the soviet union expected that he was going to have Ongoing Communications landing implemented for probably months, but an earthquake happened in armenia. It disrupted his cadence. You will find thousands of examples of president bush where there were hurricanes or or lee at whyires are dying, or his mother getting sick, Kennebunkport Denning hit beingrfect storm hit by the perfect storm. There were lots of distractions that came in the midst of responsibility. You could not there are not enough volumes to be able to be read by anybody. Including very personal once. Not only that, the destruction of the house in kennebunkport, but toward the end of the ministration, president bush, mrs. Bush, and the dog develop a thyroid problem. That is true. Because the secret service much consternation because that is not supposed to happen. Two people and a dog. Timeconsuming. They had to regulate the president s health. He and those around them complained for several months that he was more petite than previously as they tried to get medicine right. You have to inspect the water. Why is the dog sick . That is going to appear. I dont think i will have a chapter on the fibroid. Thyroid. [laughter] i have a followon. Who are you . Rebecca brubaker, one of the Miller Center fellows. I guess i have a twopart question. First, i really liked your analogy at the beginning of the idea that bush thought history was flowing in the right direction and his job was more to manage the flow around the rocks rather than diverging it or stopping it. Beyond the two times that you mentioned where he dipped his hand in the flow to guide , ants, was there a third omission he most regretted, where he wished he had dipped his hand in . A bitve already talked about yugoslavia. Maybe a related question, was there any point near the end of his presidency that you have run into where he started to question whether that flow really was headed in a better direction as opposed to just a different direction, to may be a e volatile and dangerous the optimism, the director of the flow to stay with him . There was a lot happening in africa. The president knew what was happening. He would get reports. They would be reported up. He would be somewhat frustrated if it was too much to deal with right now. The Defense Department was saying, dont look to us. Please. Do not look to us. You had big famines. You had disruptive government. 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 and the president was predisposed and wanted to pay a lot of attention to it. He had to exercise great discipline and set priorities. A jim baker could not be preoccupied with some of these distractions. They 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 an awful lot going on. President bush, because he had , as probably the best trained president ever, he would bring with him, gosh, i would have been paying a lot of attention to this, i want to know about it. Yes, i want to be involved. I should know what is going on. He did want to know what is going on, but he had to be restrained and say, somebody else is going to have to Pay Attention and give me regular reports. If it reaches the next threshold, ring my bell. Somalia is a good example. The president decided to do something. Aboutory which one hears the president s ultimate decisionmaking is a private one about amalia. Somalia. I should caution this by saying i have no documentary evidence for the story, but i have heard it separately and individually from so many different people. When everyone is any the same tune, it starts to ring essentially true. I would love to know your thoughts and if you remember the same or differently. Somalia is there. There are reports of the famines going on. Is veryly, and this late in the game for the administration, ultimately, the president is upstairs watching television. Starving images of children. Essentially, the announcer said, can somebody do something . He says, i can do something. More importantly, i have a moral imperative to do something. It presents the idea of doing something to the security staff and they say, are you crazy . What is the exit strategy . He said the exit strategy is feeding children. He discards the it is also very late in the game. Yeah. Hi. How does this work . Oh. Hi. Dale copeland, department of politics, university of virginia. Jeff, i am going to come at you from a political sciencey point of view here. I have heard interesting descriptions of what has been happening, but i kind of want to i want to know where you fit within the causal debates about the end of the cold war because as i see it, there are three or four big ones. There is the sort of straightforward, gorbachev realized that they were way over spending on military. They had to reduce the military spending, or they would be a defunct great power. Reagan and bush pushed them to ,he ground with their own arms so on and so forth. That is the 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. The second story is the opposite. Gorbachev is a liberal, or a new ideologically leader, this vision of how he wants the soviet union to change and become a more integrated part of the world community. It even though he and his memoirs claims he is a leninist, i dont buy it, obviously. The third story that i am very theathetic to is that soviet regime even before gorbachev, but especially under gorbachev, realized they needed the technology the west could offer if they were going to revitalize the economic structure of the soviet union and make it a viable superpower in the long term. Military, yes. That was important. Reduce the arms of spending. More importantly, revitalize