Gorbachev asked to lead next USA President out of Iraq conflict;
“USA needs to elect a President who gets along with the world, and doesn’t brandish a big stick and make threats”; World needs “Planetary Glasnost.”
By Stephen Fox
[for more information, please open:
http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev-asked-today-in-santa-fe-to-lead-next-usa-president-out-of-middle-east.html
Stephen Fox, alternative newspaper managing editor and gallery owner of
Santa Fe, on Monday afternoon asked former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev if, after November, he would please be so kind as to lead and advise the next
USA President as to how to get out of our Iraq quagmire. This is what he replied, through a translator:
“The Middle East is what the entire world is watching. If things go badly
for the USA, things go badly for all of us. America must not abuse the trust
it has from its allies, much of which has virtually stopped. I am glad to
see in this election a resurgence of interest in international affairs. As I
will say in my talk tonight, judging from the USA’s military budget, your
nation seems to be at war with the world, and I sense that the American
people don’t like this at all. The size of your weapons budget is larger
than it was at the peak of the Cold War, and larger all of the rest of the
nuclear nations put together. Why do you continue to build these weapons?
This is amazing to me!
I think that [former Secretaries of State] George Schultz and Henry
Kissinger, [former US Senator] Sam Nunn, and [former Secretary of Defense]
William Perry have put together recently a very interesting plan in this
regard, for which I appreciate their initiative.
With a background of conflict, military budgets in the USA continue to grow,
and you produce more weapons. The next president must show courage and
responsibility to resist increasing your arms expenditures. Most serious
nations in the European Union are studying the proposal by Schultz and
Kissinger, and the USA should heed this proposal.
You must bear in mind, that many nations find it difficult to trust America
if it insists on maintaining its weapon superiority.
After January 1, 1986, when I proposed an abolition of Nuclear Weapons,
there was an immediate reaction, that many didn’t trust me, because of the
USSR’s massive ground forces and conventional weapons. I replied by making
some large cuts in spending for conventional weapons, and eventually we
signed a treaty in this context in Paris.
So I would put the same question to America and to Americans!”
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At the beginning of today’s Press Conference in Santa Fe, Gorbachev defended
Putin’s concern over USA building extensive missile defense systems in
Eastern Europe, but said that it was good that Bush and Putin took the time
to recently meet, once before Bush leaves office.
He also stated that the USA needs to “elect a President who gets along with
the world, and doesn’t brandish a big stick and make threats.”
This is “up to the American people to persuade its leaders, and this burden
can’t be shouldered by others.” After 15 years of “pushing” since leaving
office in 1992, Gorbachev now believes that most world leaders and heads of
state are “lagging,” and that what we need next is “planetary glasnost.”
He is encouraged by the progress in Russia of the political party he
started, the Union of Social Democrats, given that more than 100 nations
have the same kind of party, the Social Democrats. He said the history of
the USSR was a 70 year experiment with Communism in its extreme Bolshevik
form, and that Russia had “paid the price” for doing so.
Gorbachev reminisced on Yeltsin being pressured by the International
Monetary Fund and a few US Think Tanks which came to impose on Russia a free
market approach, which did a lot of good. He called it the “Washington
Consensus” that was really the opposite ideology and effect of Bolshevism.
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I have met and talked with several Nobel Peace Laureates, as well as several
others I thought should have won that honorable prize. The Nobel Peace Prize
has been awarded to 95 individuals and 20 organizations since 1901.
The Laureates I have exchanged extensive correspondence with include His
Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and Kofi Annan. I have talked at great length with
Jody Williams. I asked Oscar Aria Sanchez, former-and-now-again President
of Costa Rica, to help create a branch in Santa Fe of the United Nations
University for Peace; Dag Hammarskjold’s nephew Knut was on the Board of
Honorary Advisors of this conception, as was Gandhi’s grandson, Arun, and
Einstein’s granddaughter, Evelyn. So was former USA Secretary of Interior,
Stewart Udall.
As an organization making a huge difference in the world, Doctors without
Borders is my highest inspiration daily in my work to get the neurotoxic and
carcinogenic artificial sweetener, aspartame, off the market by rescinding
its approval to be sold.
Mairead Corrigan of Ireland was the first Nobel Peace Laureate I talked with
for several hours at the Second United Nations Special Session on
Disarmament in 1978. I also had a very long conversation with Canada’s Prime
Minister Pierre Trudeau, and I have always thought he deserved the Nobel
Peace Prize. Certainly, George Mc Govern deserves something like a Nobel
Peace Prize, for his lifetime of pacifism.
Yet somehow, today former President Mikhail Gorbachev was the most
compelling. I am certain that because I was asking on behalf of tens of
millions of Americans and several billions people in hundreds of nations,
that he really will help to advise and guide the next USA President to bring
the USA out of the Middle East, and to end the war in Iraq.
There really is no choice.
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You are free to reprint this. If you have any questions that can’t be answered by email, I am at 505 983-2002.
Stephen Fox
