George H.W. Bush dies at 94. What did Russians think of him?

andalusia wrote:President George H.W. Bush dies at 94.  What did Russians think of him?

I know when the Cold War ended that the USSR ended the Warsaw Pact and pulled their bases out of Eastern Europe but the US did not do the same with NATO and their bases in Germany and Italy.

http://www.tmz.com/2018/11/30/president-george-hw-bush-dead-dies/

flamming_python wrote:

andalusia wrote:President George H.W. Bush dies at 94.  What did Russians think of him?

I know when the Cold War ended that the USSR ended the Warsaw Pact and pulled their bases out of Eastern Europe but the US did not do the same with NATO and their bases in Germany and Italy.

http://www.tmz.com/2018/11/30/president-george-hw-bush-dead-dies/

Personally I liked him, if only for the common sense he had at the time to withdraw from Iraq and not attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein after beating his forces.

And in general under his administration things made a lot more sense. The US wasn't clamoring to support hardcore anti-Russian nationalists in the ex-USSR such as Georgia; they instead took a line of neutrality.

US intelligence work was continuing as always of course, installing friendly elites in Eastern Europe. However the actual push to expand NATO, and not to mention - intervene in Yugoslavia, didn't happen until Bill Clinton.

GarryB wrote:He ordered the bombing of Iraq, but not the invasion of Iraq.

He ordered the isolation and sanctions on Iraq that probably killed a lot of kids, and he called on the Shia majority in Iraq to rise up against the Sunni minority in control, but didn't support them and they got hammered by Saddam... but that was because he realised that if Saddam is gone in Iraq then Iran would gain a lot of influence in the region... something later US presidents forgot... with the result that now Iran is in a much better position in the ME than ever before... which is what has Saudi Arabia so scared and doing stupid things too.

Funny that the west is very selective about who it forgives... seems to have totally forgiven Germany and Japan, but not Russia... yet it has forgiven other components of the Soviet Union.

The US got support from Russian at various times through Americas history, yet during the Russian revolution the US and its western allies chose to interfere... I don't remember Russian forces fighting in the US civil war, but there were US forces camped in Siberia for quite a few years.

The only thing I can say is that in public it was all about peace keeping and the commander in charge of the forces there took that role literally and so did not interfere as much as western politicians secretly wanted him to.