The New Russia

The years since I left the Kremlin have been a time of enormous changes. I could not stand aside from what was happening; I reacted constantly to events and tried, within my abilities and opportunities, to influence them. I initiated and supported international projects, which continued, in the new circumstances, what had been begun in the years of Perestroika.

I wondered what would be the best way to talk about the dozens, indeed hundreds, of meetings, trips, conferences, speeches and articles I devoted to world events. How could I avoid losing sight of the wood for the trees?

So I asked myself what had been the main thing, the thread running through my international activities over the years. The answer came to me instantly: I had been standing up for, trying to develop and apply to the conditions of a rapidly changing world the New Thinking of the Perestroika era, the ideas and principles that I and my colleagues had offered the world in the latter half of the 1980s. I would like to reiterate them here, because I am certain that it was New Thinking that made possible putting an end to the Cold War. I believe the world still very much needs it today.

The New Thinking of the Perestroika period is not a set of dogmas or a code of practice. It developed and was supplemented by new ideas that reflected the course of world events. However, its basis remained unchanged: recognition of the interconnection and interdependence of the world, of the indivisibility of global security, of the importance of universal human values and interests. In February 1986, I declared it from the rostrum of the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It became the outlook of the Party, and had momentous significance.

New Thinking was not a sudden revelation that arose out of nothing. It had a pre-history, precedents. On not a few occasions when I have been giving lectures or talks in the United States, I have quoted a speech given by President John F. Kennedy at the American University, Washington, DC in June 1963. He called then for us ‘not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats’.[1] At the height of the Cold War, he managed to break free from the vicious circle of demonizing ‘the enemy’ and striving for world hegemony. The future world, he said, will not be ‘a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war’. Either there would be peace for all, or there would be no peace at all. When we criticize the communists, he was saying, we must not demonize Soviet people: they are the same as us.

Other precursors of New Thinking were such outstanding thinkers and politicians as the social democrats Olof Palme and Willy Brandt. Before others did, they were able to perceive and understand the challenges of modern times. Hence the innovative concept of ‘common security’ in the nuclear age that was propounded and advocated by Palme, and the ideal of overcoming the confrontation between East and West, of pan-European cooperation, of a Greater Europe, which was elaborated by Brandt, François Mitterrand and Helmut Schmidt.

New Thinking also incorporated important principles of international cooperation, which, even during the Cold War, were developed at the United Nations. Its humanist approach was in harmony with the appeals and demands of anti-war movements and the leaders of world religions.

A synthesis, New Thinking is modern humanism, its purpose to move us towards a more stable, safer, more just and humane society. Acknowledging the interconnection and interdependence of the world and the primacy of universal values and interests by no means implied a lack of respect for the sovereignty of states and national interests. Nobody was disputing their importance, any more than the importance of class, corporate and other interests. Now, however, they had to take account of new circumstances, when the interests common to all mankind needed to be given priority. The imperative needs were to prevent nuclear war, and to save mankind from ecological disaster.

We believed this could be achieved only through the joint efforts of all countries and peoples, and from this specific aims and features of the foreign policy of Perestroika followed:

• rejection of ideological confrontation of the West;

• rejection of a militarized approach to foreign relations;

• a policy of halting the arms race, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, reducing armed forces and embarking on disarmament to a level of ‘reasonable sufficiency’;

• a desire to integrate our economy into the world economy and include Russia in civilization in general;

• recognizing freedom of choice for all, including choice of social system;

• abstaining from the use of force in international relations to impose one’s power on others;

• non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states;

• promoting preventive diplomacy and establishing trust as a crucial factor in global politics;

• showing a willingness to cooperate with all comers to take joint action on problems not previously included on the international agenda, like human rights, ecology and humanitarian matters.

This was new for us, and presupposed change both in foreign and domestic policy. At the same time, I quite deliberately emphasized to our partners in negotiations and to the leaders of Western states that modern global interdependence left nobody any option but to change. Subsequent events were to show not all our partners invariably observing the principles of New Thinking, and sooner or later the world and they themselves had to pay for that.

After resigning the presidency at the end of 1991, I naturally found myself in a very different situation, but considered I had a duty to try to ensure that New Thinking became firmly established in the world, despite the change in the global balance of power caused by the disappearance off the map of the Soviet Union. The situation was not straightforward. The Cold War had ended even before the dissolution of the USSR, as our Western partners acknowledged. Russia and the countries of the West no longer viewed each other as enemies, and there were opportunities for cooperation, both bilateral and in addressing global challenges.

One of my first guests at the Foundation, Henry Kissinger, began our conversation by saying that the new Russia now making its debut on the world stage had no enemies. She could be confident that her security was assured for the foreseeable future. ‘And that’, he added, ‘is largely due to your efforts.’ I agreed with him, but with the important caveat that security, good relations and cooperation with other countries do not arrive once and for all. For them to be permanent, there need to be policies based firmly on the foundation of what has been achieved and which adequately reflect those changes.

Challenges of globalization

Meanwhile, the world was changing rapidly. Processes begun earlier gained momentum from the ending of the Cold War. Global confrontation, if unable to halt them, had certainly inhibited them. Now they accelerated and spread virtually across the planet. Academics and politicians called them globalization, and it became the dominant trend of world development.

From the outset, I and my colleagues at the Gorbachev Foundation made this phenomenon a top priority in our researches. I believed that globalization offered an opportunity for transition to a securer, more stable world order and, ultimately, to a new civilization synthesizing the main ideals and values of different cultures and ideologies. We chose as the Foundation’s motto, ‘Towards a New Civilization!’. Even so, I was far from idealizing the way globalization was proceeding, and presented my thoughts on this at a conference we held in summer 1992.

I feel I managed in that speech to outline both the promise of the process of globalization and the knotty problems arising as it proceeded. Initially, it was presented as an unambiguously positive process opening up limitless possibilities for all. To some extent, that was an honest mistake, but in part it was promoted in order to exploit the new situation and establish a monopoly of leadership by the West, and primarily the United States.