the economic base of the soviet union so the soviet union could become an important player into the 21st century. Otherwise, they felt they would decline and politically and militarily be no longer viable. The fourth story really is a more personal story of personalities. Gorbachev or says reagan. Gorbachev versus bush. I have only read three chapters of your manuscript. I am not sure what the causal story is other than descriptively that they were they liked each other. They grew to trust one another. The story a political scientist like myself would want to ask is, what conditions allowed to that trust to develop, especially with reagan, who was very much an antisoviet individual . How does that trust develop and what is the material or ideological circumstances hanging over these leaders that allowed their personalities to play such an Important Role at this critical time . Descriptive story of their personalities talking to one another and having trust bill does not really tell me more of what i really want to know, what are the reasons why they were able to do it and kissinger and nixon, who built up a detente, were not able to do it . Why were these individuals able to do it . Extract from the story to look at the causal conditions under which this would work. That is a great question. Let 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. This is the second [inaudible] it is a narrative approach. You can interpret it how you want. The second is, i dont know why you are uncomfortable with the notion that Ronald Reagan singlehandedly did all of this. I saw him take his shirt off and pull the wall down. In seriousness, the view i take is a combination of several different themes you have established. I think there is also, and this is where perhaps we see a disciplinary distinction, there is an element of chaos that i think is significant at the end. Of all the players in the story, and this is one of the tensions within the book, george bush has his name on the title, but gorbachev is the most important person in all this. Gorbachev is the one who recognizes, as do others in the soviet union, that the system needs to change. Upy need to open the system and adopt a more western ways. Socialism is not working. We should never forget that gorbachev did not want the soviet union to end. He was a socialist. How can i save the system . That is really quite crucial. He wanted to open up the system to integrate and ultimately, what is interesting to me, his ideas do weve all, even during the relatively short time he is in office. It is really only six years that it occurs for him. He begins with the notion that he needs to change the system, integrate reforms, open things up within the soviet union. I dont think it is until about 1988, 1989. The u. N. Speech is the best public indication of this, when he begins to talk about his vision of a new world order. New world order. It is one in which the soviet union is more integrated with the western europe. This is where he begins the rhetoric, which does not appear until june of 1989 of a common european home. This notion, this rhetoric scares the be jesus out of the americans. Are building a home, we are not in it. They use the architectural metaphor themselves frequently to say that this is the central problem that gorbachev is building for us. Something significant happens. Gorbachev is a catalyst and opens up, whatever metaphor you want, he is a catalyst, takes the cork out of the bottle, and people begin to run with it. Here is where crowds do play a story in it at the end. Gorbachev never envisioned losing control the way that he did. Significantly, gorbachev was adamant that we were not going to use force to reimpose control and was very explicit with people in east germany that you should not use force and we will not back you if you use force. Dont forget, we have a lot of soviet troops on the on eastern german soil. I think the story i would tell is one of a decaying soviet union which almost everyone recognizes, gorbachev willing to make changes, and the change speeding up and catalyzing in ways that even he did not predict. One thing. It was not just president bushs personality. It was the complementary personality of jim baker. Gorbachev could deal with the president respectfully and infrequently. Jim baker had a very good relationship. They get along well. That created a climate that i , thisencourage gorbachev might work. I do think gorbachev was trying to reform the soviet union, not dissolve it. Being athat he ended up believer that he could do actually more for his people if he were to have a more open society that would be engaged. So, i think he became a believer. I dont think it wouldve happened with just one personality. You had to have two personalities, at least two on each side. Did not really think it would work at the beginning. Lotsresident was getting of different views. I think jim bakers relationship ended up being very constructive as well. Here is another case where the personalities and individual moments really matter. I think it is crucial, this relationship is quite close. It is crucial that the one personality is not a diplomat and knows nothing about Foreign Policy. He comes to gorbachev and says, i dont know anything about Foreign Policy, and gorbachev says, exactly. You will approach at all with fresh eyes. When he begins meeting with baker, baker sends these wonderful, private communications to the white house for bush and skull crossed skulcroft. Baker says, you would not believe how honest this guy is being with us. They are afraid and they dont know where things are going. Their afraid of their afraid