George H.W. Bush: “The new world order is not facing one common objective, an aggressive international communism. That is gone, and out of…”

“The new world order is not facing one common objective, an aggressive international communism. That is gone, and out of the demise of that highly centralized philosophy and government in the Soviet Union comes some historic ethnic challenges and the kinds of struggling for sovereignty and democracy that you've just mentioned. These are growing pains, it seems to me. And what we want to do as the United States, and I know the United Kingdom feels the same way because we've talked about this today, we'd like to be catalysts for peace and catalysts to see this move towards democracy continue. But nobody said that the emergence of freedom would be easy. What's different is we are not facing one aggressive international Communist force; that's what's entirely different. Democracy is on the move in these various countries you talk about. I don't know that any one of them wants to now turn its back on democracy, and some of those who have not been particularly democratic are saying they are. So that's the positive side. But I am concerned about some of the ethnic strife, some of the struggles you mentioned. I am not as concerned on the Maastricht matter. I think that's a matter for the Europeans themselves to sort out. But when you have fighting and tensions based on ancient, sometimes ethnic animosity or ethnic pride, whatever, we'd like to be catalysts for peace; we'd like to find ways to help. And that's our role. But there's a tremendous difference than what it was a few years ago, tremendous.”