Malta Summit

• 1. Introduction

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  The Malta Summit brought United States President George H. W. Bush and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev together on the 2nd and the 3rd of December 1989. It happened just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The two men did not meet in a palace or a capital city. They met on ships in the Mediterranean, in weather rough enough to give the event a nickname. Why did the leaders of two superpowers choose the open sea? Who had to be talked into attending? And what did Bush and Gorbachev say to each other that people still argue over what it ended?

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• 2. A Reluctant Washington

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  Brent Scowcroft and other members of the American administration were uneasy when the Malta Summit was first proposed. They feared a meeting held too soon, one that would raise high expectations and deliver little more than Soviet grandstanding. Their word for it was premature.

  French President François Mitterrand saw it differently, and so did British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Other European leaders and key members of the United States Congress joined them in urging Bush to sit down with Gorbachev. Their combined pressure prevailed.

  The summit also had a recent precedent. In December 1988, a meeting in New York had included Ronald Reagan, and Malta followed it. Once Bush agreed to go, the next argument was about where the two leaders would meet.

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• 3. Choosing Malta

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  Condoleezza Rice later described how hard the venue was to settle. In her words: "... it took a long time to get it arranged, finding a place, a place that would not be ceremonial, a place where you didn't have to do a lot of other bilaterals. And fortunately, or unfortunately, they chose Malta, which turned out to be a really horrible place to be in December. Although the Maltese were wonderful, the weather was really bad."

  The idea of meeting at sea is said to have come largely from Bush himself. He was fascinated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who liked to receive foreign leaders aboard naval vessels. The two superpowers still haggled over the choice for a considerable time before agreeing.

  The islands of Malta sit at the geographic centre of the Mediterranean Sea, where east meets west and north meets south. That position gave Malta a long history of domination by foreign powers. It served as a British naval base during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it suffered massive destruction during World War II.

  In 1980, Malta declared its neutrality between the two superpowers. The declaration followed the closure of the British military bases and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Regional Headquarters, known as CINCAFMED, which had been based on the island. Section 1(3) of the Constitution of Malta now says: "Malta is a neutral state actively pursuing peace, security and social progress among all nations by adhering to a policy of non-alignment and refusing to participate in any military alliance."

  The December weather that Rice complained about would soon become part of the story itself.

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• 4. The Seasick Summit

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  Off the coast of Marsaxlokk, the ships of both delegations lay at anchor in a roadstead. The Soviet delegation used the missile cruiser Slava. The American delegation also had its sleeping quarters on board.

  Stormy weather and choppy seas disrupted the schedule. Some meetings were cancelled and others were rescheduled. International media coined a nickname from the misery, calling the event the "Seasick Summit".

  The talks finally took place aboard the Maksim Gorkiy. This was a Soviet cruise ship that had been chartered to the West German tour company Phoenix Reisen. It anchored in the harbor at Marsaxlokk, where the water was calmer than in the open roadstead.

  What the two leaders said after those meetings would be heard far beyond the harbor, at a joint news conference.

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• 5. From Yalta to Malta

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  Reporters in 1989 reached for a comparison from the closing years of World War II. At the Yalta Conference, British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed on a post-war plan for Europe. News reports of the time called Malta one of the most important summits since that one.

  Malta had its own earlier role in that story. On the 2nd of February 1945, as the war in Europe drew to a close, the island hosted the Malta Conference. Roosevelt and Churchill met there, in an equally significant meeting, before travelling on to see Stalin at Yalta.

  The 1989 summit carried the echo further. It signaled a reversal of many of the decisions taken at Yalta in 1945. To see what that meant in practice, the place to look is what Bush and Gorbachev actually said.

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• 6. Words on the Water

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  No agreements were signed at the Malta Summit. Its main purpose was to give the United States and the Soviet Union a chance to talk through the rapid changes sweeping Europe. The Iron Curtain, which had separated the Eastern Bloc from Western Europe for four decades, was being lifted. Bush also expressed his support for Gorbachev's perestroika initiative and for other reforms in the Communist bloc.

  At the joint news conference, Gorbachev spoke first. He said: "The world is leaving one epoch and entering another. We are at the beginning of a long road to a lasting, peaceful era. The threat of force, mistrust, psychological and ideological struggle should all be things of the past." He added: "I assured the President of the United States that I will never start a hot war against the USA."

  Bush replied: "We can realise a lasting peace and transform the East-West relationship to one of enduring co-operation. That is the future that Chairman Gorbachev and I began right here in Malta."

  With those words, the two men declared an end to the Cold War, though whether it truly ended there is a matter of debate. Some observers view Malta as its official end. At a minimum, the summit marked a lessening of the tensions that defined the era and a major turning point in East-West relations.

  Bush had also carried a physical reminder of the changes in Europe, and he gave one to every participant.

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• 7. A Piece of the Wall

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  As a token of the moment, President Bush presented every participant in the conference with a piece of the Berlin Wall. Getting the pieces took a presidential mission. Two pilots and four soldiers carrying sledgehammers were sent to Berlin.

  They collected 400 lb of the Wall. Half of it, 200 lb, was given to the President. The other 200 lb went to members of the 207th Aviation Company.

  Those fragments of concrete went to a long list of advisers, ministers and ambassadors. Those people made up the two delegations.

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• 8. The Delegations

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  James Baker, the US Secretary of State, headed an American team that mixed diplomats, defense officials and White House staff. Brent Scowcroft served as National Security Adviser, and John H. Sununu was the White House chief of staff. Robert Blackwill was Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for European and Soviet Affairs at the National Security Council. Condoleezza Rice was Director for Soviet and East European Affairs at the same council.

  The rest of the American side included Jack F. Matlock, Jr., the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Raymond Seitz, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs. Margaret D. Tutwiler was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and spokeswoman of the Department. Paul Wolfowitz was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and Robert Zoellick was Counselor of the Department of State.

  Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet Foreign Minister, led the Soviet delegation. Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Akhromeyev advised Gorbachev on military affairs. Alexander Bessmertnykh was Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister. Alexander Yakovlev was the chief ideologist of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the International Policy Commission of its Central Committee.

  Anatoly Dobrynin also sat on the Soviet side. He had served as Soviet Ambassador to the United States from 1962 to 1986, so he knew Washington from the inside.

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