Globalization became the object of one of the Gorbachev Foundation’s main research projects. We were among the first to draw attention to negative aspects that became increasingly prominent as globalization accelerated, and to point out the considerable risks. Polarization of global wealth and poverty increased at a dangerous rate.

The problems of globalization and its consequences came to be an invariable item on the agenda at international forums, including those at the highest level. In September 2000 they were discussed at the Millennium Summit, held in New York at the headquarters of the United Nations and attended by 160 heads of state and governments. They were mentioned in the Millennium Declaration adopted there and approved by the UN General Assembly.

In parallel, also in New York that September, the State of the World Forum 2000 was held with participation of prominent members of the world’s political elite. I was one of its initiators, chaired it and gave the opening speech, in which I urged that there was a need to find some way of regulating the blind, uncontrolled process of globalization.

The outcome of our project was a collective work, Facets of Globalization: Difficult Issues of Contemporary Development.[2] That volume tries not only to analyse the phenomenon of globalization, its complexities, pluses and minuses, but to outline the concept of ‘globalization with a human face’, socially and environmentally responsible globalization. This first attempt to suggest an alternative could not hope to provide answers to all the issues and problems, but was responding to a real public demand: the movement for an alternative globalization was gaining momentum and identifying serious problems. It increased in strength after the global economic crisis of 2008 exposed the inadequacies of assumptions currently underlying world development.

One of the most important political conclusions, staring us in the face as we examined what was happening in the world, was that no country, or even group of countries, would be able to cope with the major challenges of the new millennium on its own. These were the challenges of security, poverty, economic backwardness and the environmental crisis. They are interconnected and ultimately require an integrated response. Their sheer scale and the risks they are fraught with are, in my belief, unprecedented. I have discussed them on numerous occasions with politicians, scientists and social activists, have taken part in dozens of conferences and forums, given interviews, published articles, and had my conviction confirmed again and again that, without New Thinking, the world will fail to respond adequately to them.

The challenge of security

Challenges to security come in various guises, of which the most dangerous are weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. The worry is compounded by the possibility that ultimately the most terrible weapons may fall into the hands of extremists.

For me, the issue of nuclear disarmament runs through all the years and decades of my career. One of the great achievements of New Thinking was ending the nuclear arms race. After decades of relentless build-up, stockpiles began to be reduced. The turning point came at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit. Although it proved impossible to finalize agreement there because of Ronald Reagan’s desire to get us to agree to continued testing and deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems, not only on earth but even in space, it was at Reykjavik that the scope of a 50 per cent reduction of strategic offensive weapons and the elimination of intermediate range missiles were agreed. These were subsequently formalized in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaties of 1987 and the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). In autumn 1991, President George Bush and I exchanged letters of intent to eliminate the greater proportion of tactical nuclear weapons. All these agreements were subsequently implemented. It was an unparalleled reduction of such deadly weapons in such a short time frame.

It seemed at first that ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction would continue along the lines we had managed to establish. In 1992, Presidents Yeltsin and Bush signed the START-2 Treaty, and the Chemical Weapons Convention was drafted. Shortly afterwards, however, the process began slowing down before stalling completely. The START-2 Treaty languished in the US Congress and the Russian Duma for several years, and was not ratified by Russia. The delay was particularly due to the protracted economic crisis in Russia. Neither was a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty agreed. Negotiations on monitoring compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention also got nowhere, blocked by the United States.

The reduction and elimination of weapons of mass destruction became a hostage to the general state of international relations, and in the 1990s, instead of gradual improvement and the growth of trust, the direction of travel was reversed. I have no doubt that the main reason for that was a misreading by the West, and particularly the United States, of the circumstances of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of the Cold War.

The West claimed a victory, as if the Cold War had ended not as the result of joint efforts, not through negotiation, but thanks to power politics. This led them to conclude that they should further increase their strength and military superiority. They abandoned the joint commitment, documented in a statement in Geneva by the leaders of the USSR and the United States, that our countries would not seek military superiority over each other. This affirmation was, however, no less important than another historic provision of that joint declaration, acknowledging that nuclear war must never be allowed, and that in such a war there could be no winner.

The world witnessed the capital of trust accumulated in the second half of the 1980s being frittered away, as the prospect of a new, more secure world order was replaced by the spectre of chaos and a world in which might was right. The use of force against Yugoslavia, the expansion of NATO and missile strikes against Iraq during the second half of the 1990s demonstrated how the United States intended to handle security issues. The voices of Russia, China and even of some US allies were ignored. The policy of unilateralism formulated, incidentally, before George W. Bush arrived in the White House, became an ongoing negative factor in world politics. Might was right: other countries duly took note.

In the late 1990s, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons and North Korea followed suit. There were questions about Iran’s nuclear programme and whether it really was intended, as claimed by the Iranian leaders, solely for peaceful purposes. There are dozens of potential threshold nuclear countries in the world that could, if they so chose, create nuclear weapons. The example of South Africa which, after the abolition of apartheid, renounced nuclear weapons and destroyed them, has had no successors. The threat of nuclear proliferation and a new arms race became a reality.

In international politics the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons has, in effect, been abandoned. Instead, in the military doctrine of the nuclear powers it is again regarded as an acceptable means of waging war, for a first or even a ‘preventive’ strike. This change first occurred in US military doctrine, before its example was followed by others.

We have to face the fact that the opportunities that arose with the ending of the Cold War have not been pursued. Indeed, frankly, they have been squandered.

Ban the bomb!

I believed, and still do, that the only way to save the world from the danger posed by nuclear weapons is to get rid of them completely. In the final analysis, that is the only way, and in early 2007 something happened that indicated this was understood in elite political and intellectual circles of the United States, the country that had in the past made the greatest ‘contribution’ to the nuclear arms race.

On 4 January 2007, the Wall Street Journal published ‘A World Free of Nuclear Weapons’, signed by such well-known US politicians from both major political parties as George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn. The fact that these ‘four wise men’, political heavyweights not given to utopian projects and who have unique experience of forming the policies of previous administrations, decided to go public on such an important issue as the need to repudiate nuclear weapons, testified to an important change of attitude among the American establishment. This was momentous.

