The Wall Fell Down

On Monday night I was able to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall in style with former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and President George H.W. Bush. Rice gave a speech to cap off a day full of festivities. In her remarks, she highlighted the roles played by Bush, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in the events of 20 years ago. I was very impressed with Rice. She spoke well and displayed great command of a variety of foreign policy issues during the Q & A.

Much was made during the day about how Bush refused to openly gloat when the Berlin Wall fell, to "dance on the wall" as he put it. He received criticism in the press at the time for not seeming excited, but he knew there was plenty of work still to be done (e.g. German unification), and he didn't want to put Gorbachev in a bad political position at home by rubbing it in that the West had won. This restraint helped ensure the smooth unification of Germany within NATO less than a year later, and helped ensure the USSR didn't resort to violence to maintain its grip on power.

The story of how the Wall actually came down is interesting:

The intention was to announce the changes [to travel rules] overnight and phase in the new rules the next morning. Instead one of the Politburo members, Guenter Schabowski, blurted out the plans during a televised press conference - and compounded his error by adding the new rules would come into force "immediately".

Upon hearing this, East Germans went to the Wall in droves. The border guards, unsure of how to respond, eventually stood aside and let people pass through. This courageous, humane choice, the opposite of that made by Chinese soldiers five months previously in Tiananmen Square, but similar to that made by the Romanian army one month later, ensured that freedom would prevail and the wall would crumble.

In a world where so many are still oppressed, the events of 1989 provide hope. The fall of the Soviet Union was not expected by anyone. As pessimistic as we might feel about conditions in China, Iran, Burma, or North Korea today, we can maintain hope (and dictators must remain fearful) that seismic shifts could occur at any moment.