of conservatives if they move too fast. They are demonstrating fear to baker. He was open about it. What is interesting in the way both of you have spoken is that you might say the fundamental driving force is what many people have suggested, which is soviet decline. It kicked in in the late 1960s. The realization in the early 1980s that this was even worse than the 1960s, 0 growth, etc. , so this growth the fear of relative decline and the need to integrate the soviet union is pushing gorbachev to take steps that become more and more radical, including domestic reforms that lead to what you are talking about, this instability of 1989. It was not present in 1985. It was not even foreseen. Eastern europe, domestic instability. I think it is a multicausal story i am hearing. One of the ones i see so forceful in both of your responses is that without this fundamental, relative decline and the understanding of the unless we doat something big, we arent going to be a superpower for long, at least for the next couple of decades. Am i hearing you right . That is pushing an avowed leninist socialists to make what looks like liberal reforms, but he is doing it in an instrumental way to overcome the decline problem. I actually believe in gorbachevs peripheral vision, not knowing how to describe it otherwise, you also have a relationship with a polish pope. Calling attention to what has happened in poland. The soviet union. Sayou are going to taking root in some places in the soviet union, you have Margaret Thatcher with Ronald Reagan shining spotlights that caused others within the soviet union to say, wait a minute. This is not a monolithic soviet came. Gorbachev there is pressure coming from poland and czechoslovakia and other places. The poems have been written. Things are happening. The pope is giving permission for it to happen. For me, the best way to understand this with the different crosscurrents is i think what gorbachev wants more than anything is an intellectual revolution within his country. The moment that you say that we are going to allow not only reform and change, because everyone might reform and change, but reform and change, not sacrificed not centralized in moscow, allow people to question. That is where things begin to catalyze. They begin to take it and run with that as well. For me, at the heart, it is the explanation you are describing, which is a recognition of soviet decline and then the decision to make not only structural changes, but intellectual changes as well, none of which has anything to do with the United States. Yes, i think if there is one pernicious, evil lie in history we should strive in u. S. Foreignpolicy, it is the notion we anybody who is watching on cspan, we didnt. [laughter] st. Charles university. This explanation, gorbachev centered for the cold war, i have two comments and questions centering on the vision thing and the new world order. Decline of the soviet system in was gorbachevs center. If you take a look at his comments, especially in retrospect, the comment on what he thought was going on, he called the end of the soviet called the experiment a dead end in social evolution. That is pretty much a direct quote. What he realized, i think, was that soviet theology as it had played out had no chance of being realized in a rapidly globalizing world. The soviet union was actually isolating itself. Else that theere soviet unions foreignpolicy was setting itself up against the rest of human cause. It is a combination of, i think,. Orbachevs true believer faith true believers are the greatest ostrates. Ate pr side, it is not so much american policy. The emergence of this global society. It appeared to be reversible. Gorbachev admits that. It led him to the decision, we can be outside it or we can join it. We have to join the world bank. We have to join the imf. We have to become part of it. To doher part of it has with the interpretation of events in yugoslavia. Know itsome of you may has been the subject of great debate among historians. Was it in fact tribalism . I think the current of historical position is running in the opposite direction. It was not tribalism here it it it was the politicians who screwed things up. Not tribalism. It was the politicians who screwed things up. If the americans had been more this same episode couldve been avoided. Lastly, the vision they, the theon thing, there is famous press conference in cairo in which the president s remarks are attributed to jet lag. He is asked to define what though new world order is and it comes out a jumbled. Jumble. My question is, how systematically did the administration think about the new world order, and was its thinking more coherent than was on display in that press conference . I think the new world order, in quotation marks, and or pitch of was the first use the term that i am aware of, was not , i donts context think that it was contrived. I think it is more describing the result. Team at sure that the the white house was looking to create a new world order. They were trying to deal with a world that had changed. It represented a new world order. I am not sure that this was a a newgic map of creating order. Map, i think some but he would have been very involved in it and it might have been john, who loves to create new solutions for problems that did not exist. [laughter] we have a few minutes left. I want to turn to david and melanie and see if you would like to make any additional jeff on someress aspects of the comments. I think he is responded for this venue very forthrightly and constructively, but give you a chance to followup and have an exchange, if you want. Writing dissertations