I responded with an article, also published in the Wall Street Journal, on 31 January. I reminded its readers that, at their forum in Rome in November 2006, Nobel Peace Prize winners had issued a special appeal in respect of the nuclear threat. I reminded them too of the campaign, in which I participated, initiated by the world renowned physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Sir Joseph Rotblat (who died in 2005), to inform the public about the nuclear threat. I reminded them of the great work undertaken by Ted Turner’s Nuclear Threat Initiative. We shared a common understanding that the Non-Proliferation Treaty could not be allowed to gather dust and that the main onus for ensuring that did not happen was on the members of the ‘nuclear club’. I wrote:

Again, as in the mid-1980s, there is an issue of political will, of the responsibility of leaders of major states to overcome the gulf between talking about peace and security and the very real threats hanging over the world.

I called for a dialogue to be launched ‘within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, involving both nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states, to cover the full range of issues related to the elimination of those weapons’. The goal would be to develop a common concept for moving towards a world free of nuclear weapons, and the key to success would be ‘reciprocity of obligations and actions’:

Banning nuclear weapons is not just a slogan but a specific, practical task. How is it to be accomplished, what is obstructing movement in that direction? These issues were the focus of intense, persistent discussion in the World Political Forum that I and a group of friends and allies established. The idea of setting up the forum found political support in many countries, and the inaugural conference took place in Turin on 18 May 2003. In my opening speech I said:

To put it in a nutshell, we wanted to help politics to keep up with the pace of global change.

One of the Forum’s most important initiatives was a conference on ‘Overcoming Nuclear Dangers’, held in Rome on 16–17 April 2009. We organized it in collaboration with the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Participants included George Shultz, William Perry, Sam Nunn, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Ruud Lubbers, Alexander Bessmertnykh; such members of the US and Russian legislatures as Dianne Feinstein, Mikhail Margelov and Konstantin Kosachev; and leading scholars and experts. The conference gained momentum after the 5 April statement in Prague by Barack Obama, newly elected president of the United States, in which he called for a world without nuclear weapons. This aim was confirmed at a meeting of the presidents of the United States and Russia in London. These events made it all the more important to discuss practical ways of achieving this.

In my declaration at the opening of the conference, I said: ‘Nuclear weapons are an extreme manifestation of the militarization of international relations and political thinking. We have not successfully dealt with this burdensome legacy from the twentieth century.’ Decisive action was needed. The co-chairman, George Shultz, was in full agreement, declaring that eliminating nuclear weapons was an idea whose time had finally come, but that time was also against us. Prudent action was needed immediately.

This was true, but could it be considered realistic if, after ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction, one country would still be in possession of more conventional weapons than the combined arsenals of almost all the other countries in the world put together? If it were to have absolute global military superiority? In my speech, I warned that the answer could only be negative:

I reminded the conference that when, in years gone by, we had proposed moving forward to a non-nuclear world, our Western partners had raised the issue of the Soviet Union’s superiority in conventional weapons. We had not tried to evade it and had entered negotiations that led to a mutual reduction of conventional arms in Europe. Today we needed the West to adopt a similar approach.

I returned regularly to the topic of nuclear disarmament, in October 2009 setting out my position in detail at the UN Office in Geneva. In the presence of representatives of dozens of countries and the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, I said it was essential that this global organization should play its part fully:

I believe, I said, that after that, the other nuclear powers, both official members of the nuclear club and others, should at the very least declare a freeze on their nuclear arsenals and express their readiness to enter into negotiations to limit and reduce them.

I also proposed discussing within the UN framework the military concepts and doctrines inherited from the Cold War era. I suggested the topic might be raised at the Security Council’s Military Staff Committee, which, as long ago as 1988, I had proposed in a speech to the UN General Assembly should be brought out of mothballs.

In April 2010, the presidents of Russia and the United States signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to replace START-1. Almost immediately the agreement came under attack and was criticized from both right and left. Some claimed the proposed reductions were dangerous, others that they did not go far enough and boiled down to no more than creative accountancy. In an article published in both the New York Times (22 April 2010) and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, I stoutly defended the treaty. I wrote that, although the reductions proposed really were modest compared with what had been achieved in the agreement, which President George Bush and I signed in 1991, it nevertheless represented a major breakthrough.

In connection with the signing of the treaty, the Obama administration proposed to Russia and China to initiate a dialogue on the issue of strategic stability. I commented that this should not be limited to strategic arms issues. ‘More general problems must also be addressed if we are to build a relationship of partnership and trust. Foremost is the problem of military superiority.’

I pointed out that the US National Security Strategy adopted in 2002 explicitly proclaimed the principle that the United States should enjoy global military superiority: ‘This principle has in effect become an integral part of America’s creed. It finds specific expression in the vast arsenals of conventional weapons, the colossal defense budget and the plans for weaponizing outer space. The proposed strategic dialogue must include all these issues.’

Consequences of NATO expansion

The correlation between reduction and elimination of weapons of mass destruction and the general state of international relations and security is something any sober-minded politician should be keeping in mind. The generation of politicians that replaced ours failed signally to improve security in Europe and the rest of the world. The worst blunder was the decision to expand NATO and turn it into a ‘guarantor’ of security not only in Europe but beyond its borders.

Speaking in October 2009 at the Council of Europe, I gave that organization its due in building a Greater Europe, but added: ‘Europe still has not resolved its major issue of providing a solid basis for peace, of creating a new security architecture.’ I recalled the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, signed in 1990, which was to lay the foundation for that architecture. Immediately after the end of the Cold War, we discussed how to create new security procedures for our continent. There was talk of a European Security Council, a kind of directorate with sweeping powers. The idea had the support of such major politicians as Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Brent Scowcroft and Roland Dumas, but events took a different course.

The leaders of NATO, with the United States taking the leading role, decided to expand the bloc to include the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, citing security considerations to justify the decision. Security, however, is needed only if there is a threat, so who was threatening whom? Who was threatening Poland, Hungary or the Czech Republic, countries that rushed to be first in the queue to join NATO? If there was such a threat, why did they not sound the alarm, convene emergency meetings of the institutions of the then Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe or, come to that, the UN Security Council?

