Excerpt from "At Historic Crossroads: Documents on the December 1989 Malta Summit"

Published in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue 12/13, Fall/Winter 2001

"We have managed to avoid a large-scale war for 45 years. This single fact alone says that not everything was so bad in the past. Nevertheless, one conclusion is obvious—reliance on force, on military superiority, and the associated arms race have not been justified. Our two countries obviously understand this better than others."
—Mikhail Gorbachev

Following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and increasing unrest within the Soviet Union, it was clearer to President George Bush (1924–; served 1989–93) and his secretary of state, James A. Baker (1930–), that change was real in the former Soviet empire and a prospect of substantial political instability loomed...