Mikhail Gorbachev — A New Cold War Order?

The Cold War’s end was supposed to mark the beginning of a path toward a new Europe and a safer world order. But, instead of building new European security institutions and pursuing the demilitarization of Europe – as promised in NATO’s London Declaration of 1990 – the West, particularly the United States, declared victory. Euphoria and triumphalism went to Western leaders’ heads. Taking advantage of Russia’s weaknesses and the lack of a counterweight, they refused to heed warnings against claiming a monopoly on global leadership 

The events of the past few months are the consequences of shortsightedly seeking to impose one’s will while ignoring the interests of one’s partners. A shortlist of such faits accomplis would include NATO enlargement, the war in Yugoslavia (particularly Kosovo), missile-defense plans, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. As a result, what was a blister has now turned into a festering wound.…

Today’s key global problems – terrorism and extremism, poverty and inequality, climate change, migration, and epidemics – are worsening daily. And, as different as they are, they share one key feature: none has a military solution. Yet political mechanisms to solve these problems are lacking or dysfunctional, even as the continuing global crisis should persuade us to seek – without delay – a new model that can ensure political, economic, and environmental sustainability.…

Project Syndicate
A New Cold War Order?

Mikhail Gorbachev | last head of state of the Soviet Union