What was going on? Assuredly, many countries of Eastern and Central Europe applied for membership of NATO, and perhaps, knowing their history, it was difficult to expect that they would have a balanced and rational approach to the question after lacking independence for decades. That does not, however, mean that the overarching requirements of equilibrium and security should have been subordinated to their emotions. Alongside these there were entirely pragmatic vested interests involved that had little to do with security issues.

Russia, after initially failing to take a stand (on a visit to Poland in August 1993, Yeltsin even signed a declaration to the effect that if Poland preferred to join NATO, that would not be contrary to Russian interests), subsequently came to her senses and announced her opposition to the policy of expanding the North Atlantic alliance. Her views were effectively ignored. It was said that Russia had no right to veto decisions involving other states. This assertion, at first sight unchallengeable, implied that Russia was somehow not a party to general security matters.

The most the Americans would agree to was to sweeten the pill, but that made no real difference: Russia’s relations with the West were irreparably damaged. Did those who so advocated NATO expansion give any thought to the configuration of political forces in Russia at that time? Was the West really blind to the kind of sentiments NATO expansion aroused among influential circles in Russia?

It has to be said that attitudes in the West to NATO’s plans were far from uniformly supportive. I can instance my conversations with such prominent politicians as the former Italian prime minister, Giulio Andreotti; the former British prime minister, Edward Heath; the former US ambassador to the USSR, Jack Matlock; the doyen of American diplomats, George Kennan; and leading politicians of Spain, Portugal and France.

By then I had many times visited the United States, had discussions with numerous leading politicians of both parties, with businessmen, intellectuals and ordinary Americans. I found few people in favour of NATO expansion to the East. There were, of course, those who, without any particular enthusiasm, were prepared to go along with it, but most Americans clearly had doubts about its wisdom, and many were passionately opposed. They were ignored.

In Russia, NATO’s expansion plans became an acute domestic problem. They were immediately seized on by those in favour of confrontation with the West, and by those who were intent on using the ‘external threat’ to their own advantage. There was much agitation among enthusiasts of blaming everything on Gorbachev, and people who simply did not know their facts and claimed I had failed to take measures that could have prevented the expansion of NATO. In the course of reunifying Germany I should have haggled harder and ruled out the possibility of any expansion of NATO in the future.

These charges were completely absurd. German reunification was completed at a time when the Warsaw Pact was still in existence, and to demand that its members should not join NATO would have been laughable. No organization can give a legally binding undertaking not to expand in the future. That was a purely political question, and all that could be done politically in the conditions of the time, was done. The agreement on the final settlement with Germany stated that no additional NATO troops would be deployed on the territory of the former GDR, and neither would weapons of mass destruction. That meant that NATO’s military infrastructure would not move eastwards.

The decision to expand NATO, taken after the break-up of the Soviet Union, was contrary to the spirit of those undertakings, as I have repeatedly pointed out when parrying baseless accusations. The main problem was that the policy of the leaders of NATO harboured a real threat, and not only to Russia. There was a danger that, half a century after the start of the Cold War, the world could again be plunged into something analogous.

The expansion of NATO fundamentally undermined the European modus vivendi established by the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975. It was a complete reversal of the strategy, jointly developed by all the states of Europe, to move beyond the Cold War. It shook the foundations of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, as a new line dividing Europe was drawn. NATO started behaving like a policeman charged with maintaining order in Europe and even the world. That began as early as the first half of the 1990s, with intervention in the conflict as Yugoslavia disintegrated.

Most acute and bloody was the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Western countries, instead of doing their utmost to support the efforts of the mediators, Cyrus Vance, former US Secretary of State, and Lord Owen [a former leader of the British Social Democratic Party], only made the situation worse. For the first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began direct military intervention, and, moreover, with a clear bias against the Bosnian Serbs. In 1995, Serbia was forced to accept NATO’s terms and the Americanimposed Dayton Agreement.

NATO’s new strategy, adopted on the alliance’s 50th anniversary at a session of the North Atlantic Council in Washington in spring 1999, provided for the possible stationing, deployment and use of NATO forces beyond the borders of the territories for which the bloc was directly responsible, anywhere in the entire European and Atlantic area. This new strategy was promptly applied in Kosovo, where Albanian separatists were fighting to detach the province from Yugoslavia.

In the end, after NATO’s intervention and the bombing of Belgrade, Yugoslavia was forced to concede and Kosovo was declared independent. The Serb minority there was reduced to the status of hostages and a dangerous precedent was created of military action undertaken against a sovereign country without authorization by the UN Security Council, in violation of the UN Charter and international law.

The world after 9/11

Despite this, the international community had an opportunity to return to the path of joint maintenance of security. It arose in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001.

I well remember how I heard about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. I was working in my office at the Gorbachev Foundation when my assistant came in. ‘Mikhail Sergeyevich, something incredible is happening. A plane has crashed into a skyscraper in New York. Let’s turn on the television.’ And indeed, I could not believe what I was seeing on the screen. When I was in New York to address the United Nations in 1988, I had visited the World Trade Center and met businessmen there. Now those towers were on fire and belching smoke, the kind of spectacle you would have imagined possible only in a horror movie. That same day I sent a telegram of condolence to President Bush via the US Embassy in Moscow:

I expressed my sympathy and solidarity with the American people also in a letter published in the New York Times. It evoked many responses, some of which I would like to reproduce here:

The fact that seemingly impregnable America had been struck right in its heart demonstrated clearly that nobody in the world is now invulnerable; anyone can become the victim of terror. The sense of sympathy and solidarity felt by most people around the globe was entirely natural. It was natural too that America’s call for an international anti-terrorist coalition was positively received. The world witnessed something quite unprecedented: a common agreement between America, Russia, Europe, India, China, Cuba, the greater part of the Islamic world, and other regions and countries. This happened despite all the serious differences dividing them. Unique in modern history, it resembled the coalition against Hitler during the Second World War.

