Global leaders praise Bush as a calm and vital statesman

To Germans, the 41st president of the United States, George Bush, was the man who helped ensure the peaceful reunification of their country. To Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, he exemplified great kindness. To many Kuwaitis, he was a hero, lauded for the 100-hour ground war that routed Iraqi forces from their country.

On Saturday, as former and current leaders around the globe learned of Bush’s death at 94 on Friday night, their condolences were steeped in praise for the depth of his abilities as a statesman and his refusal to grandstand — a point that commentators noted was in sharp contrast to the tone of the current administration.

“Germany owes a lot to George HW Bush,” Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote in a telegram to President Donald Trump. “It was a stroke of luck in German history that he was at the head of the United States of America when the Cold War came to an end and Germany’s reunification became possible.”

Bush, often criticised at home for his measured response to the fall of the Iron Curtain, was praised for that very quality abroad. His calm, controlled response to the end of communism in Europe earned him respect on the Continent as a senior statesman, despite his decisions to send US troops into Panama and to launch the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Historians have noted that while Ronald Reagan gets the credit for urging Gorbachev to “tear down that wall,” it was Bush who later succeeded in persuading the Russian leader, as well as President François Mitterrand of France and deeply sceptical Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, to allow the two German nations to reunite.

In the Middle East, Bush’s legacy was more nuanced, given his decision to end the war after 100 hours that pushed the Iraqi army out of Kuwait but left Saddam Hussein in power.

Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, praised the “historic stands and support” that Bush showed to his country and “his pivotal role in forming an international coalition, mandated by the UN to liberate the state of Kuwait” after the invasion by Iraq in 1990, the Kuna news agency said.