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(JFK - Berlin - 1963 - Bringing the message to the worlds largest group of shut-ins)

With the Cuban Missile Crisis a fresh memory only eight months earlier, President Kennedy toured Europe in the summer of 1963 and stopped in Berlin on June 26, 1963 to address a crowd of over 150,000 against the ominous backdrop of the Wall that divided the two Berlins.

"Today the proudest boast is, Ich Bin ein Berliner"

The day before, Kennedy spoke at the Assembly Hall in Frankfurt and offered a similar message.

Kennedy: “For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

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All in all, JFK did much to bolster the confidence of the German people, in light of the increased Cold War posturing going back and forth in the divided city. Still, it wasn't until 26 years later that the Wall would finally come down.

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(The Berlin Wall - so after 28 years of grief, death and terror, it's over in a few minutes.)

With the relaxation on travel restrictions between East and West Germany, it was only a matter of time before the wall dividing the two Berlins became impractical and a relic of the Cold War. But the speed with which the change occurred took the rest of the world by surprise. As the day wore on and as reports came in as fast as they happened, it was slowly becoming apparent to the rest of the world that the Iron Curtain indeed was evaporating.

Mike Pulsiver (CBS News): "Witnesses are quoted as saying they have seen East German soldiers dismantling a section of the Berlin Wall as an incredible story keeps unfolding at breakneck speed."

The irony was, after so many years of a seemingly impregnable wall dividing the city and the endless attempts to escape to the West and the loss of life that happened during those attempts, the fact that the wall came down so quickly seemed ironic and in some ways strange. But the people of Berlin seized the moment and it became one huge party. The past was gone and there was no turning back.

As a bonus for our German friends, or those of you who want to brush up on your German, I've included a several news reports from German Radio from November 9-11, 1989. They are separated by a few seconds of silence between cuts.

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The clips go as follows:

1. Press Conference with Gunter Schabowski, DDR
2. Radio report
3. Radio DDR – 3 am news
4. Berlin Radio
5. SFB Radio – 8 am news
6. Comments by Walter Momper from Bonn
7. Jugenradio DT 64 – News 5pm.
8. Willy Brandt address
9. Address by Egon Krenz

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(East Berlin 1953 - Getting to be an all-too-familiar image: Rocks vs. Tanks)

As the Cold War trudged on during the 1950s, there were a few uprisings that became wrinkles in the Iron Curtain. One was the East Berlin riots that began in June of 1953. They were quickly joined by other disturbances around East Germany, with a few cities in the Eastern Bloc joining in. They were quickly extinguished but gave the West a glimpse that not all was as it was portrayed to be. As these newscasts from June 17-23rd attest.

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(Budapest on November 4 - Waking up to smell the sulfur)

Just when the world thought the Cold War wasn't going to get any colder, this happens. Only twelve days earlier, Hungary went through something of an upheaval with anti-Soviet riots springing up all over the country and a return to power of Imre Nagy (pronounced: Imray Nahj), the moderate who was ousted by pro-Soviet Premier Andras Hegedus in 1955.

So on the morning of November 4th, 1956 when you fell out of bed, it sounded like this:

Bob Pfeiffer (CBS News announcer): “ The latest word from Budapest is that Soviet armored forces seized Budapest in a surprise attack today and captured the government of Premier Imre Nagy. According to communications from Vienna the last words at 8:24 am from the . . .one of the news bureaus in Vienna was – ‘we shall leave our post, we shall leave our post’, according to the Budapest operator ‘goodbye friends, goodbye friends. God save our souls, the Russians are too near’. And then the line from Budapest went dead. Repeating – the Soviet armored forces seized Budapest in a surprise attack today and captured the government of Premier Imre Nagy.”

The Russian army quickly captured Budapest and within days the revolt was crushed and the pro-Soviet hardline regime of Janos Kadar was installed. Hungary would slip back into the Soviet Bloc and not really re-emerge until the collapse of the Soviet Union some 30 years later.