The first foreign leader to phone George W. Bush to express support and solidarity with stricken America was Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Announcing that he was joining the anti-terrorist coalition, President Putin began cooperating in the fight against terrorism. I fully supported him, believing that at this moment we needed to put aside the irritants that had been bedevilling Russian–American relations recently. I said as much in an interview for Larry King on a satellite link-up between Moscow and the United States. I added, ‘It is very important now to do nothing to undermine the coalition, but rather to transform it into a means for creating a new, peaceful and just world order.’

In an article published in dozens of newspapers in different countries, I developed the idea of a coalition for a new world order.

In my article, I urged that these questions should not simply be dismissed.

As time passed, however, I and those hoping for a far-reaching change of direction in world politics began to have doubts. Would the coalition survive? Would those who were partners in it stick to the principle of collective action in the fight against the global threats facing mankind?

These doubts grew as the military action against Afghanistan became increasingly protracted, making it clear that the hope of rapid success was fading. Increasingly, the talk was of extending the military action in time and space. The longer the war, the more difficult it would become to maintain the unity of the grand coalition, I warned in an article in November 2001. It might come to grief because of political and geopolitical policies designed to satisfy the ambitions of regional leaders, or because of other interests. Or, indeed, because of an attempt, under the guise of combating terrorism, to gain greater control over other states and expand spheres of influence. It seemed to me important to analyse the underlying causes and consequences of the September 11 disaster. In the same article I wrote:

A whole decade had been lost.

Again and again, I urged that the fight against terrorism should not be reduced to a purely military response, and in particular that it should not be used as cover for promoting purely selfish interests. Gradually, however, my worst fears proved only too well founded.

After some initial success in Afghanistan, which proved ephemeral, US leaders again became persuaded that the United States could cope with any situation by relying on its own military might. They increasingly resorted to unilateral decisions and actions, and they announced that the United States was unilaterally withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which ceased to be operative in June 2002. They refused to implement the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, withdrew from the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol on climate change (George W. Bush revoking his predecessor’s signature), and refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the United Nations’ International Criminal Court.

The world began to be drawn into a new round of militarization, growth of military budgets, development and production of ever more sophisticated ‘smart’ weapons. Preparations began for a military operation against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was the culmination of the US policy of unilateral action. I heard about it at Tokyo railway station, when I received a mobile phone call from the correspondent of Interfax. I immediately described it as a mistake that would have immense negative consequences for the United States and the rest of the world. These very soon became evident, and are making themselves felt to this day.

Poverty is a political problem

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, then, it became clear that the world’s politicians were failing to cope with the challenges of security, nuclear weapons or terrorism. Matters were no better in respect of two other crucial global problems: the challenge of poverty and underdevelopment, and the global environmental crisis.

In October 2004, we devoted the Assembly of the World Political Forum to the problem of poverty. Interest in the topic and the level of participation were wholly exceptional. Among the speakers at plenary meetings were the deputy UN secretary-general, Anwarul Chowdhury; the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad; former prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto; the former German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher; former UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali; vice-president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma; former Japanese prime minister, Toshiki Kaifu; former prime minister of India, Inder Kumar Gujral; former prime ministers of France, Lionel Jospin and Michel Rocard; former director-general of the World Trade Organization, Mike Moore; assistant UN secretary-general, Jeffrey Sachs; former Polish president, Wojciech Jaruzelski; former president of Portugal, Mário Soares; the personal representatives of the presidents of Nigeria and Kyrgyzstan; and other politicians, as well as representatives of social, governmental and religious organizations and the media.

Poverty is a political issue, I said in my speech at the opening of the assembly, and that became the leitmotif of the assembly. I believe the main thrust of my speech remains important today:

What I sensed in the speeches of the politicians and experts attending the forum was great concern at the critical situation of poverty in the world. Analysing the experience of different countries in the fight against poverty, they made their different suggestions for ways to resolve the problem, but what they were all agreed on was that poverty underlies virtually all the problems confronting humanity at the present stage of its development: the degradation of the environment, the lack of security and stable economic growth, terrorism, social marginalization and many other negative aspects of globalization.

I stressed that we must listen to the signals being sent by the antiglobalization movement. Although among the protesters calling for ‘alternative globalization’ there certainly were hoodlums, aggressive troublemakers and outright rabble-rousers, the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets were honest, concerned people putting forward an entirely reasonable demand: that globalization should not be a one-way process making the rich even richer and neglecting the poor. Here is the real situation:

• nearly a billion people in the world are starving, while one person in four in the United States suffers from obesity;

• of 34 million people with AIDS, 23 million live in Africa;

• Tokyo alone has as many telephone lines as the whole of Africa;

• 57 million children are deprived of the opportunity to attend school;

• in Botswana, average life expectancy is 41 years.

Eradication of poverty and hunger was the top Millennium Development Goal among those approved by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in 2000. Among the most immediate tasks were a plan by 2015 to reduce by half (compared with 1990), the proportion of people living in poverty, and to reduce by half the proportion of people suffering from hunger. What were the results? According to a 2013 UN report, the first task has been achieved: the proportion of people living on US$1.25 a day (the threshold of extreme poverty) fell from 47 per cent in 1990 to 22 per cent in 2010.

As we see, we are nevertheless still very far away from eradicating poverty. We are also far from eliminating hunger. Over the same period, the proportion of those suffering chronic hunger has decreased, but there is no certainty that the target will be met by 2015. There has been progress, but completely insufficient and very uneven. Against the notable progress in China, India and a number of other countries, the situation in most African countries is all the more depressing. Aid from rich to poor countries, instead of increasing, has declined.

The disquiet of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is entirely understandable as he calls for an urgent intensification of efforts to resolve the problems. But will he be heard by Western leaders? They talk of the need to ‘reformat’ the world, as recently in Davos, but we have been hearing that rhetoric for many years now and there is little to show for it.

The global gap between the extremes of wealth and poverty continues to grow. A report presented to the Economic Forum in Davos on the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few tells us that almost half the world’s wealth is now concentrated in the hands of 1 per cent of the population. Their total wealth is estimated at a fantastic $110 trillion, 65 times greater than the total wealth of the poorer half of the world’s people. The wealth of the 85 richest people in the world is equal to that of the poorer half of the world’s population.

