Global leaders praise Bush as calm, vital statesman.
BERLIN — To Germans, the 41st president of the United States, George Bush, was the man who helped ensure the peaceful reunification of their country. To Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, he exemplified great kindness. To many Kuwaitis, he was a hero for the 100-hour ground war that routed Iraqi forces from their country.
On Saturday, as former and current leaders around the globe learned of Bush’s death at 94 on Friday night, their condolences were steeped in praise for the depth of his abilities as a statesman and his refusal to grandstand — which commentators noted was in sharp contrast to the tone of the current U.S. administration.
“Germany owes a lot to George H.W. Bush,” Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote in a telegram to President Donald Trump. “It was a stroke of luck in German history that he was at the head of the United States of America when the Cold War came to an end and Germany’s reunification became possible.”
Merkel praised Bush for recognizing “the significance of this historical hour” and giving Germans “his trust and support.”
“The courageous and peaceful revolution of the people to the east of the Iron Curtain thus met with the courage and skill of a statesman who, together with others, led Europe and the trans-Atlantic partnership through this upheaval, ushering in a new era,” she wrote.
Bush, often criticized at home for his measured response to the fall of the Iron Curtain, was lauded for that very quality abroad. His calm, controlled response to the end of communism in Europe earned him respect on the Continent as a senior statesman, despite his decisions to send U.S. troops into Panama and to launch the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, underscored Bush’s skillful negotiation among the former adversaries of the Cold War.
“We had a chance to work together during the years of tremendous changes. It was a dramatic time that demanded great responsibility from everyone,” he told the Interfax news agency. “The result was an end to the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.”
Gorbachev said Bush “was a true partner” at the diplomatic table, but above all one who showed kindness to him and to his late wife, Raisa.
One example of Bush’s approach: On the morning of Nov. 10, 1989, as news reached Washington that the Berlin Wall had fallen peacefully the previous night, Bush called Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany to wish him “lots of luck.”
Historians have noted that while Ronald Reagan gets the credit for urging Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” it was Bush who later succeeded in persuading the Soviet leader, as well as President François Mitterrand of France and deeply skeptical Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, to allow the two German nations to reunite.
“I will never forget the role he played in making Europe a safer and more united place following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission.