Gorbachev: US ‘Victory Complex’ Is Costly, Prevents More Peaceful World
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said last night that the United States developed a “victory complex” after the Cold War that has proved costly to the goal of building a more peaceful world.
Gorbachev received several rounds of applause from a packed house at the Kentucky Center’s Whitney Hall when he called for the United States to seek nonmilitary solutions to such looming crises as environmental degradation and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“The attempt to rule the world from one power center, it was an illusion … for which we are all paying, for which the United States is also paying the price,” Gorbachev said. “Not a single problem that the world faces today can be solved by one country alone. Only if we act together can we solve that problem.”
He criticized America’s taking military action in Iraq despite opposition from the United Nations.
“This was really a blow to the entire international system,” he said.
Gorbachev - who led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its breakup in 1991 - is on a multicity tour leading up to an international meeting in New Orleans of the Green Cross International, an environmental group he founded.
His Louisville visit was sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Kentucky/Southern Indiana.
Gorbachev began his wide-ranging speech with a history of his political career, admitting that he took part in oppressing religious and other dissident groups as he rose to power as a regional governor.
But he said he was deeply influenced by efforts by former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to open the society after its oppression under Josef Stalin - lessons that served as a model for Gorbachev as he later introduced democratic as well as economic reforms.
In fact, Gorbachev, who later granted religious freedom in the Soviet Union, received an award honoring those efforts last night from the Center for Interfaith Relations in Louisville.
Gorbachev credited the American presidents he negotiated with, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, for cooperating to end the Cold War relatively peacefully.
But then “a new generation of American political leaders regarded the breakup of the Soviet Union as America’s victory,” he said.
“We have not used the 15 years after the end of the Cold War in the best possible way,” he said.
Gorbachev defended the policies of current Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has drawn criticism for his authoritarian rule and confrontational stance toward the United States.
“Russia is a country with which America can get along,” Gorbachev told reporters before the speech. “This is a reliable partner, but of course it will defend its national interest.”
He said Putin deserves some criticism, but that in general he’s stabilizing the country after the chaotic 1990s.
“We have everything we need … to make Russia a successful country,” Gorbachev said. “We only need some time. … Perhaps there are some who don’t want Russia to become stronger.”
Asked by an audience member last night about his legacy, he said: “What I would like history to say was that Gorbachev was a good guy who wanted to do good things for the people. He did not fully succeed, but he is someone who is worth remembering.”
Afterward, audience member Laura Verwest, who is studying Russian at the University of Louisville, said she liked how Gorbachev “brought attention to globalization and global warming. People need to address these things if we expect to have a good future.”
But Dennis Danilov, a UofL student and native of the former Soviet republic of Moldova, said Gorbachev’s vision of global cooperation is “too utopian and unrealistic.”
Countries will defend their self-interest, he said. “It’s always been that way.”
© 2007 The Courier Journal
Wish Gorby could run for President here.
FYI — Gorbachev is generally regarded as incompetent by Russians. That goes for his work at his peak, when he has leader of the USSR. He is not put up on a pedestal over there, lest we think this is a man universally regarded as a hero and a great statesman.
Still, it is nice when these elder statesmen come out and tell it like it is. Our government has squandered treasure and blown a lot of our good will overseas, and as a result the position of the US in the world has been greatly weakend, and with it our ability to solve the greatest challenges we face collectively.
And, if that’s not a weakening of national security, I don’t know what is.
Gorby was always my Man….
I remember back when Ron Reagans’ Evil Empire scared me into gettin a pistol for the inevitable mushroom grateful that your dead plan kicks in.
My scientist friend Dr Sherry Speeth in Cleveland told me how any one submarine on either side could wipe out the world in a few minutes…so why all the over kill on weapons or defense…..one Sub could end it all.
So I wrote a letter to Reagan and Andropov about all this and the need to End the stupid arms race and the next thing is Andropov dies and the Russians are ready to drop the “Hammer” and Reagan steals my revolution idea and there you have it folks History according to Jim
PS How come nobody has taken me away yet?
Gorby, you are still the Best!
You are away, Jim - we’re all away now.
I do appreciate your letters though. I can at least count on one more citizen who takes the time to get off his ass (even if you wrote them while sitting on your ass) and lets those in power know that there is some sentience out here.
Thanks, bud!
BTW, Gorby did wish that glasnost had gone a little slower, but once people smell freedom, the genie’s out. I wonder when Americans will start breathing some free air…
It is unfortuate that Gorbachev became a scapegoat for Yeltsin’s crimes and the gross suffering of soviet citizens. Yet the man does have credibility on the world stage. To help understand both his and Putin’s POV, read “Failed Crusade.”
“Not a single problem that the world faces today can be solved by one country alone. Only if we act together can we solve that problem.” - Gorbachev
True! But we would have to get rid of the global corporate corruption first…..and that’s no easy task when political leaders are in their pockets.
As researched and eloquently written by Naomi Klein from her latest release titled The Shock Doctrine, “…Gorbachev had led the Soviet Union through a remarkable process of democratization: the press had been freed, Russia’s parliament, local councils, president and vice president had been elected, and the constitutional court was independent. As for the economy, Gorbachev was moving toward a mixture of a free market and a strong safety net, with key industries under public control — a process he predicted would take ten to fifteen years to be completed. His end goal was to build social democracy on the Scandinavian model, “a socialist beacon for all mankind.” ”
Unfortunately, Yeltsin garnered power away when he collaborated with the west (more Chicago School economic “reform”) to impose shock therapy on the former Soviet system. The communist state was quickly replaced by a corporatist one and the beneficiaries of the boom were confined to a small club of Russians and a handful of mutual fund managers from the west, teaming up with Yeltsin’s “Chicago Boys” and stripping the country of almost everything of value. Profits were moved offshore at the rate of $2 billion a month, in a mocking and devastating foray of casino capitalism that is exactly what is occurring in Iraq to this day.
In-a-nutshell, Mr. Gorbachev didn’t have a chance. At the 1991 G7 meeting, he was devastated by the unanimous message from his fellow heads of state that if he didn’t embrace radical economic shock therapy immediately, “they would sever the rope and let him fall.” He wouldn’t, Yeltsin would, and the rest is history. Russia was taken-over by the unrelenting corporatists, their democratically elected parliament was rendered illegal, and the saboteurs took over and wreaked the economy until only a handful of oligopolies benefited while a majority of the middle-class fell into poverty. The “winner-take-all” philosophy of unabashed, “Chicago Boys” capitalism, won. The people lost.
JEFFERSON’S GUARDIAN: thanks for the education. I was never clear on what turned against Grobachev as I felt him to be a true and earnest visionary. Nations time to time get these types of leaders when they are lined up for transition, or even minor doses of rebirth/Renaissance. During these ripe transition periods if the “wrong” midwives take over the process the promise is too quickly laid to waste… reminds me of the turtles that labor to lay their eggs in the sand, only to find the prey waiting to sabotage their best efforts, the fruit of nature subverted.