MALTA SUMMIT

A summit meeting of U.S. President George W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev took place on December 2–3, 1989, on warships of the two countries anchored at Malta in the Mediterranean. The meeting, the first between the two leaders, followed the collapse of communist bloc governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia (Romania would follow three weeks later). Soviet acceptance of this dramatic change, without intervention or even opposition, dramatically underscored the new outlook in Moscow.

President Bush, who had been reserved and cautious in his assessment of change in the Soviet Union during most of 1989, now sought to extend encouragement to Gorbachev. Most important was the establishment of a confident relationship and dialogue between the two leaders. No treaties or agreements were signed, but Bush did indicate a number of changes in U.S. economic policy toward the Soviet Union to reflect the new developing relationship. Malta thus marked a step in a process of accelerating change.

Two weeks after the Malta summit, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze paid an unprecedented courtesy visit to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Brussels. Clearly the Cold War was coming to an end. Indeed, at Malta, Gorbachev declared that "the world is leaving one epoch, the 'Cold War,' and entering a new one."

Some historians have described the Malta Summit as the last summit of the Cold War; others have seen it as the first summit of the new era. In any case, it occurred at a time of rapid transition and reflected the first time when prospects for future cooperation outweighed continuing competition, although elements of both remained.

See also: cold war; united states, relations with

bibliography

Beschloss, Michael R., and Talbott, Strobe. (1993). At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Garthoff, Raymond L. (1994). The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

Raymond L. Garthoff