in Germany, starting with daddy Prescott's role in the Hitler project, and continuing with Averell
Harriman's machinations of 1945, win the eastern zone after the Nazis had fallen. But Bush's reaction was also illustrative of the Anglo-hich helped to solidify a communist dictatorship for forty years
American perception that the resurgence of German industrialism in central Europe was a deadly
threat.
Over in London, Tfoamed at the mouth in observations about German unity, which he equated with a Nazi resurgencehatcher's brain truster Nicholas Ridley was forced to quit the cabinet after he (^)
seeking to enslave Britain within the coils of the EEC. Conor Cruise O'Brien, Peregrine
Worthshorne and various Tory propagandists coined the phrase of an emergent "Fourth Reich"
which would now threaten Europe and the world. The Anglo-Saxon oligarchs were truly dismayed,
and it is in this hysteria that we must seek the roots of the Gulf crisis and the war against Iraq.
But in the meantime, the collapse of the old Pankow regime in East Berlin meant that Bush had
urgent issues to discuss with Gorbachov. The two agreed to meet on ships in Malta during the first
week of December.
Bush talked about his summit plans in a special televised address before Thanksgiving, 1989. He
tried to claim credit for the terminal crisis of communism, citing his own inaugural address: "The
day of the dictator is over." But mainly he sought to reassure Gorbachov: "...we will give him our
assurance that America welcomes this reform not as an adversary seeking advantage but as a people
offering support." "...I wpresident of the United States." Bush also had to protect his flank fromill assure him that there is no greater advocate of perestroika than the criticism from Europeans (^)
and domestic critics like Lyndon LaRouche who had warned that the Malta meeting contained the
threat of an attempted new Yalta of the superpowers at the expense of Europe. "We are not meeting
to determine the future of Europe," Bush promised. [fn 11]
It is reported that, here again, Bush was so secretive about this summit until it was announced that
he did not consult with his staffs. If he had, the nature of Mediterranean winter storms might have
influenced a decision to meet elsewhere. The result was the famous sea-sick summit, during which
Bush, whose self-image as a bold sea dog in the tradition of Sir Francis Drake required that he
spend the night on a heaving US warship, required treatment for acute mal de mer. Bush's vomitingsyndrome, which was to become so dramatic in Japan, was beginning. He had perhaps not been so
tempest-tossed since his nautical outing with Don Aronow back in 1983.
At the Malta-Yalta table, Bush and Gorbachov haggled over the "architecture" of the new Europe.
Gorbachov wanted NATO to be dissolved as the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist, but this wassomething Bush and the British refused to grant. Bush explained that Germany was best bound (^)
within NATO in order to avoid the potential for independent initiatives that neither Moscow nor
Washington wanted. A free hand for each empire within its respective sphere was reaffirmed, as
suggested by the symmetry of Bush's assault on Panama during the Romanian crisis that liquidated
Ceausescu, but left a neo-communist government of old Comintern types like Iliescu and Rompower. Bush would also support the Kremlin against both Armenia and Azerbaijan when hostilitiesan in
and massacres broke out between these regions during the following month. Bush's reciprocal
services to Gorbachov included a monstrous diplomatic first: just as the communist regime in East
Germany was in its death agony, Bush despatched James Baker to Potsdam to meet with the East
German "reform communist" leader, Modrow. No US Secretary of State had ever set foot in theDDR during its entire history after 1949, but now, in the last days of the Pankow communist
regime, Baker would go there. His visit was an insult to those East Germans who had marched for
freedom, always having to reckon with the danger that Honecker's tanks would open fire. Baker's
visit was designed to delay, sabotage and stall German reunification in whatever ways were still
possible, while shoring up the communist regime. Baker gave it his best shot, but his sleazy