432 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
forces. He repeated the case for Najibullah to step down in Afghani-
stan if ever there was to be a prospect of peace there. He promised that
Washington would recognize a Nicaraguan government under Sandi-
nista leader Daniel Ortega so long as the elections were fairly
conducted, but he expressed unhappiness about the USSR’s failure to
withdraw support for Cuba.^35 Shevardnadze rejected the demand
about Najibullah and deprecated American actions in Panama.^36
When Baker put the arguments to Gorbachëv, he sensed that he was
making some progress and thought Gorbachëv was showing greater
flexibility than Shevardnadze. Kohl too had the feeling that the Soviet
leadership was beginning to budge.^37 But the discussions were incon-
clusive.^38 Baker had tried hard to reassure Gorbachëv by offering a
‘guarantee that Germany’s unification will not lead to the eastward
spread of the NATO military organization’.^39 He failed to convince
him. On that crucial point there was no meeting of minds.^40
On 10 February Baker addressed the Foreign Relations Committee
of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Expressing thanks for the honour of
speaking to ‘the Founding Fathers of a new Soviet Union’, he referred
warmly to ‘my friend, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze’ and claimed
that he and his President ‘very much want perestroika to succeed’.
According to Baker, they desired this for the sake of ‘the Soviet people’
and because the USSR’s foreign and defence policies had become
‘fundamentally less threatening to the American people than the
hostile Stalinist approaches of the past’. He talked of the Cold War in
the past tense.
He undertook to help in securing the release of Soviet POWs in
Afghanistan and in getting the Jackson–Vanik amendment repealed.
At the same time he emphasized that America had never recognized
the USSR’s annexation of the Baltic states in the Second World War.
He claimed a legal basis for American military action against Presi-
dent Noriega in Panama. He made the case for the new Germany to
belong to NATO. He suggested that the USSR could do better things
with its finances than make grants to Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua and
Cambodia – he jibed that if there was one politician whom Castro
criticized more than Bush, it was Gorbachëv.^41 He insisted that the
Bush administration wanted Gorbachëv’s reforms to succeed; but as a
former Treasury Secretary he believed that Soviet leaders had to make
the choice between a command economy and a market economy: ‘But
you can’t have something in between.’ Although he wanted to help, he