Gorbachev the key to Wall's fall: Navarro-Valls [CN-USA]

[Catholic_Press]

The most important figure in the fall of the Berlin Wall was former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who allowed the revival of political freedom throughout Eastern Europe, former Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Walls says.

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[A.Pelliccio]

What an insult to Ronald Reagan, Maggie Thatcher, and P JPII.

 

[Digitonomy]

What an insult to Ronald Reagan, Maggie Thatcher, and P JPII.

I find it hard to believe that the statement by Navarro-Walls is in any way an insult to John Paul. Navarro-Walls served closely under him from 1984 onward, so he was certainly familiar with the importance of John Paul in this process. It’s also worth pointing out that Thatcher’s role is a bit mixed - she no doubt favored the removal of the travel restrictions and other communist trappings that were an affront to human dignity, but she opposed the reunification of East and West Germany.

 

[MJE]

“Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” and I say thank you Pres. Reagan. Thank you JPII & M. Thatcher. Communism was rotting from the inside out and these 3 took that ‘evil empire’ on.

 

[RobbyS]

The most important figure in the fall of the Berlin Wall was former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who allowed the revival of political freedom throughout Eastern Europe, former Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Walls says.

More…

Of course he was key to the collapse of the Soviet Union. More or less as Hitler was key to the destruction of the Third Reich.

 

[JaMc]

I don’t think any one figure was the “key” to the Wall’s fall. If it was Reagan v. (for example, someone like) Stalin, it would have stayed up, just as if it were Jimmy Carter v. Gorbachev. At that time, you had a “perfect storm” of world leaders, all committed to changing the Cold War status quo, which we have, unfortunately, never seen since and may never see again for a long time: Thatcher and Regan in the West, Pope John Paul II, and Gorbachev.

 

[Big_Ro]

What about a ten year war (stalemate) in Afghanistan?

 

[TEPO]

Sorry, but Gorbachev is a pantheist, and is no hero of mine.

pantheism.net/

Mikhail Gorbachev:
“I believe in the cosmos.
All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are
my cathedrals.”

 

[Digitonomy]

A member PM’d me about Thatcher’s attitude toward reunification, and since both he and I found this topic interesting, I’ll post a brief account from the first Google hit that popped up:

Maurice Vaisse, a French historian who supervised the [recent] release of the [French diplomatic] files, said that Thatcher was “horrified” that a German reunification just 44 years after the Second World War would “reinvigorate the country’s bid to become the most powerful country in Europe”.

The files also disclosed that, two months before the incident, Thatcher told former President of USSR Mikhail Gorbachev that neither Britain nor Western Europe wanted the reunification of Germany.

“This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security,” she said.
Source

 

[latin_rite]

I don’t think any one figure was the “key” to the Wall’s fall. If it was Reagan v. (for example, someone like) Stalin, it would have stayed up, just as if it were Jimmy Carter v. Gorbachev. At that time, you had a “perfect storm” of world leaders, all committed to changing the Cold War status quo, which we have, unfortunately, never seen since and may never see again for a long time: Thatcher and Regan in the West, Pope John Paul II, and Gorbachev.

I think you are spot on. It wasn’t a case of one man doing it all or the majority of it. It was good timing. You had two men. Who wanted to end it. Simple as that if gorbachev didn’t want to end. then there was no way it would have ended. At least not as peacefully. I htink it was a combination of men coming togther at the excat time they needed to come togther