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Browse Items: Speech
Margaret Thatcher discusses the fall of the Berlin Wall
Margaret Thatcher held an impromptu press conference outside of her official residence, No. 10 Downing Street, on the morning following the initial opening of the Berlin Wall. In her remarks, it is clear that she is hesitant to reply directly to the idea of a unified German state. Instead, she expressed a desire to move slowly and to facilitate the internal growth of democracy from within East….
Hungary's Prime Minister discusses the Future
As part of a public demonstration of support for the newly-elected governments in Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, traveled throughout the region in September 1990. Not only did this provide her an opportunity to discuss important matters for Britain's foreign policy but also she could use the attention she brought with Western journalists to allow the new….
Reagan's Support for Human Rights
By the summer of 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev's reform policies, glasnost' (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), had begun to change the political landscape of the Soviet Union. When President Ronald Reagan visited Moscow in the summer of 1988 for a political summit, he gave a series of speeches applauding the progress of Soviet reforms but also demanding further achievements. In this speech….
Continuing Arms Reduction after the INF Treaty
In order to reform the Soviet economy, Mikhail Gorbachev believed it was necessary to cut spending on the Soviet military. As part of this process, Gorbachev actively pursued arms reductions in a series of negotiations with the United States. In December 1987, President Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in Washington, DC. The treaty eliminated….
President Reagan's Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate
On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan delivered a major speech on the Cold War with the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall as a back drop. In staging this speech, President Reagan hoped to draw a parallel with the historic speech delivered in Berlin by President John F. Kennedy in July 1963. It was in this speech that President Kennedy spoke the famous phrase: "All free men, wherever they….
President Reagan's "Evil Empire" Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals
Ronald Reagan began his presidency in 1981 confident that the policy of détente with the Soviet Union—initiated by Richard Nixon in May 1972 and terminated in January 1980 by Jimmy Carter as a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—was misguided. During his first three years in office, Reagan substituted a confrontational approach that he mediated occasionally with pragmatic….
Peace for Afghanistan
On 25 December 1979, the Soviet Union deployed its army in Afghanistan, in support of the Afghan Communist government against a group of Muslim opponents. For the next nine years, the Soviet army was involved in a long-drawn out military conflict without a victory, creating a constant embarrassment for Soviet military might. The expense of causalities and supplies was a constant drain on the….
President Reagan's Radio Address to the Soviet Union Before the Geneva Summit
Ten days before the Geneva summit that marked his first meeting with new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, President Ronald Reagan delivered this radio address to Soviet citizens. The New York Times characterized the speech as a “folksy but firm presentation of his views” and noted a “marked difference in tone” from Reagan’s earlier rhetoric. During his first three years in….
U.S. Support for Perestroika
In May 1988, President Ronald Reagan traveled to the Soviet Union for a summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. While in Moscow, he addressed a group of students at Moscow State University, using this forum as a chance to publicly announce his support for the Gorbachev's ongoing reform efforts. In this excerpt of his speech, he condemns the opponents of Gorbachev's reforms, and uses a popular….
President Reagan Proposes a Missile Defense System
Since 1949, when the Soviet Union first successfully tested an atom bomb, the national security policies of both the US and the Soviets derived from a doctrine of deterrence rather than one of defense against attack. By deploying enough weapons to insure the destruction of the country that launched a nuclear strike, the Cold War rivals adopted a policy of mutual assured destruction (MAD) to….
President Reagan Discusses the crisis in Poland
In August 1980, a worker's strike began in Gdansk, Poland in reaction to the struggling economy and massive shortages. In a compromise, the Communist government legalized Solidarity, but this only increased tensions. Imports from the Soviet Union and the West failed to improve the economy, with more strikes becoming endemic throughout 1980 and 1981. Fearing a Soviet military invasion to restore….
President Reagan Discusses Summit Meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987
The Washington summit of December 7-10, 1987 between President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, their third such meeting, was called “historic” by both participants. On December 8, they signed the first treaty between the superpowers to reduce nuclear weapons arsenals, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and continued Strategic Arms Reduction Talks….
President Reagan Discusses His Meetings With Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev initiated the October 1986 weekend summit at Reykjavik, Iceland with President Ronald Reagan after progress in arms negotiations had slowed following their first meeting in Geneva the previous November. The meeting was billed as an “interim summit” in preparation for a more substantial one in Washington. At the conclusion of two days of intense bargaining….
President Reagan Addresses Congress Following the US-Soviet Summit in Geneva
Ronald Reagan began his presidency in 1981 confident that the policy of détente with the Soviet Union—initiated by Richard Nixon in May 1972 and terminated in January 1980 by Jimmy Carter as a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—was misguided. During his first three years in office, Reagan substituted a confrontational approach that he mediated occasionally with pragmatic….
NATO Statement on Achieving Stability in Europe
As the Cold War wound down, NATO’s mission underwent a gradual shift from one of insuring the security of member nations through the deterrence of military aggression to one of fostering the integration of Eastern European countries into a new world order. Earlier, in 1967, following a series of statements the previous year from France, West Germany, the US, and the Soviet Union calling for a….
NATO Speech on the Establishment of German Unity
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the prospect of a powerful reunited Germany worried nations in both the Eastern and Western blocs. Soviet officials suggested in repeated messages to the US that the four allies empowered to govern Germany at the conclusion of World War II—Britain, France, the US, and the Soviet Union—meet in order to relinquish their occupation rights and….
NATO Statement on Its Role in Reshaping East-West Relations
As the Cold War wound down, NATO’s mission underwent a gradual shift from one of insuring the security of member nations through the deterrence of military aggression to one of fostering the integration of Eastern European countries into a new world order. At the fortieth anniversary NATO summit held in Brussels at the end of May 1989, the heads of the member states issued a declaration that….
NATO celebrates German Reunification
On 3 October 1990, the constitution of West Germany was extended to cover the five states of East Germany, reunifying Germany as a single country under one law. Congratulations were extended to the new country from around the world, including from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which could celebrate the reunification as one of its own achievements. NATO was a military alliance….
President Bush and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki of Poland Trade Toasts
Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a founder of Solidarity, who became Poland’s first noncommunist prime minister in forty years, visited Washington for three days of meetings in March 1990 as European and American diplomats were engrossed in negotiations to devise a plan for German reunification that would be acceptable to all nations involved. The Polish government feared that a powerful reunited Germany….
President Bush's Statement on the Anniversary of the Berlin Wall
In May 1989, Hungary began to dismember the barbed wire fences and mines surrounding its border with Austria, prompting the largest exodus of East Germans since August 1961 when East Germany constructed the Berlin Wall to stop the flow of emigrants to the West. Tensions during the summer of 1989 between East and West Germany were at their highest level since 1961, as fleeing East Germans sought….