George H.W. Bush's "Pause" and Mikhail Gorbachev's "Common European Home"

This article examines the reasons for U.S. President George H.W. Bush’s cautious stand and restraint on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s “common European home” project against the backdrop of Washington’s foreign policy during the first year of his term at the White House. On the one hand, it maintains that, in the spring and summer of 1989, unlike his own predecessor, Bush and some high-ranking officers of his administration – including national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and secretary of state James Baker – were still skeptical about the real end of the Cold War. On the other, it suggests that the hypothesis of a European security system underlying Gorbachev’s blueprint seemed to interfere with Bush’s global strategy and pursuit of a hegemonic U.S. role. As a result, the American president outlined his vision for a “Europe whole and free” as a competing concept with the Soviet leader’s paradigm to undermine Gorbachev’s political attractiveness and to prevent Moscow from taking the initiative in the field of Europe’s collective security. In Bush’s view, Washington-dominated NATO should remain the cornerstone in any project to keep peace in Europe, thereby ensuring and consolidating U.S. leadership in the Old World. Conversely, Gorbachev’s idea implied that the Soviet Union would be counted as an undisputed part of the continent, while the legitimacy of Washington’s involvement was at least questioned.