Gorbachev: “History is not something preordained”

by CKR

In Mikhail Gorbachev’s first visit to Santa Fe, he emphasized this theme: that history can be changed by all of us, particularly if we act together. The world faces many dangers, including climate change, not enough clean drinking water, and American overmilitarization. But he sees ways through these dangers if ordinary people will act and politicians acquire the courage to lead.

It’s not surprising to hear such a message from the man who hoped to reform Communism and improve living conditions in the Soviet Union, only to find that his reforms led to the dissolution of that entity. As fifteen new states declared their independence, he largely restrained government forces from violence.

Gorbachev also ended the nuclear arms race with the United States, which the Soviet Union could no longer afford. He called for outlawing nuclear weapons by the year 2000, and he and President Ronald Reagan almost agreed on that goal when they met in Reykjavik in October 1986. Although they never made that declaration, they negotiated treaties that did more to decrease weaponry, both nuclear and conventional, than had ever been done before.

He wielded his power in ways that have changed the world for the better. So he is frustrated that in the time since the Soviet Union dissolved, there have been too many missed opportunities and politicians lacking in “courage and will,” a new generation of political leaders who “underestimated the need for cooperation.”

He believes that today we are also facing a number of unsustainable trends, in security, in poverty and backwardness, and in a global environmental crisis. He sees these issues as interrelated; for example, the need for water may result in armed conflict between nations. Such an interrelated approach is evident at his organization, Green Cross International (in the United States, Global Green USA).

Gorbachev supports the initiative by George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn to eliminate nuclear weapons. He attended their conference this past fall. But he was very clear that the initiative cannot succeed on its own. US spending on defense, its continuing multiplication of military bases abroad, and its apparent willingness to develop more nuclear weapons all work against such an initiative.

He recalled that Soviet conventional forces in Europe greatly overbalanced the other militaries in the late 1980s. To retain a balance, the nuclear negotiations of that time had to be accompanied by negotations to reduce Soviet conventional arms in Europe which culminated in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. In the same way, the United States now much pull back on its overwhelming conventional forces if the nuclear abolition initiative is to succeed.

He was highly critical of recent American unilateralism and of the idea of a “League of Democracies,” which, he felt, would undermine the United Nations. The United Nations, he said, needs reform, but it is better to build on what is working than to start from scratch.

He returned again and again to the idea that citizens and their leaders can change events. Americans have a responsibility to vote for those who will change the unilateralist and militarist course. On America’s role in climate change, he said that it is up to Americans to persuade their leaders and that the media need to get the word out.

“There is always room for initiative in history.”

Comments

[Courtenay Barnett]

Do you actually believe this - " He called for outlawing nuclear weapons by the year 2000, and he and President Ronald Reagan almost agreed on that goal when they met in Reykjavik in October 1986." - and in Santa Claus too?

[patricia kushlis]

Courtnay: Check the records of the Reykjavik Summit. The answer is yes.

[CKR]

I'll amplify what Pat Kushlis said: Check out Jack Matlock's two books: Autopsy on an Empire and Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended. Matlock was the US ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time. Their joint statement at Reykjavik, which Gorbachev cited in Monday's talk, was "Nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."

You also might check out Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly, which focuses on the Chernobyl incident as being formative in Gorbachev's thinking. I suspect that his dislike of nuclear weapons must have preceded the Chernobyl incident, which reinforced that dislike, but both my and Rhodes's surmises must await the opening of more of the records.

And yesterday I just happened to be looking at a graph of the numbers of nuclear weapons over time. For the Soviet Union, the numbers start slow, but then start going up in an almost exponential curve until 1986, the year after Gorbachev came to power. There's a sharp peak in that year, and then an equal or faster decline.

[Courtenay Barnett]

In reply to Pat and CKR:-

I will accept the fact that Gorbachev was a “dove” who bought into the idea of a recoil from the expansion to the nuclear brink. I believe that in fact Haig was a hawk – Reagan a supportive aggressor – and the US outspent the Soviet Union. The new generation of American hawks – PNAC – GWB – stand as proof of nuclear weapons proponents still active and alive. That seems to me the upshot of a falled, but not totally emasculated Russia – and – yes – Gorbachev is neither loved nor respected by the majority of Russians.

[CKR]

There was a letter to the editor in the New Mexican today providing a similarly confused history. According to that one, Yeltsin and Reagan were responsible for whatever good may have happened in Russia in the early nineties.

PNAC and GWB are American proponents of nuclear weapons. And Bush's statements are more confused than that. Although my impression is that he likes his nukes, you can find more variety in his words. It's not clear to me that this has anything to do with an "emasculated Russia."