According to Forbes Magazine, during 2013 the number of billionaires on the planet rose to 1,426, a more than threefold increase over the number at the end of the twentieth century. Their total capital amounted to $5.4 trillion, an increase on the previous year of $800 billion! The wealth of the billionaires is more than three times that of the poorer half of the global population.

This unheard-of concentration of wealth in the hands of a few undermines democracy, threatens the fabric of societies, and rules out equal opportunities for all. Mass poverty, meanwhile, is a drag on economic development, leads to instability, and facilitates the spread of crime and terrorism. Allowing mass poverty to continue while this accumulation of personal wealth at the other end of the spectrum proceeds unchecked is a serious challenge to the global community, a threat to peace and the security of the world.

There is, however, another issue that cannot be ignored in any honest discussion of the state of the world. I remember a conversation I had in 1992 with former US Secretary of State George Shultz. I pointed out to him: ‘You Americans want to export your way of life to the rest of your world, but you consume 44 per cent of the world’s electricity. If other countries were to live by your standards, the planet’s resources would be totally exhausted within a few years.’ At that time, neither he nor I had any answer to that issue. I will return to it when we come to discuss the economic crisis that erupted in 2008.

Mentioning the issue, I had in mind that for the world to continue in accordance with the old model would not only result in depletion of natural resources, but would also lead to environmental catastrophe. In all the years that followed, we have been witnessing a growing rift between man and nature. Some have looked on impassively, with indifference, while others have tried to halt this dangerous process. I have sided firmly with those who are disturbed by the environmental crisis and are trying to do something about it.

In 1992, a Conference on Environment and Development, the first ‘Earth Summit’ of heads of state and government, was convened by the United Nations in Rio de Janeiro. In parallel, a forum was held of representatives of public organizations, cultural figures and parliamentary and religious leaders from some dozens of countries. They discussed the role that should be played by civil society in the struggle against environmental threats. The participants of this forum sent me a letter, reminding me of an initiative I had suggested in 1990 at a forum of the Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity: to create a global environmental organization, like the International Red Cross in the humanitarian field, that would become a centre for efforts to save the planet from environmental disaster. They asked me to head efforts to create an International Green Cross. The wording of the letter was so genuine and insistent that I could not refuse.

Since childhood I have been very close to nature. I knew from my own experience how dependent human beings are on its condition and the changes taking place in it. I remembered only too well the dust storms in my native Stavropol, but it was only in Moscow, when I had access to the documents, that I learned of the environmental impact of the hydroelectric power stations on the Volga, and the slow destruction of the Aral Sea as a result of water being taken from the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers for irrigation. When we proclaimed the policy of Glasnost, among the first to make use of the opportunity to express their opinion were citizens protesting about pollution of the air and of freshwater reservoirs, the wasteful exploitation of forests and other damage inflicted on the environment. The situation had become so serious that, at the insistence of local people, dozens of polluting industrial enterprises were shut down. People stood for days at a time in the squares, and would not leave until their grievances were given proper consideration.

Mulling over my response to the request to assume the duties of head of a global organization for the protection of nature, I was well aware that I would not get away with being a mere figurehead. This was going to be hard work. I could see that the environmental challenge might well prove the most demanding of all the tasks mankind would face in the twenty-first century. In an interview for the Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun [Morning Sun], I said the environment was now my day job.

The date Green Cross International was founded is considered to be 18 April 1993, when the organization held its first general assembly in the Japanese city of Kyoto. This event was preceded by heated discussion about what kind of organization it should be. Some argued that it should be a kind of emergency response corps, sending ‘green helmets’ into environmental disaster areas. Others suggested we should follow the model of Greenpeace, mobilizing people for ambitious protest operations. I did not feel either option was very promising and found support from people with great experience and a profound understanding of the issues. The outstanding Norwegian scientist and explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, said at the organizational meeting before the first assembly: ‘If we are going for “green helmets” I will not be in there with you. The need is for something different, an organization whose purpose is to change the way people think, to effect a transition to environmental awareness. The need is for specific projects leading to that goal.’ As the discussion proceeded, with the lively participation of representatives from the United States, Russia, Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland (and these countries were subsequently to provide the organizational muscle of the Green Cross), our view found favour.

We set forth the organization’s philosophy in the Green Cross International Charter:

The process began of forming national branches of the organization, in the course of which I visited many countries and took part in their founding conferences. Green Cross International sees its mission as being to respond to the combined challenges of security, poverty and environmental degradation. To achieve this, we:

• promote legal, ethical and behavioural norms that ensure basic changes in the values, actions and attitudes of government, the private sector and civil society, necessary to develop a sustainable global community;

• contribute to the prevention and resolution of conflicts arising from environmental degradation and shortages of natural resources;

• provide assistance to people affected by the environmental consequences of wars, conflicts and man made calamities.[1]

For many years, I served as president of Green Cross International and chairman of its board of directors. In 2008, we reorganized the management: I retained the honorary position of founding president and remained a member of the Board of Directors; Alexander Likhotal (Russia) was elected president and Jan Kulczyk (Poland) was elected chairman of the board. I am grateful to them and to dozens of other people who have supported me in this major project and who today continue it with energy and enthusiasm.

During its existence, Green Cross International has initiated a series of programmes for ‘environmental healing’ of the Earth. One of the most important has been the Legacy Programme, which had the aim of dealing with the environmental legacy of the Cold War and the arms race (eliminating stockpiles of chemical weapons, toxic contamination, etc.). In 2000, I undertook a major initiative to overcome the inertia building up in the process of eliminating chemical weapons, of which the United States and Russia had together accumulated more than 65,000 tonnes. Destruction of Russia’s stockpiles of chemical weapons had been halted due to lack of funds, and also as the result of demands and questions raised by other parties to the UN Convention on the Elimination of Chemical Weapons, which had not been addressed for several years.

I sent letters to the leaders of Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and other countries appealing to them to give firm financial commitments in relation to the destruction of chemical weapons. In response, the Russian government substantially increased funding for its programme. Important steps were also undertaken by the US government.

