Twenty five years ago on Dec. 3, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev issued statements at a joint press conference signaling the end of the Cold War. The two made the announcements at a summit in Malta, the same place Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in 1945 to discuss postwar Europe. Since Malta is located in the middle of the Mediterranean, it was historically a strategic location for military powers, and it sat symbolically halfway between â??East and West.â?
Although little substantive progress was made, Secretary Gorbachev told the press:
I assured the President of the United States that the Soviet Union would never start a hot war against the United States of America. And we would like our relations to develop in such a way that they would open greater possibilities for cooperation. â?¦ We stated, both of us, that the world leaves one epoch of cold war, and enters another epoch. This is just the beginning. We are just at the very beginning of our road, long road to a long-lasting, peaceful period.
President Bush, also sounding largely optimistic, added, "With reform underway in the Soviet Union, we stand at the threshold of a brand-new era of U.S.-Soviet relations. It is within our grasp to contribute each in our own way to overcoming the division of Europe and ending the military confrontation there."
