This is Democracy – Episode 64: The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Legacies and Lessons After 30 years

Narration: This is Democracy. A podcast that explores the interracial, inter-generational, and inter-sectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.

Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today we’re marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred on November 9th, 1989 and it was a transformative moment for many of us. And we’re fortunate today to have with us my dear friend and colleague, ambassador, professor, former dean: Robert Hutchings who truly was present at the creation. Bob, welcome.

Robert Hutchings: Thank you very much.

Jeremi: Bob is the Walt and Elspeth Rostow Chair in National Security and professor of Public Affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs where he was dean and actually was one of the main reasons we moved to Austin, he recruited us here years ago. He also served before that as assistant dean at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy, Public Affairs at Princeton University and served in capacities on the national security council, the national intelligence council, and other roles. Most significantly, he had the rank of ambassador during the years surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and was very close to the center of White House decision making as well as decision making on the ground in central Europe at this time, so we’ll have a chance to really hear from Bob about that. Before we turn to Bob’s insights though, we have of course, Zachary Suri’s scene setting poem. What is the title of your poem today, Zachary?

Zachary Suri: Berlin 30 years.

Jeremi: Berlin 30 years, let’s hear it.

Zachary: It’s been 30 years since it all came tumbling down, cranes slowly lowering the concrete slabs to reveal the last soldiers of the iron curtain. It’s hard for all of us to believe that it has been so long, the way my dad used to tell it, it was the beginning of a new world, like it was hope sung terribly by a screaming David Hasselhoff almost killed by an exploding firework on top of the wall, as if it was a solid piece of history, the small section of graffitied concrete on my father’s desk. And five years ago, it was 25 years, changing the lyrics of children’s songs to fit the belching Trabants driving over the threshold into freedom, chanting them throughout the halls at the school. And I have always been fascinated by the Cold War, maybe it’s the glory of the espionage, the way the rain must have looked on the gray alleyways near the Brandenburg Gate. But I like to think it is the pressure of spotlights and watch towers, the children burned alive in Vietnam, the way it was glory, the way it was hell. The way it wasn’t black and white when Leamas climbed back into East Berlin to be shot to death after arguing over the existence of morality, speeding down an East German Autobahn flowing off the pages of the Carrera on the blue comforter of the bed on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes I want to have seen it, to have seen all of the checkpoints and the spies in the park, sometimes I just want to have written a letter to divided Berlin like it defined the world because it did. And if 9/11 is our defining low, if it was the darkest defining day of this generation, then Berlin November 9th, 1989 is the high point, the peak of freedom after a quarter century of silent war all over the world, forgetting morality for the comfort of duality. And Cold War can seem far away on a couch nearly 30 years later, a mere cold rainstorm in Berlin at 5 PM 50 years ago, like condensation of planes dropping chocolate from the sky, but it is so real in the images, so real in the spy novels, so real in the voices of our parents, and it is real to me.

Jeremi: Hmm, you captured a lot with that, what is your poem about?

Zachary: My poem is really about how significant a moment the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 9th, 1989 really is. How it marks this sort of transformation from Cold War to a more hopeful, peaceful world.

Jeremi: Well, and Bob you were there for that–

Robert: I was indeed.

Jeremi: What made it so hopeful?

Robert: Well, first of all, it was the rapidity of change.

Jeremi: Yes.

Robert: It was sort of the culmination of a number of things we had been hoping for, we had been striving for as a country and me as a person for many years, and it came crashing down so suddenly in one night.

Jeremi: Right, right– and you didn’t really expect it to happen that way, did you?

Robert: No, I think we were hopeful that we were embarked on a course of action that would lead to these kinds of changes soon.

Jeremi: Right.

Robert: But not so soon.

Jeremi: Right, right, so why did it happen so soon then?

Robert: I think it was a combination of things planned and things unplanned. These regimes turned out to be more brittle than we realized and once Poland achieved a democratic breakthrough in the late summer of 1989, it sort of crystallized movements all over the region, even in places where nothing much had been happening like East Germany and Czechoslovakia, which had been suffering under some of the most hardened communist regimes.