Another important Green Cross International project was the Earth Dialogues, a series of public forums devoted to the ethical aspects of sustainable development. The first dialogue was held in Lyon in 2002, with the French prime minister and several other ministers participating. Lyon was followed by Barcelona, New York and Lahore, and similar events were held in Russia and Italy. In 2006, I participated in an Earth Dialogue in Brisbane.

My work in the international environmental movement led to involvement in the Earth Charter project, whose aim was to draft a kind of environmental code of best practice for the planet, a declaration of basic principles and values to enable the creation of a just, sustainable and peaceful global community in the twenty-first century.

The idea of an Earth Charter was first put forward in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission). It was supported in 1992 by the then secretary-general of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, but it was only in 1994 that Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the Earth Summit, and I, through organizations each of us had founded (the Earth Council and Green Cross International), breathed life into the project as a civil society initiative. The government of the Netherlands offered to provide financial support.

In 1996, a commission under the co-chairmanship of myself and Maurice Strong was set up to draft the charter. In April 1998, the draft was discussed at a session of the General Assembly of Green Cross International. I set out my views on the charter’s goals and objectives, and also delivered a major paper called ‘A Sustainable Future’.

The final version of the Earth Charter was approved at a meeting of its drafting commission at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The charter was officially presented to the international community on 29 June 2000 at a launch ceremony in the Peace Palace in The Hague in the presence of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The General Conference of UNESCO subsequently approved a resolution supporting it.

The efforts of ecologists and the environmentally aware section of the world community to get the idea of environmentally sustainable development put into practice ran into major obstacles: a lack of understanding of some, the vested interests of others, the short-termism and narrow-minded pragmatism of yet others. Although supported by the international community in the form of the United Nations, which fleshed it out into a specific action programme, the ideas were pushed to one side by a single-minded determination to promote the free play of market forces, which sent global development in the wrong direction, towards reduced sustainability.

This seriously alarmed many people, including me. I tried to draw the attention of politicians and the public to the need to implement the concept and values of sustainable development. I proposed, inter alia, to attend the ‘Rio + 10’ conference in Johannesburg in 2002, prepared the notes for a speech, but was unfortunately not able to attend.

I greatly regretted being unable to speak in Johannesburg. We at Green Cross International were very concerned that the forum might end in failure. I sent more than 100 letters to heads of state and governments outlining the standpoint of our organization and urging them not to allow the conference to be a failure. I received replies from the presidents of Russia, France and Poland, from the prime minister of Great Britain and many others. They all recognized the need to put environmental issues at the heart of politics and the social agenda.

More than 100 heads of state and governments went to Johannesburg, but many who were expected refused to attend. This was a bad sign, and indeed, hopes that the Johannesburg summit would be a turning point failed to materialize. Disagreements and vested interests again prevailed. The documents adopted were largely declarative, lacking specifics or binding provisions, and were really just one more disappointment.

The water crisis

Given the situation, action on specific environmental problems took on particular importance. One of those I had to deal with was the issue of the growing global shortage of fresh water. In July 2002, I took part in an international conference on Water for the World, organized through Green Cross International. The following year I took part in the World Water Forum. These began to be held regularly and attracted authoritative experts and politicians able to propose practical solutions.

In February 2009, in Brussels, an international conference on Peace with Water was held at the European Parliament, on the initiative of the World Political Forum. Its purpose was to develop proposals on conservation of water resources for consideration by those taking part in negotiations on a new international climate agreement. The proposals were presented in a Memorandum for a World Protocol on Water.

The water crisis, I said at the conference, is a combination of environmental, social, economic and political factors. According to UN estimates, nearly 900 million people do not have access to clean water and 2.6 billion live in insanitary conditions. Demand for water is constantly rising. Of the water in developing countries, 80 per cent is used for agricultural irrigation. The problem is being aggravated by global climate change. Access to water is beginning to cause international conflicts. Politics is being slow to respond to what is truly an emergency situation, despite numerous studies and reports from experts and environmental organizations. As founding president of Green Cross International, I coauthored such a report, together with three former political leaders of Sweden, Botswana and the Philippines, back in 2000. It was well received, but its recommendations have not been implemented.

The central principle we need to get acknowledged, we said, is that water, as a supremely important resource for all mankind, is common property and access to it must be declared a basic human right. This view was widely endorsed and the governments of many countries, as well as a number of business leaders, spoke out in support of it.

I was well aware, needless to say, that international acceptance of a human right to water was not the end of the problem. In order to ensure effectively that hundreds of millions of people have access to clean water, the right needs to be enshrined in national legislation. Providing people with water and sanitary conditions is critically important for solving such other problems of developing countries as education, health and regulation of the birth rate. There is also a direct connection with security.

In March 2012 I was invited to speak at the Sixth World Water Forum in Marseille. My main points were that water, unlike other resources, has no substitutes. The fresh water resources available to us are finite, and water consumption is increasing. It is no longer possible for consumption to continue to grow at the rates seen in the twentieth century. The situation in poor countries, where millions of people die prematurely from drinking untreated water, is becoming completely unacceptable.

Green Cross International launched a Water for Life initiative that proposed developing an international convention on the right to water. It took many years to accomplish this but, finally, in 2010, the United Nations did adopt a resolution to include the right to water and sanitation as a fundamental human right. The international community found it difficult to agree on this important step, but eventually took it.

Practical implementation of the principle is even more difficult. Only a few countries have included the right of access to water in their national legislation. One of these is France, which also devotes considerable resources to ensure access to water in developing countries. Green Cross International for its part has been actively involved in developing measures for the conservation and rational management of water resources.

Even quite simple solutions that do not require huge investment can save many human lives. As the result of just one Green Cross International pilot programme in Ghana, 40,000 people living in the Volta River Basin have gained access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Another important area for our efforts is preventing conflicts over access to water resources, and exploitation of them as a means to exert political pressure or enforce ultimatums.

The threat of climate change

Another critical issue, which in the past decades has come to the fore in world politics, is global climate change resulting from the scaling up of human economic activities. The situation was deteriorating dramatically year by year, and at the Earth Dialogues meeting in Australia, I complained that world leaders were ignoring the climate crisis.

