Seasick Summit led to a smoother world
Adisco on a cruise ship isn’t where you would expect such an important announcement to be made.
But on December 3, 1989, US President George H. W. Bush and Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev faced the world’s press to signal that The Cold War was coming to an end.
They had met on the Soviet cruise liner, the Maxim Gorky, off the coast of Malta, for peace talks.
Following an eight-hour discussion, the leaders promised what they described as “a lasting peace”.
The Cold War had divided the globe between the NATO powers – made up of the US, the UK and their allies – and the Warsaw Pact countries led by Soviet Russia.
The gathering was nicknamed the Seasick Summit because of the choppy waters at the time.
But the two opposing superpowers were used to rough seas by then.
In 1945, a conference between the leaders of the Allies – Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin – was held in Yalta as the Second World War drew to a close.
It agreed Germany would be divided up among the Allies, and Stalin promised fair elections would be held in Eastern Europe.
“Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler,” said Churchill about Stalin’s promise.
“He was wrong. But I don’t think I am wrong about Stalin.”
Unfortunately, he was – following the end of the Second World War, many of the agreements made in Yalta were disregarded by the now competing powers.
There were no free elections in the likes of Poland, and critics accused the UK and US leadership of selling out to Russia.
There were fears relations would break down and the two sides would eventually start a Third World War.
But with both superpowers armed with nuclear weapons the stakes became even higher than in 1939.
Both sides began stockpiling huge amounts of nuclear weapons – ensuring a conflict would almost certainly mean the destruction of much of the civilised world.
The two sides began The Cold War in earnest and while they didn’t confront each other directly, they fought a number of proxy conflicts, including the Korean War and Vietnam.
In the 1980s, economic and political pressure saw the Soviet Union begin “perestroika” (reorganisation) and “glasnost” (openness).
Eventually its leader – Gorbachev – would oversee a more lasting peace with the NATO powers ending a journey in Malta that started nearly 45 years earlier at Yalta.