here. One thing that is instructive to think about is the genre piece. S of a long you hear jeff wrestling with some of the genre conventions of writing this kind of work. Residential biography, International History, what goes on the page and what doesnt go on the page . Trying to do three things at once is something that you shouldnt do. There are three arcs to the story. It will be interesting how he weaves them together. Im still worried that by not conceiving the degree to which president bush and his team are wrestling with many issues at once, even if it is just a paragraph here in the 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. To writing leads us in a more linear fashion, but you are writing a much broader synthesis. It is a tricky genre problem. I am hearing you still wrestle with that genre. Toi would like to come back my middle east question and push you one thats a little bit more. What you understand the Bush Administration to have gone into a moresis in iraq expect preparing for in terms of middle east policy . Some goodas already work done within the administration on what americas National Security aim should be at this point. Richard had a key role in directing and writing much of that. Was the embassy director for the middle east. The argument which came out of those embassy documents was essentially that the United States needs to ensure that there is no single or power that is dominant in the gulf. So consequently, iraqs move south gives the fear that there will be that dominant power. [inaudible] exactly. One of the interesting things that occurred in that debate, which was recently declassified, is a number of people, dick cheney in particular, who argue in that meeting that, maybe it doesnt really matter that Saddam Hussein has gotten all the oil in kuwait. He has got to sell it and we want it. On the as he is selling global market, what difference does it make . People are throwing out ideas. It is hard to tell what the sincere thought is within the meeting. Of crisis, moment people begin to step back and take a look at their assumptions and move forward. I will tell you one of the most interesting things that we discovered in the new documents aprilt the raw deal gotten all of this. She was the u. S. Ambassador to iraq. 32nd called into a version, she is called into a meeting with Saddam Hussein days before the invasion. This was a very rare thing. He doesnt talk to people who then left. Have aains they longstanding grievances and she says, we cannot comment on border disputes. People of subsequently said that gave him a green light. The truth of the matter is, i have 13 different cables from the white house and from the state department in the days leading up to that saying, make sure you tell Saddam Hussein we dont comment on border disputes because we dont comment on border disputes. There are 3000 border disputes around the world. We dont have to stick our nose everywhere. She delivered the second part of the message, which gets forgotten. We dont comment on border disputes, but we really will be against any use of force. We are always against use of force. Diplomatic solutions are the way to go. That part always gets forgotten. There is any number of cables that say president bush was scheduled to speak with Saddam Hussein by telephone the evening of the invasion. Of course, the call never occurs. The talking points i will prepare for him also included that language. We will not comment on border disputes. That is the version we are sticking with. Dont use force, the next part. I think she really gets the raw deal. It really demonstrates that their primary concern for the middle east seems to be, lets not have this be an issue. Make sure the middle east is calm enough to get the oil out. The rest of the world is going on. As long as we dont have a dominant power in the middle east, that is what we care about. I dont see a lot else in the National Security documents of differences with the Reagan Administration over the middle east. I want to thank jeff for the draft manuscript that has initiated a very rich conversation. I want to thank the panelists for taking advantage of the opportunities in that manuscript to really conduct this terrific discussion about writing president ial history and about. He administration of h. W. Bush i am deeply grateful. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] you are watching American History tv, 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter at cspanhistory to keep up with the latest history news. Each week, American History tvs real america brings you archival films that help tell the story of the 20th century. Next, a portion of the biweekly world war ii newsreel series, army navy screen magazine. It was intended only for servicemen around the globe. The 20 minute report appeared between 1943 and 1946 and was supervised by a film director and army major frank capra. The experience of our armies in africa and europe has emphasized the importance of rail transportation in combat areas. The importance of organizing and training railroad battalions for use overseas. All these offices and most of these are old hands from the of and other great railroads america. Once they put on fatigues, they started the start at the beginning again and learn a railroading the army way. They can strip and reassemble a railroad under field conditions. These are government owned train sheds and repair shops. These men learned the nomenclature. Land thea strip of track goes on. In total war, railroading is a weapon. Workork of freight cars is for soldiers. Soldiers engineer it and man the switches. The soldiers