I do suggest that you read some history from reliable sources, like Matlock, who was there. There is a lot of bosh on the intertubes from people who would like a world in which everything is black and white. Or Red (as in Communist) and Red, White and Blue. (That's the color of the Russian flag, too!)

It's nice to have our guys be the good guys and believe that Reagan was solely responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the world is much more interesting than that. If you talk to people who were there, in say Russia or Estonia, in the eighties, they'll tell you that the economic problems were clear before Reagan became president.

Reagan's biggest contribution was his willingness to work with Gorbachev toward weapons-reduction treaties.

So please, before you come to your conclusions based on your private reading of today's events, read some history.

[Courtenay Barnett]

My reply to you is: In an October, 2007 article entitled, “ What are nuclear weapons for? Recommendations for restructuring U.S. strategic forces” Sidney D. Drell and James E. Goodby make the following observation:-

“For the foreseeable future, there are no other “big
powers” that U.S. nuclear forces need to deter,
dissuade, or defeat. France, Israel, India, Pakistan,
and the United Kingdom have nuclear weapons but
are not currently adversaries, and their nuclear forces
are much smaller than those of the United States.
Hence, the remainder of this discussion can turn to
the implications of the new strategic paradigm for
what Bush has called the “crossroads of radicalism
and technology”: rogue states and terrorist groups
that try to acquire nuclear weapons and who, if
successful, might then think of using them against
their enemies, including the United States.”

My comment: The status of Pakistan, one has to put significant qualifiers on. Iran would have to be factored into the global equation.

Your points about Reykjavik, Gorbachev ( I repeat my observations) and Reagan ( I must accept that the implications of mutual assured destruction did dawn on him, and the extended US establishment – but the policies of the US do project US global domination – witness PNAC and the recent foreign policies of GWB). I do not perceive anything but an extension along this trajectory if weapons are now deployed by the US and Eastern Europe. What do you think Russia will logically do in response? Will this not exacerbate tensions? What else is a rational person to conclude than that there are certain misguided militaristic aspects of US foreign policy that projects war, aggression and destruction into the world?

I am clear in my own mind that nations possessing nuclear weapons must destroy them for the good and survival of humankind – since we as a species now have this power to destroy human existence on this planet of ours, earth. I do not diminish your quite sensible observations about the historical context within which these Reykjavik negotiations operated. It is, however, the US trend towards nuclear aggression that I have expressed concern about. The current US administration has definitely expressed itself that the 1968 non-proliferation treaty is not applicable to the US.

UN Security Council Resolution 687 has called for a nuclear and chemical free Middle East region. The US in this scenario will have its position policy with Israel’s security as a focal point. The dynamics then flow from that point onwards, from a nuclear armed Israel. It was Bill Clinton who rejected Russia’s suggestion of a nuclear free zone from the Arctic to Baltic seas. Again, we must of course, place all things in historical context and have faithful academic and intellectual regard for context and content.

I do accept ultimately the sense of what Gorbachev expressed:-

“We need a new system of values,
a system of the organic unity between mankind and nature
and the ethic of global responsibility”
Mikhail Gorbachev

This I do not perceive in prevailing US foreign policy in the Bush administration.

[Courtenay Barnett]

Correction: read " I do not perceive anything but an extension along this trajectory if weapons are now deployed by the US and ( 'in' not 'and' )Eastern Europe. "

[CKR]

Courtenay Barnett: I now think that you, Gorbachev and I agree.

Don't know what that earlier stuff was about.

[Courtenay Barnett]

To a large extent we do.And lest I forget...PEACE!

[zenpundit]

"He was highly critical of recent American unilateralism and of the idea of a “League of Democracies,” which, he felt, would undermine the United Nations"

Does the G-8 or G-20 or the WTO undermine the UNSC ?

If a "League of Democracies" would undermine the UN it says more about the membership of the UN than it does about the democracies; if such an organization would, by example, put moral pressure on the UN to reform and press reform upon recalitrant member-states in order to retain it's aura legitimacy, then by all means, start a democratic club.

[CKR]

Hi Mark -

I think that when most people talk about a "League of Democracies" (most prominently these days, John McCain), they are looking to replace the UN. The G-8 and WTO aren't in that category.

And I keep wondering who will develop the criteria for a "Democracy." The US has long been willing to overlook little faults in democracy, like strongman rule, if those "democracies" are on our side.

So it would be divisive in two ways. Better to concentrate on reforming the UN.