Jeremi: And we often talk about democratization, was this a story of democratization? And how should we understand that story?

Robert: That’s a really good question, we use democracy in a kind of a generic way to embody a number of other things that are related but not that same as democracy, in this case, we– I think the most important single achievement of American policy during this period was to give pride of place in American interest to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Germany and to elevate them to number one in our global list of priorities. It was based on the judgement that this was where the Cold War began and if it was going to end, this is where it needed to end. So, in coming to that realization, we were focusing not only in democratization but also liberation, the end of the Cold War, and these things sort of became rolled into one single concept. In the region itself, Europe, market democracy were the rallying cries.

Jeremi: Right, right. Is it fair to say though that the citizens in Hungary and Poland and East Germany, that they were seeking something similar to liberal capitalism and democracy as we think about it, or were they seeking something different at that time?

Robert: You know I think for ordinary citizens, they weren’t quite sure what they were seeking, they certainly were seeking liberation from foreign occupation, the Soviet grip on their countries, that was universally shared. And democracy was an aspiration because their images were of Austria and Germany, the countries closest to them, they wanted something like that. Now, what their understanding of that was, was probably not terribly well developed at this early stage.

Jeremi: Sure, but they had an image and, in some cases, they were watching West German television even, right?

Robert: Right and early in my career, they were listening to Radio Free Europe.

Jeremi: Yes, I should have mentioned that, that you were a pioneer in using the radio to break through the Iron Curtain.

Robert: Well you know it’s an interesting thing that this radio station established early on in the Cold War was named Radio Free Europe, it was an American financed radio station but done in Europe’s name, the idea of both freedom and the concept of a wider Europe.

Jeremi: Sure, sure. Zachary, did you have a question?

Zachary: Yeah, so how did the media display this moment of great change? And do you think it was accurate, or do you think it reflected the great historical forces that really came to head at this moment?

Robert: Oh, I think so, it was a dramatic year and the images– I show it to my classes every so often, the images of what happened that night in Berlin, the night of just, of November 9/10, 1989, it still gets me every time I see these images. So, I think the excitement of the moment was captured. I think the policies that went into making this possible were less well understood for understandable reasons.

Jeremi: Right, right. What was it like to be watching this? I remember as a high school student watching this and it still moves me when I see the images of it now, the sort of sense that the impossible was now becoming, not just possible but inevitable. Things that we never thought we’d see in our lifetime– I grew up you know before that, living under the fear of nuclear war in the early 80’s and all of a sudden now it seemed as if people around the world were freeing themselves from their chains.

Robert: Exactly, well you know I was Radio Free Europe in the very early part of the 1980’s dealing with the rise and fall of solidarity the first time and I remember saying communism in Poland can’t last another decade. Well I barely became accurate because it took the entire decade.

Jeremi: Yes (laughs).

Robert: Early that year of 1989 we had policy meetings in which one of us articulated the thought that if Poland holds as scheduled the free elections that are planned for that summer, this is the beginning of the end of communism in Poland. If that’s the case, we reasoned, this is the beginning of the end of communism everywhere in East Europe.

Jeremi: Wow, so you foresaw that to some extent.

Robert: We foresaw the possibility, not predicted the actual achievement, but we foresaw the possibility which is why we devoted so much of our attention to Poland and to a lesser extent Hungary which was also embarked on a process of democratization.

Jeremi: We haven’t mentioned Gorbachev yet, we should probably bring him in also, right?

Robert: I think he was, I mean he certainly– probably more than any other single figure, deserves credit.

Jeremi: Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, yeah.

Robert: Yes, more for what he declined to do than what he actually did. He opened up the possibility of change in the region and then refrained from using force to suppress those movements when they went much farther than he or anyone else in the Soviet Union imagined they would

Jeremi: And why do you think that is? What was your analysis at the time of that?

