Commission report, and many other books. And he is now in the midst of writing a terrific book on sort of decisions for war. And in ways that illuminate old crises and decisions like going to war in 1898, wilsons decision for war in world war i. He sort of brilliantly reassessing these decisions. Were all looking forward to philips next book. At the same time, hes doing about a dozen other things that none of us can keep track of. Sometimes we dont know about. Philip, thank you. Thank you. I actually am sorry to say, we need to wait for james wilson to show up. So he is probably out there somewhere having a good conversation. If we can send the search party out. So far its been a great panel. It is rather intimidating when you sit next to somebody that can refer to his book. Glad you could join us. Thank you. All right. Lets go ahead and get started then. This is a panel covering the period only of the great second crisis phase of the cold war in the early 1980s extending to end of the
Lifetime e a took place a lifetime ago. And its collapse seems so unimaginable. If i can indulge you for a second, the year before the collapse, i had organized a conference. Withe was more associated the cold war. Some of you were there. Of talk aboutt the integration of europe. , knownial the soviet was talking about the reunification of germany. Off desk also the time john and bill had begun their series on sovietamerican relations, the first time sovietamerican scholars got together. Scott armstrong had just come up with the idea of a National Security archive. But the end of the cold war . Not a chance and no discussion. Notequently, one is remarkable, what is now much closer now than we were then, by reaching a consensus regarding events in germany, and then of course, there aftermath. These questions concerned the drivers, whether they be individual, state, or international. These questions concerned consequences, whether they be international, state, or individual. These questi
Four decades or even more, its a little short of remarkable that were marking 25 years since the fall of the berlin wall. Its remarkable because on the one hand we can recall that event so vividly, but on the other hand, it sometimes seems like it took place a lifetime ago. Its also remarkable because for those of us who pursued our degrees and published our first books during the preceding decades, in some cases before the construction of the wall [ laughter ] its collapse seemed so unimaginable. In fact, if i can indulge you for a second, the year before the collapse, i organized a conference on john foster dulles. No one was more associated with the cold war. Some of you were there. There was lots of talk about the integration of europe. The soviets new thinking. Glasnost. Perestroika but no one was talking about the reunification this was the time john gaddes began their conferences on soviet and american relations. First time soviet and American Scholars got together. And Scott Ar
Will, within the communist world would react to remove those like gorbachev who tried to push the world forward through with reform. And ultimately, we see this fear coming true in august of 1991 when there was a conservative coup, at that point without very likelihood of success. But nonetheless, the great fear that that could generate into civil war, Ethnic Violence and the like. So i argue that there are really two moments, therefore, when president bush essentially took off the hypocratic gloves, if you will. The first was with reunification of germany. He believed in a nato context it was necessary to keep future sta bill nit europe because having nato in europe allowed the americans to also stay in europe and he believed firmly the only thing that kept the peace since 1945 in europe was the american presence. Therefore he pushed hard for reunification an the terms he needed which was keeping germany in nato. And the second moment was the gulf war. When this strikes me as really t
Scholarship about the causes for the fall of the wall but the proximate causes, the short term events are not wellknown in the nongerman speaking world and so i decided for the anniversary to try to put together that story as best i could and then of course as always happens when you start researching something it becomes more complicated than you expected. It ended up being a fascinating rg 31 so let me just gallop through some of the ideas in my book and then if we have questions we can talk more about them. I want to talk a little bit about the precursor to the night of november 9, 1989, when the wall opens. And then a tiny bit about how we think about these events, memory and legacy, themes that my colleagues will emphasize as well. So its important to say that the first unexpected event actually happened not in berlin but in moscow which is to say there were a rapid series of deaths. In 2 1 2 years there were four leaders of the soviet union, of course, after brezhnev died. Then a