Bringing Down Walls, 25 Years Later

President George H.W. Bush got it right. He used prudence, restraint and empathy to facilitate the unraveling of the Soviet Union and the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall 25 years ago. That's when citizens of a divided Germany began dismantling the wall, which had become the hated symbol of cold war divisions in Europe, the totalitarianism of the Soviets, and the goal of communist leaders to keep their people trapped inside the borders of their stifling and thuggish states.

And history has proven the wisdom of Bush's approach.

The wall was breached on Nov. 9, 1989, and Bush has told friends the event was one of the highlights of his presidency. He says the destruction of the wall, which the Soviets decided to allow, was caused not by him or the leaders of the former Soviet Union or Germany but by "the people themselves." He is being modest.

berlOne important reason for the smooth transition from the old U.S.S.R. to modern Russia was Bush's winning the trust of then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and West Germany Chancellor Helmut Kohl as he pressed for the unification of Germany and the end of the Soviet empire.

It's a lesson on how much is possible if leaders use common sense, show strength when necessary, demonstrate goodwill toward each other, and make an effort not to exploit every event to gain an advantage. This kind of wise leadership is missing today in the tense relationship between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and among too many other world leaders.

They might do better if they emulated Bush. He refused to gloat even though the former international adversary of the United States had been brought low. This deprived hard-liners in Moscow of an opportunity to stir up fear and resentment against the U.S., and it gave Gorbachev, a reformer, more room to operate inside the Kremlin without a backlash.

When Bush's advisers urged him to visit Berlin to celebrate the end of the 30-year-old barrier between East and West, the president declined. "What would I do?" he asked. "Dance on the wall?"

He preferred to take a subdued approach, to prove to Gorbachev and Kohl that he would help them manage a complex and dangerous situation, not make things more difficult for them.

"Looking back," former Secretary of State James Baker wrote on cnn.com this week, "one of President Bush's outstanding traits has been his humility, and particularly his insistence after the Iron Curtain fell that Americans not gloat about our victory in the decades-long Cold War against the Soviet empire. In 1989, after all, the president still had further business to do with Soviet leaders, even as their country was rapidly imploding. Included on his checklist were nuclear arms reductions, which were later accomplished and have played a critical role in maintaining world peace."

Baker, who was in office when the wall came down in 1989, added: "Time and again, President Bush demanded that we not dance on the ruins of the Berlin Wall. He simply wouldn't hear of it."

Bush understood something his counterparts of today often miss: Discretion is the better part of valor.