The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2019 49 A Study in Change Margaret K. McMillion Washington, D.C. I n 1989, I was a member of the Class of 1990 at the National War College. We began the year firmly set in the Cold War. Our first reading assignment, John Lewis Gaddis’ Strategies of Containment , set the stage for the next 10 months. Change, though, was in the air. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev was promoting glasnost and perestroika. Vietnam and Laos had initiated market reforms known as NewThinking and the New Economic Mechanism ( Doi Moi and Chintanakhan Mai ). Yet events at Tiananmen Square that June had shown the limits of reform in China. Throughout the fall of 1989, our class watched with wonder as the pace of change accelerated in East- ern Europe. A Solidarity-led gov- ernment took power in Poland in late August. Hungary and Czecho- slovakia allowed “holidaying” East Germans to travel on to Austria and take refuge inWest Germany. The East German government agreed that citizens seeking asylum in Budapest could go by train toWest Germany. Following protests in Leipzig, General Secretary Erich Honecker resigned. On Nov. 9, the East German spokesman announced (inaccurately, we later learned) that citizens could leave by any border crossing. Guards opened the checkpoints between East andWest Berlin, and the BerlinWall was gone. More was to come, and the evening news brought new devel- opments every day: in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and, ultimately, Romania, democratic governments assumed power. For me, one of the most memorable events was the invasion of the East Ger- man Stasi offices in Erfurt in January 1990. An incredulous CBS correspondent stood amid flying paper and demonstrators who were determined to stop the remaining officials from destroying their files, which today are declassified. Among the military offi- cers in the class, there was a palpable sense of relief that they were unlikely ever to fight a war in Europe. These events had an immediate impact on our academic program as we began to discuss a possible “peace dividend” and “new architecture” in Europe. Faculty member Stephen Szabo told USA Today that students faced a situation comparable to the fast- moving events at the end of World War II. His suddenly popular area studies class on Eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact, which I took in preparation for a spring field trip to Poland, Czechoslova- kia and Austria, focused more on political and economic reform than military doctrine. By the time the course concluded in April, the Warsaw Pact was becoming a relic of the Cold War. It would later be dissolved. The yearbook staff decided that change was the only possible theme. The winds of change were also blowing elsewhere, especially in South Africa where Nelson Mandela walked free in February and Namibia became independent in March. We wrote in the foreword: “The challenges are many, but the opportunities have never been greater.” Two pages provided a chronology of a memo- rable 10 months in world affairs. It was an exciting time, disorienting in many ways, but filled with hope about the possibilities for building a more peaceful and prosperous world. Margaret K. McMillion was U.S. ambassador to Rwanda from 2001 to 2004. In 1989 she was studying at the National War College in Wash- ington, D.C. Ambassador McMillion currently resides in Bangkok. conferences and delegations focused on what was necessary to establish free-market economies with enterprises that could com- pete regionally and globally. Questions about the reunification of Germany and its impli- cations for Austria also arose, including what it might mean for the European community if Austria joined, as it hoped to and indeed soon would. Other European governments even raised what now seems an outlandish concern: that Austria might unify with Germany. My tour in Vienna ended in 1992. The political, economic and social changes were well underway and becoming institutional- ized, notwithstanding the growing trepidation within Austria about refugees and illegal immigrants coming from the East. The overall sense was of gratitude that the wall was gone; now our work had to be realizing the opportunities for the new Europe. An economic officer in Vienna in 1989, Robert F. Cekuta retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2018 after serving as U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan. He now divides his time between Washington, D.C., and Jefferson, Maine. “The challenges are many, but the opportunities have never been greater.” –National War College Class of 1990 Yearbook