Editing Perestroika (section)

== The role of the West in ''Perestroika'' ==
[[File:President Ronald Reagan greets a young boy while touring Red Square during the Moscow Summit in the USSR.jpg|thumb|A young boy and [[Ronald Reagan]] in Red Square, Moscow, 1988]]
During the 1980s and 1990s the United States President [[George H. W. Bush]] pledged solidarity with Gorbachev, but never brought his administration into supporting Gorbachev's reform. In fact, "no bailout for Gorbachev" was a consistent policy line of the Bush administration, further demonstrating the lack of true support from the West. President Bush had a financial policy to aid ''perestroika'' that was shaped by a minimalist approach, foreign-policy convictions that set Bush up against other U.S. internal affairs, and a frugal attitude, all influencing his unwillingness to aid Gorbachev. Other factors influenced the West's lack of aid, for example; the "in-house Gorbi-skeptics" advocacy, the expert community's consensus about the undesirability of rushing U.S. aid to Gorbachev, strong opposition to any bailout at many levels including foreign-policy conservatives, the U.S. Congress, and the American public at large. The West seemed to miss an opportunity to gain significant influence over the Soviet government. The Soviets aided in the expansion of Western capitalism to allow for an inflow of Western investments, but the ''perestroika'' managers failed. President Bush had the opportunity to aid the Soviet Union in a way to bring closer ties between the governments, like [[Harry S. Truman]] did for many nations in Western Europe. <blockquote>Early on, as ''perestroika'' was getting under way, I felt like the West might come along and find it a sensible thing to do—easing Russia's difficult transition from totalitarianism to democracy. What I had in mind in the first place, was the participation [of the West] in conversion of defense industries, the modernization of light and food industries, and Russia's inclusion on an equal-member footing in the frameworks of the international economic relations... [U]nlike some democrats, I did not expect "manna from Heaven," but counted on the Western statesmen to use their common sense.<ref>{{Cite book|title=America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–2000|last=LaFeber|first=Walter|publisher=McGraw Hill|year=2002|location=New York, New York}}</ref></blockquote>President George H.W. Bush continued to dodge helping the Russians and the [[List of presidents of Czechoslovakia|President of Czechoslovakia]], [[Václav Havel]], laid bare the linkage for the Americans in his address to a joint session of Congress on 21 February 1990: <blockquote>... I often hear the question: How can the United States of America help us today? My reply is as paradoxical as the whole of my life has been: You can help us most of all if you help the Soviet Union on its irreversible, but immensely complicated road to democracy....[T]he sooner, the more quickly, and the more peacefully the Soviet Union begins to move along the road toward genuine political pluralism, respect for the rights of nations to their own integrity and to a working—that is a market—economy, the better it will be, not just for Czechs and Slovaks, but for the whole world.</blockquote>

When the [[United States]] needed help with [[German reunification|Germany's reunification]], Gorbachev proved to be instrumental in bringing solutions to the "German problem" and Bush acknowledged that "Gorbachev was moving the USSR in the right direction". Bush, in his own words, even gave praise to Gorbachev "to salute the man" in acknowledgment of the Soviet leader's role as "the architect of ''perestroika''... [who had] conducted the affairs of the Soviet Union with great restraint as Poland and Czechoslovakia and GDR... and other countries [that had] achieved their independence", and who was "under extraordinary pressure at home, particularly on the economy."