Robert: I think Gorbachev was focused, first of all, in rescuing the Soviet economy. It’s sort of a less understood aspect of Soviet behavior then, it wasn’t as if Gorbachev came riding into town determined to democratize the USSR, that wasn’t his agenda at all, it was recognition that the Soviet economy was in a critical state. And then he began to experiment, initially with very minor administrative measures and then with somewhat more robust ones, but what he unleashed in Eastern Europe went much farther because those countries were already farther down the road of anticipating democratic pluralistic change and the rudiments of a market-based economic system.

Jeremi: So, in a way, things got out of control for Gorbachev but he didn’t react with force to resist this movement.

Robert: Exactly, and we were– we from the point of view of American interest, we were fortunate enough that he had enough authority left to allow these developments to occur but not enough power to stop them effectively.

Jeremi: Right, right. And how did you manage that? This is something you and I have talked a lot about and you’ve written a lot about and I hope our listeners will read your many books, including books you and I have written together on this. But how did you and Washington manage this? You and Jim Baker, secretary of state at the time, President George H. W. Bush, this is a very difficult and delicate situation you were in.

Robert: It was and as I said before, our appreciation of the possibilities for such sweeping change was not a prediction that was going to occur, much less that it would occur with such speed. So, we proceeded with extremely ambitious goals, but very carefully pursued and Bush came under some criticism for being too cautious, but I think it was his understanding of the potential that the whole thing could be turned around. That the revolutionary year of 1989 was not inevitable.

Jeremi: Right.

Robert: The potential was there, but the Soviet side needed to be handled with great care and with some degree of empathy.

Jeremi: Absolutely and you would stand by that, right? That looking back 30 years from now, it could have all gone in a very different direction, right?

Robert: Absolutely, as a student of Eastern Europe for the first half of my career, I felt even though I didn’t personally experience the many failed revolutionary attempts that had already occurred. East Germany in 1953, Poland and Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia and again Poland in 1968, Poland in 1970 and Poland again in 1980, 81– all of these were hopeful experiments and all were suppressed.

Jeremi: Right, you could argue some of that is happening even before our eyes today in places perhaps like Hungary and elsewhere, yeah.

Robert: Exactly, exactly.

Jeremi: Zachary, you had a question?

Zachary: Yeah, so we often think of the fall of the Berlin Wall as this moment of coming together throughout Europe, but what were the lasting cultural effects of having this very much dual system and trying to unify countries like Germany?

Robert: Well yeah Germany is still not fully unified in this sense, one way I thought about it at the time– and I was influenced by a very nice book by Sir Ralf Dahrendorf called “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe.”

Jeremi: A wonderful book.

Robert: A little pamphlet almost, but wise. And one of his arguments was that there were three revolutions going on, the political revolution could be accomplished in a fairly short time, you can write new constitutions, you can hold elections, you can bring a new government into power, the economic transformation would take much longer, years if not decades to transform central planning into a market economy. And the third revolution, that is the social revolution to transform these societies and transform ways of doing business from the bottom up, building democracy from the bottom up, not just from the top down, this is the work of decades if not generations, and this is where Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other countries are still in the process of achieving this.

Jeremi: Right, were American policies helpful after the Wall fell? What did we do well, what did we not do well?

Robert: I think American policies before the Wall fell in that period of 1989 were pivotal. Our influence afterwards was still strong, but diminishing. It’s hard to remember now since the American image has been so tarnished in the world in the last several years. That we had enormous influence over these countries and populations in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the wall. Our influence was easily as great as that of Europe combined. We knew, at least some of us knew, that that would not last. That the natural destination of these countries was Europe, not North America. So, we tried to organize our help in a way that could hasten these countries’ integration into the European Union which was their hope as well.

Jeremi: Right, you had shared with me before the podcast a really insightful memo that you wrote actually for President Bush that was never actually delivered to President Bush, but that made the case that in some ways we were so focused after the fall of the Berlin Wall on providing aid that we weren’t always thinking about the reforms that were necessary beyond providing aid itself, yes?

Robert: Yeah, this was a challenge of imagination really of lifting ourselves beyond the Cold War frame of reference into anticipating the new European situation that we were now confronted with, a vacuum of influence in Central and Eastern Europe, now these countries at that time were not yet in the European community, European Union, not yet in NATO, they were the lands between. And we needed to engage them in the ways that we’d never done historically.