At the time the situation was worrisome as it came hot on the heels of a number of violent clashes in 1956 - the Suez Canal crisis, the Algerian conflict and the anti-communist riots in Poland. It also came at a time when Russia, under the leadership of Nikita Khruschev, was denouncing the Stalin regime and the hope was the new leadership would reflect a moderation on the hardline policies of the past.

No such luck.

Oh . . .the fabulous fifties.

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(Lake Success 1949 - John Foster Dulles and Andrei Gromyko - between them, an iceberg)

With the upcoming General Assembly meetings at the UN, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back sixty years, before the United Nations headquarters was built and meetings were held in New York at Lake Success. In 1949 it was about forming the Atomic Energy Commission and the subject was inspections. The USSR had only announced a few weeks earlier that it had tested its first Atomic Bomb, adding one more name to the club that has grown increasingly ever since.

But in 1949 the UN was still grappling with the ground rules - where was this new potentially devastating power heading - and who else was going to get it?

During the weekly radio program Memo From Lake Success, co-produced by CBS, the CBC and United Nations Radio, the subject of regulating nuclear energy high on the list.

Future Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson is interviewed, explaining his take on the situation.

Interviewer: “Mister Pearson, the West maintains that atomic energy can be controlled internationally only by this proposed agency which will manage and operate the Atomic Industry. Would it be possible to set up, by treaty beforehand, a system of quotas, allocations of atomic plants and nuclear fuels. And then a system of continuous rigid inspection be set up for the international agency, which might be effective and perhaps necessitate a little less of the insistence on ownership and operation?"

Lester Pearson (Canadian Foreign Secretary): “ Well, of course naturally that point had occurred to people, but you must remember that the representatives of the majority in this commission, have gone through this matter very, very carefully. And they have come to the conclusion that the only safe way is to have international operations and control. But if it were possible to give more power of operations to nations, and take away some power from the international agency, then that would make it all that more important that you had complete international power of inspection at any time without any reservation of qualification. And that means a really . . well . . .quite important interference in what our Russian friends call National Sovereignty. And they have given no indication whatever at any time that they are willing to accept that kind of international supervision or inspection. And that seems to me to be the fundamental difference between the two positions now. We are willing to go very far in the direction of international inspection and supervision. They are certainly not willing to go so far."

The climate has changed considerably since 1949. There is no more Soviet Union for one thing - only now there's North Korea and Iran.

Two more members of the ever-expanding club.

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(Khruschev and Nixon in Moscow - the Revere Ware took backseat)

It was this day, fifty years ago that the Cold War became something of a pissing contest between Vice-President Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev.

It all started at the Moscow Fair on July 24, 1959 during a tour of a model kitchen, put together as an example of the typical American home by The State Department.

It quickly dissolved into a shouting match over who had the better advances in technology, even down to kitchen appliances.

It all pointed out how volatile our relationship was with the Soviet Union - how we could agree on literally nothing, and how adamant each side was portraying each other as backward and neanderthal.

Still, it made for good copy and every newspaper and magazine in the world had pictures of Nixon and Khruschev flailing arms around - all for the sake of a washer/dryer combination.

Typical of their exchange:

Nixon: "You won't conceded anything, will you?"

Kruschev: "We too, as you know, don't kill flies with our nostrils!"

Back when the Cold War became just a little bit funny.

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(Khrushchev: Exercising the Righteous Indignation Clause)

1960 started off rather hopeful. In 1959 a noticeable thaw was taking place in the Cold War. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a visit to the U.S., cultural exchange programs were going full force and all was looking optimistic that maybe we all could get along after all. May 17th was slated to be the day the first major summit conference between the NATO powers and The Soviet Union would begin.

And then came the U-2 spy plane incident. The U.S. had been sending regular reconnaissance missions over Soviet territory, taking pictures of military installations. On May 1st, the Russians shot down one of the planes, announcing to the world on May 5th they had captured the pilot Francis Gary Powers.

At first, the State Department denied the plane was on a spy mission, saying Powers was flying over Turkey and had become unconscious, sending the plane in auto-pilot over Soviet air space and all was an unfortunate accident. But later, the story was recanted and officials conceded Powers was really on a spy mission.

With last minute negotiations via British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan as go-between, Eisenhower agreed to suspend future flights, but refused to apologize for the incident.

