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Kohl, Helmut

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Bush, George H.W.

1924- 2018

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February 1, 1983	Telegram, Dimitar Stoyanov to Comrade Mielke The Bulgarian Minister of the Interior writes to Erich Mielke on NATO efforts to discredit Bulgaria, the Soviet Union, and other communist states following the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.
July 2, 1957	Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1957 On July 2, 1957, US senator John F. Kennedy made his perhaps best-known senatorial speech—on Algeria. Home to about 8 million Muslims, 1.2 million European settlers, and 130,000 Jews, it was from October 1954 embroiled in what France dubbed “events”—domestic events, to be precise. Virtually all settlers and most metropolitan French saw Algeria as an indivisible part of France. Algeria had been integrated into metropolitan administrative structures in 1847, towards the end of a structurally if not intentionally genocidal pacification campaign; Algeria’s population dropped by half between 1830, when France invaded, and the early 1870s. Eighty years and many political turns later (see e.g. Messali Hadj’s 1927 speech in this collection), in 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched a war for independence. Kennedy did not quite see eye to eye with the FLN. As Kennedy's speech shows, he did not want France entirely out of North Africa. However, he had criticized French action already in early 1950s Indochina. And in 1957 he met with Abdelkader Chanderli (1915-1993), an unaccredited representative of the FLN at the United Nations in New York and in Washington, DC, and a linchpin of the FLN’s successful international offensive described in Matthew Connelly’s A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002). Thus, Kennedy supported the FLN’s demand for independence, which explains its very positive reaction to his speech. And thus, unlike the 1952-1960 Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) that officially backed the views of NATO ally France and kept delivering arms, the Democratic senator diagnosed a “war” by “Western imperialism” that, together with if different from “Soviet imperialism,” is “the great enemy of … the most powerful single force in the world today: ... man's eternal desire to be free and independent.” (In fact, Kennedy’s speech on the Algerian example of Western imperialism was the first of two, the second concerning the Polish example of Sovietimperialism. On another, domestic note, to support African Algeria’s independence was an attempt to woe civil-rights-movement-era African Americans without enraging white voters.) To be sure, Kennedy saw France as an ally, too. But France’s war was tainting Washington too much, which helped Moscow. In Kennedy’s eyes, to support the US Cold War against the Soviet Union meant granting Algeria independence. The official French line was the exact opposite: only continued French presence in Algeria could keep Moscow and its Egyptian puppet, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, from controlling the Mediterranean and encroaching on Africa.
December 3, 1956	Middle East (Situation): Debated in the Commons Chamber, Monday, 3 December 1956 In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) nationalized the Suez Canal Company, surprising the world. The government of France, in whose capital of Paris the company was headquartered, and the British government, the company’s plurality shareholder, sought to reverse nationalization in court, but failed—even though they clad their case in the language not of imperial self-interest but, rather, of international public interest. The time in which such language was somewhat acceptable, even at home, was passing, and the Suez Crisis played a big part in this final act. At the same time, the two governments early on after the canal nationalization decided to remove Nasser by force, for re-compensation was not their central concern. France believed Nasser was enabling the FLN, which in 1954 had started Algeria’s War for Independence, and Britain wanted some say in the canal, which had for decades been its worldwide empire’s “swing-door,” as a member of parliament, Anthony Eden (1897-1977), called it in 1929. In August 1956 France began discussing a joint operation with Israel, which wanted Nasser gone, too, and the Red Sea opened for Israel-bound ships. In early October the two were joined by Britain. On the 29th, Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. On the 30th, France and Britain gave Israel and Egypt a 12-hour ultimatum to cease hostilities, or they would intervene—and Anglo-French forces bombed Egyptian forces from the 31st and on November 5-6 occupied the canal’s northern tip. Although a power play, “Operation Musketeer,” like the court case, could not be an open imperial move anymore, then, and did not present itself to the world as such. No matter: especially in colonies and postcolonial countries, people were outraged. More problematically for France and Britain, Washington was incredulous. This Middle Eastern affair triggered the worst crisis of the 1950s between America’s rising international empire and Europe’s descending empires, and indeed clarified and accelerated that descent. President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) fumed that Prime Ministers Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet (1905-1977) had disregarded his administration’s opposition to military action. Worse, they had deceived him about their intentions. And worst, their attack on Egypt undermined the supreme US tenet: Soviet containment. The Americans were by association tainted by their NATO allies’ imperialist move while the Soviets looked good—on November 5 they offered Egypt troops and threatened to nuke London, Paris, and Tel Aviv—and that although they had just repressed an uprising in Hungary. On the very day of the ultimatum, October 30, Eisenhower washed his hands of that move on live US television, and the US mission at the UN organized a cease-fire resolution vote in the Security Council. France and Britain vetoed it. Although sharing its European allies’ emotions about Nasser, the US administration withheld critical oil and monetary supplies from them to bring them to heel and withdraw from Egypt—after which, it promised, they would be warmly welcomed back. It ceased most bilateral communications and froze almost all everyday social interactions with its two allies, even cancelling a scheduled visit by Eden. And it badgered its allies at the UN, supporting an Afro-Asian resolution that on November 24 called Israel, Britain, and France to withdraw forthwith. On December 3, the British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd took the floor in the House of Commons.
March 21, 1990	Working Record of a Conversation of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki with Deputy Secretary of State L. Eagleburger At a working lunch, Mazowiecki and Deputy Secretary of State L. Eagleburger discuss the dangers of Balkanization. Additionally, they discuss the difficulties of European unification in the current political climate.
March 21, 1990	Working Record of the Conversation between the Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and the US Secretary of Defense D. Cheney Mazowiecki and Cheney discuss Poland’s military, Soviet troop withdraw, and the future of NATO.
March 21, 1990	Minutes of a Conversation of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki with US President George Bush Over two days of meetings, Bush and Mazowiecki discuss German reunification, the future of relations with the Soviet Union/Russia, and NATO.
July 9, 1997	Memorandum of Conversation: Meeting with Ukrainian President Kuchma (following NATO-Ukraine Charter signing): NATO-Ukraine, Ukrainian Domestic Situation, Chornobyl Replacement Power President Clinton and President Kuchma discuss economic conditions inside Ukraine, Russia-Ukraine relations following Ukraine's signing of an agreement with NATO, and replacing reactors in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
May 16, 1997	Memorandum of Conversation: Meeting with President Kuchma of Ukraine President Clinton and President Kuchma discuss NATO-Ukraine relations, Russa-Ukraine relations, and domestic politics in Russia and Ukraine. Kuchma relays to Clinton that "I am deeply confident that Russia will never agree to an independent Ukraine in its mentality and thinking."
August 1, 1961	Summary of Comments by N. S. Khrushchev concerning the Question of the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty with the German Democratic Republic Khrushchev remembers the signing of peace agreement with Japan and the exclusion of the Soviet Union from it. He criticizes the politics of Adenauer and warns about the destructive effects of potential world war. Khrushchev suggests signing the peace agreement to avoid the possibility of a nuclear war against the US and its allies
June 29, 2020	Interview and Discussion with Sir Malcolm Rifkind Discussion with Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Defense Secretary and Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, about the 1990s and the new relationship that formed after the Cold War.