Jeremi: Right, right, and some of that required a lot of expertise that you had, but not many other policy makers.

Robert: Yeah, our country as a whole was not well equipped to deal with this region, we had experts in government but not the number we needed for this new situation.

Jeremi: Right, right. And I guess one has to ask, Bob, how did we get from that moment of liberation and to some extent some democratization, 30 years now where the world look so different, what– I mean a lot has happened in between, but what really jumps out to you as you think back over these 30 years?

Robert: Well first, on an optimistic note, since these are kind of depressing times in a lot of ways– on an optimistic note, I don’t think looking back from the point of view of 30 years ago I could have hoped for as much as we’ve achieved since then in this region. Of course, there are problems and they were problems that were not only predictable but predicted.

Jeremi: Yes.

Robert: The resumption of antisemitism, the resurrection of ultra-nationalism and lots of– and Illiberalism, things that are–

Jeremi: Russian interventionism again, right?

Robert: Exactly. So, things are long away from being perfect, but still these countries are free standing, stable societies with problems that they are capable now of resolving, or at least addressing on their own.

Jeremi: Absolutely, and they’re not going to war with one another either.

Robert: Right. I think for– in the much larger picture, I think the heady days of the end of the Cold War and the immediate aftermath of that when liberal values seemed to be ascendant everywhere invited a kind of excessive ambition in American policy on the part of Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Democratic enlargement, the extension of our value system around the world looked so promising to many at that time and now we’ve been chastened, we’ve tried this, we’ve wound up making things worse in many parts of the world where we’ve intervened. I think now we need to step back and see how we can advance our values with a bit more modesty and prudence, to use a word that the first President Bush liked to use.

Jeremi: How do we avoid though– and you and I have talked about this a lot, how do we avoid the bouncing back and forth between intervention and engagement and then isolation and disinterest?

Robert: You know I was just talking about this with my class today, it’s sort of a matter of focusing on longer term American interests, which are really hard in a polarized environment like we had now, but to focus on the enduring American values and interests and to try to focus on those over the long term rather than trying to solve individual, discrete foreign policy challenges one after another without any larger sense of strategic purpose. I think at the moment under the current administration we’ve sort of lost any sense of strategic purpose, but we were beginning to flounder even before.

Jeremi: Right, right, we shouldn’t just blame the present administration.

Robert: No.

Jeremi: To what extent are– as we talk about lessons and legacies of the Berlin Wall falling, is one of them about multilateralism? I mean you’ve chronicled this in such depth in your own writings, the ways in which you and others in the White House worked closely with allies in Germany, in West Germany, in Britain, in France, even in Russia of course, right?

Robert: I would add another dimension to it and that is bipartisanship.

Jeremi: Okay.

Robert: The very first step the Bush Administration took was to resolve issues with the Congress on Central America, a long way from Central Europe, but because of the Iran-Contra Affair there had been a lot of animosity built up. Secretary brokered a deal in the Congress to agree on a policy to put this period behind us and then multilateralism, President Bush, 41, knew Europe well. He, having been Vice President for eight years, he instinctively understood that we needed to operate with our allies. So, the initial efforts were all taken in coordination and consultation with our allies. He went out of his way to express support for greater European integration, it’s a complicated issue with which we were never all in on this, we were conflicted about this, but he reached out to try to cement these relationships and the fashioning of American strategy for ending the Cold War was done together with our closest allies. And there was some distance among the French, the Germans, the British, and others about how best to engage with Gorbachev and I think the Bush Administration deserves credit for having forged a common alliance position that embraced these differing perceptions but put them within a common alliance framework.

Jeremi: And it took a lot of hard work, day to day, and a lot of modesty and humility, right?

Robert: Yeah, this is an undervalued aspect of American diplomacy, or diplomacy more generally.

Jeremi: Right, right. So, we always like to close our episodes, Bob, on a hopeful note and this is such a hopeful topic. With all the bad things that have happened even in recent years, it’s hard for me not to still have hope having watched the Wall come down so quickly, as you said. And people who we thought were repressed asserting themselves, asserting themselves so articulately at the time. What are the pieces of hope we can take from that today?

