36. THE MALTA SUMMIT
Bush resisted the temptation to go to Eastern Europe to celebrate
the revolutionary upsurge. Senator George Mitchell, the Democratic
Party’s staid voice on foreign policy, found this regrettable.^1 But Bush
judged that it would serve no good for the national interest if the
American President danced amidst the rubble of the Berlin Wall. He
had a point. Gorbachëv was shunning the idea of Soviet military inter-
vention, and Bush wanted to keep things that way. Bush still needed
Gorbachëv’s cooperation in reducing arms and troops in Europe and
reunifying the continent. With a summit meeting about to occur off
the Maltese coast in early December, there was nothing to gain by
crowing over the USSR’s discomfiture.
The Americans had to assess Gorbachëv’s chances of surviving in
power after everything that had been happening in his country and
Eastern Europe. Everybody in the American administration recog-
nized that the revolutions against communist power in Warsaw and
other capitals could undermine the cause of the Kremlin reformers.
Gates and his USSR specialists at the CIA pointed out that perestroika
had not brought material improvement for Soviet citizens. The possi-
bility of popular unrest was growing. The authorities might use force
to suppress it and the Baltic protest movement could be a target. Polit-
ical democratization was disrupting the working of the administration
and obstructing the path of economic reform. Nevertheless the CIA
was divided about the future. The alternative internal opinion was that
Gorbachëv would continue to advance towards a pluralist system but
that the consequence would be an increasing loss of control from the
centre.^2 Both opinions nevertheless suggested that trouble was in store
for Gorbachëv. Arms reduction adviser Ed Rowny concluded that in
these circumstances there were ‘potential risks and few gains’ in start-
ing talks on reducing strategic nuclear weapons.^3 Rowny was hoping
to pull Bush back to his earlier scepticism about Gorbachëv and arms