Khrushchev promptly pulled the plug on the much hoped-for summit conference on May 17th and issued a stinging three-hour denunciation of the West at the Press Conference in Paris on May 18th.

Whether it was a calculated move on Khrushchev's part, knuckling to pressure from the hawkish elements of the Politburo (that would cost him his job in 1964) or it was a supreme blunder on the part of the Eisenhower administration has been a topic of dispute for years.

In any event - on this day in 1960, the Cold War got a whole lot colder.

(President Truman and members of the NATO Alliance, April 3, 1949)

"A simple document. Had it existed in 1914 and in 1939, supported by the nations that are here today, I believe it would have prevented the acts of aggression which led to two world wars." President Truman

Sixty years ago today, President Truman signed the treaty that created NATO, a document which basically stated that an aggressive act towards one member nation constituted an aggressive act towards all member nations. Viewed as another block of ice in the already frozen Cold War, it was largely a reaction to the increased presence of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and a rise in tensions brought about by the situation in divided Germany. Six years later, in response, the Eastern Bloc nations would form The Warsaw Pact, pledging to do pretty much what NATO was doing.

In his opening statement, President Truman remarked if NATO was in existence in 1914, World War 1 and World War 2 would have been prevented. I'm not entirely sure that would have been the case in 1914 since the heads of most of the warring nations were, in fact cousins. Perhaps family counseling, but not NATO would have been a good idea.

But that's another story.

(Howard K. Smith, Daniel Schorr, Charles Collingwood, Eric Severeid, Ernest Leiser, David Schoenbrun discuss Berlin)

"If, at this conference we could make a beginning toward relaxing the tension then, as they believe, in diplomacy as in forestry that great oaks from little acorns grow, perhaps we could plant an acorn at this conference."- Charles Collingwood.

On the eve of the G-20 Summit in London, I was thinking back on previous summits, back when there was a Cold War. Before The Soviet Union dissolved, everything that seemed to go wrong in the world after 1945 was either directly or indirectly attributed to the goings on of The Evil Empire. The ever-present threat of Communism seemed to be the one glue that held most of Europe and the Western Hemisphere together. It was the one fear that held everything else in check. All out nuclear war was never far away from peoples minds, and the threat of total annihilation made for many sleepless nights.

And so it was this particular Summit Conference, held over the question of Germany, or to be specific, West Berlin that drove all the Super Powers to the negotiation table. The question of reunification was argued since the end of the War and would stay that way until well into the 1980's. And it was always the potential flash point for a crisis threatening to become World War 3.

So fifty years ago next month, on May 10 1959, the Geneva Conference of Foreign Ministers would begin, in another attempt to negotiate another Cold War strategy. Nothing was particularly accomplished, and whatever was achieved died the following year with the U-2 incident and the eventual building of the Berlin Wall. On the eve of the Conference, a panel of CBS News correspondents got together to discuss what lay ahead. It's interesting to compare journalistic skills then and now - how, even within a news organization there was no lock-step point of view, opinions ran the gamut.

Information, even in the relatively primitive days of the 1950's was considered important.

("It is far easier to make war than to make peace" - Georges Clemenceau - French Statesman, 1919)

2009 is the year for a lot of milestone anniversaries. The Moon landing in 1969, Tiananmen Square, the reunification of Germany, the first open elections in Glasnost-era Soviet Union and Solidarity's sweep to power in Poland - all in 1989. Pretty impressive year.

Post World War 2 has always been a fascination with me. Certainly the Cold War, the dissolving of former colonies and the emergence of Nuclear Superpowers were major factors in shaping Foreign Policy as we know it today. The role of Secretary of State became much more prominent during this time, probably more than any other in our history. George C. Marshall is mostly remembered as the author of The Marshall Plan and the system of Foreign Aid in helping rehabilitate countries devastated by the war.

But antagonisms between the Soviet Union and the former Allies began pretty much from the get-go, when the question of what to do about Germany came up.