Robert: Well I think the core values that we have been championing for most of the history of this country are still valid. We might want to pursue them a little more carefully and cautiously and selectively, but liberal values still are the ones that will help us find a more cooperative world, will form the basis of more productive and fair domestic societies. We’ve got a lot of work to do in our own society, but I think the values that we’ve stood for for most of our history and for most of my working life, lived on from Republican to Democratic administrations back and forth several times. We just need to get back to finding our way with that.

Jeremi: Right, and not turning to hate but instead reminding ourselves of those values.

Robert: Exactly, exactly. You know, I think most Americans realize that the drama they see played out in Federal politics of the most partisan kind are not what they see in their everyday lives, it’s not what you see in the street, it’s not what you see when you go out shopping or interacting with people at the local level. So, we need to replicate what we know to be true in our interpersonal relationships on a national level.

Jeremi: Well and it’s extraordinary, and we have to remember in a time when we do see so much hate and so much demagoguery that just a little bit of idealism can go a long way. People respond to that, we’ve seen that maybe to some extent in Hong Kong today, we’re maybe seeing that in Chile and elsewhere and certainly Berlin and what was happening in Central Europe in 1989 was about that, young people seizing the idealism that had been denied to them for so long.

Robert: Absolutely, you can see this even in the resonance of some political candidates in this season, even those that are not doing well in terms of the numbers, the resonance of their authenticity and their idealism is really profound.

Jeremi: I agree.

Robert: So…

Jeremi: Still moving for us.

Robert: Absolutely.

Jeremi: Zachary, does this move you? Do young people of your generation see hope? Do you see a hope for a new falling of a Berlin Wall?

Zachary: I think in many ways young people do see a hopeful future and I think the Berlin Wall is a very important reminder of the power of this hope. And I think what’s amazing is that, as young people, we’re able to look back on this moment 30 years ago that we didn’t live through but because of all the images and all the media that’s produced, we’re able to relive that hope in many ways. And it’s such a powerful image, a physical barrier literally coming down.

Jeremi: I was thinking about this today when I was reflecting on the fact that my undergraduates now, especially the freshman are 18 which means they didn’t live through 9/11 either and that might be a good thing, that since they don’t have a memory of 9/11 they’re not framing their thinking of the world around terrorism and bombing, but maybe this alternative memory. This memory of liberation which has been part of our history through every period, can be reawakened in young people like you, do you think that’s true?

Zachary: Yeah. I think in many ways that is true.

Jeremi: Well I hope we’ve contributed to that, Bob, did you want to comment?

Robert: Yeah, I think my most powerful single memory of this whole period was not the parting of the Berlin Wall itself, but it’s when East Germans began, that night, streaming across the border. Some of them, women who had put their overcoats over their nightgowns because they’d been awakened by their friends that they could go into the West, coming across with tears streaming down their faces, being applauded by West Berliners. And then they realized these West Berliners were applauding them, so it was… A continental reconciliation.

Jeremi: Yes. Yeah and I so deeply and vividly remember watching the– I was a high schooler watching individuals who look like high school students from both sides coming together and partying on the wall (laughs). And for a 17-year-old watching that, you thought, “Wow, this is possible in the world, right?” Maybe a little bit of partying will get us beyond all the violence (laughter).

Robert: I’m for that.

Jeremi: Me too, me too. Well I hope we’ve contributed to historical enlightenment today a little bit, but more than that to some more hope. We’re so fortunate, Bob, that you were able to share your memories and your insights with us– no one knows this subject better than you and thank you for joining us.

Robert: Well thank you very much for having me, it’s been a pleasure, with you too, Zach.

Zachary: Thank you.

Jeremi: Yeah, thank you, Zachary for as always, a remarkably insightful poem and for carrying our hope to other young people like yourself. Thank you for joining us on This is Democracy.

Narration: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke and you can find his music at HarrisonLemke.com. Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday featuring new perspectives on democracy.

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