Germany was unified in 1989 - it didn't happen overnight. Beginning in 1947, as this clip from Marshall's return from a failed London Conference points out, The Soviet Union was dead against any idea of unification. A stand which would eventually lead to the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall

The issue was simple - it was whether or not Germany was to continue divided, or whether the Allies could agree to recreate a unified Germany. Unless this could be achieved, all other questions relating to Germany would remain academic.

The Russians aren't fooled by continual protestations that America's missile defense plans are aimed at "rogue states" - none of whom yet has the capability of throwing a nuke at the U.S. and who probably would choose infiltration as a delivery method in any case. They've been beefing up their missile force, introducing a new mark and modifying existing missile types with decoys, in the face of American righwing zeal for destabilizing the balance of deterrence that has served the world so well for decades.

That's not surprising. I'm sure that Russian intelligence and military planners can read, and surf the sites of those rightwing think-tanks who have provided the intellectual impetus for the Bush administration, Mccain and others. They know that missile defense, despite the spin of the Bush administration, has always been about the Soviet Union, and then Russia. It's all about Reagan's Star Wars dream, which had as its focus the "Evil Empire" still described in such belligerent terms by John McCain.

For instance, they'll have already noticed that the Heritage Foundation is planning a major publicity push on missile defense in January, planning to pressure President Obama to continue funding the multi-billion program.

The wingnut think-tank will be releasing a documentary, called 33 Minutes, and is already boosting it on its own website. The fearmongering blurb for the film says:

A ballistic missile from a foreign enemy would take 33 minutes to reach the United States. With each passing day, this becomes a growing danger to America, yet our government has failed to build the missile defense systems capable of defending us against such attacks.

Our enemies are attempting to stockpile arsenals that threaten our freedom and prosperity. North Korea and Iran are the most prominent, but this also includes Russia, China and other nations that have missiles capable of killing Americans in very large numbers and threatening our allies.

The time has come to revive the strategic missile defense system that America uniquely can develop, maintain, and employ for its own defense and the peace-loving world's security.

This documentary aims to do just that by highlighting the disastrous consequences of a nuclear explosion on American soil - one that could happen in just 33 minutes.

Continue reading »

    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has disagreed fundamentally with John McCain's saber-rattling against Russia and at the same time put himself in opposition to all of the civilian leadership of the Bush administration except perhaps his boss, Bob Gates.

"I believe we've got to have a relationship with Russia," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Los Angeles.

"I don't believe we should discontinue engagement on the military side because that relationship is going to be very important in the future," Mullen said.

..."We need to approach this in a measured way and do it in a way that recognizes we have mutual interests with Russia," he told a gathering organized Town Hall Los Angeles, a nonprofit group that sponsors debates on topical issues.

Mullen's measured remarks chimed with comments last week by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said Russia did not pose a threat on a par with the Soviet Union.

They stand in contrast to harsher rhetoric from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and particularly Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who has said Russia would face severe consequences for its actions in Georgia. 

One of the areas where Mullen said the US and Russia must continue co-operation is nuclear non-proliferation, including safeguarding loose nuclear materials which might fall into the hands of terrorists.

However, the Bush administration doesn't think that's as important as tough talk for domestic consumption.

Some high-level meetings have been postponed indefinitely, including a trip to Russia by John Rood, the acting undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, to discuss various security issues and to negotiate a new pact to replace the existing Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START.

And the congressionally appointed Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has been asked to not go on its upcoming fact-finding visit to Moscow.

Hat tip to Cheryl Rofer at WhirledView, who notes that START I is due to expire at the end of 2009. It provides the only means by which the Moscow Treaty, which limits the number of nuclear warheads Russia and the U.S. can posses, can be verified. But the neocons wanted an excuse to dump START - they hate treaties - and this hasty excuse of the Georgia conflict is just more convenient than outright abrogating it with no cause.

Then there's that Congressional factfinding trip. That's just as outrageous as the Commission was set up "to build on the work of the 9/11 Commission ... to assess our nation’s progress in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism."

The Bush administration (and John McCain) need to be asked which they think is more important: petty diplomatic posturing- when even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs thinks Russia/US co-operation is crucial to US national security - or the threat of unsecured nuclear material falling into terrorist hands.

Crossposted from Newshoggers