Every year brings further evidence that global warming, in which, in the view of most scientists, the main role is played by human activities, is causing anomalous weather patterns, leading to loss of life and bringing with it severe economic and social consequences. The 2010 Northern Hemisphere summer heat waves have by no means been the only disaster. Mudslides in China, unprecedented drought in Australia and India, floods in Pakistan and Central Europe – the list could easily be continued.

Meanwhile, nations continue to do nothing. This is the result not only of a lack of political will, but also of the fact that lavishly financed corporate lobbying and the energy business, wary of having to pay more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, have at their disposal financial resources far in excess of what is available to those supporting urgent measures to combat global warming. Every year states spend hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing the hydrocarbon (oil, gas, coal) sector of the energy industry. Assuredly, representatives of the G20 leading economies of the world have pledged to gradually phase out these subsidies, but only ‘in the medium term’.

Public opinion is increasingly disillusioned and losing faith in the ability of states to take effective action to counter climate change. From losing faith, it is a short step to losing interest and becoming apathetic.

The Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference in 2009 did not live up to expectations. Because of substantial disagreements between developed and developing countries, it proved impossible to reach a global agreement on the issue to replace the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012. After the Copenhagen conference everything started going downhill. A tendency became noticeable in formal negotiations to move away from the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The impression is that those involved are more interested in trying ‘not to raise the stakes’ than to achieve worthwhile results. The diplomats and experts get bogged down in technical details, and voices are increasingly heard in favour of agreeing to a lowest common denominator. It is being suggested that perhaps it would be good enough to accept a target increase in the Earth’s temperature during the twenty-first century of over 4°C. That is twice as much as the upper limit of 2°C urged by climate scientists and officially agreed by the leaders of the G8 and other countries.

I will not settle for that, any more than I can accept proposals to hand the debate over to the business community in the hope that some purely technocratic solution can be found there. Of course, business, with its ability to adapt new technologies to its advantage, can and must play a major role in the transition to a low-carbon economy, but to hope that in the process it may become the main engine of change is, to say the least, naive. The development of alternative and renewable sources of energy is sluggish. Progress in individual countries has little impact on the global situation. After all that has happened to the global economy in recent years, few people are likely to credit claims that the free market can solve all the problems.

The answer is for states to show collective political leadership and responsibility. They must take on a political commitment commensurate with the seriousness of the threat. We have to resolve the problem of ‘climate injustice’, where climate change has the most serious consequences for developing countries that do not have the resources necessary to counter them. The leaders of Western countries need honestly to admit the scale of the challenge and the need for systemic rather than cosmetic measures. A new global agreement must be based on scientific data, not on a compromise between group interests.

The major developing countries, by now comparable in terms of emissions with the industrialized countries, need also to take on serious commitments. The growth of the economic power of countries like China, India and Brazil must be matched by growth in their sense of ecological responsibility. Joining the fight against climate change is in their own interests. It is, nevertheless, for the rich countries to act first. Their inaction over the past 20 years gives them no right to lecture others on the subject.

In the final analysis, everybody will have to make sacrifices and learn to reach compromise solutions that take account of the interests of the major players in the world economy. Not that these always coincide perfectly.

We need a new model of development

The financial crisis that started in 2008, and which, in my opinion, is not yet over, demonstrated how closely intertwined are the three major challenges of the modern globalized world. Undeniably, militarism, expensive military interventions and the growth of military spending all played a crucial role in the explosive growth of budget deficits, most notably in the United States, that triggered the crisis. Another reason was the economic model itself, premised on overconsumption and excessive profits. It is this same model that condemns us to the continuing degradation of the environment. It is all one big tangle.

The crisis took world leaders completely by surprise. At the G8 summit in Japan just a couple of months before it started, they seemed to have no awareness of tell-tale signs of what was to come. Their reaction to the crisis when it came was little more impressive.

From the outset, I said that we could not restrict ourselves only to firefighting, and I had some questions I wanted to put to the ‘Group of Twenty’ leading economic powers in response to the crisis. The mere fact that the leaders of the G8 had now to be joined on an equal footing by the leaders of China, India, Brazil and nine other countries was very telling. That is simply how it now has to be, reflecting a shift in the global economic and political balance.

In early 2009, New York Times Syndicate published my article, listing questions I had for the G20, in newspapers around the world. The first of these was ‘whether the decisions adopted in London can resolve the global financial and economic crisis, setting the world economy on track to sustainable growth’. My own opinion was that the decisions taken at the first summits of the G20 could only be a first step. ‘Crisis prevention should not be the G20’s main task. What’s needed is a transition to a new model, integrating social, environmental and economic factors.’

Another question concerned the place of the G20 within the system of global institutions. ‘What is this group?’ I asked. ‘A “global politburo”, a “club of the powerful”, a prototype for a world government? How will it interact with the United Nations?’ I wrote:

I thought that the G20 could not ignore political problems closely linked with the fate of the world economy.

Within the framework of the World Political Forum and the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, we carefully studied the course of the crisis and social processes accompanying it. In several countries, including the United States, mass protest movements materialized.

During a trip to the United States in 2011, I saw protest demonstrations of the Occupy Wall Street movement that had sprung up and spread to many other countries. Millions of people were asking why it should be primarily ordinary people who were having to tighten their belts when they had not been responsible for the crisis. Extremists and irresponsible elements tried to hijack the protests, and that could, of course, only be condemned, but there were those who tried to use that as a pretext to write off the protest movement in its entirety.

I believed, and still do, that people have a legitimate democratic right to protest about extreme inequality and injustice in the distribution of wealth in society. In November 2011, I said at a conference of the Forum in Montpellier that the people who came out on to the streets and were ‘occupying Wall Street’ quite rightly blame the crisis on the mammoth corporations that push tax loopholes favourable to themselves through parliaments.

Politics, I pointed out, is confined in an iron cage by the demands and dogmas of neo-liberal economics, but every day it becomes increasingly obvious that these dogmas do not stimulate, but stifle, economic development.

The development model based on giving priority exclusively to the economic factors of profit and consumption, shovelling around huge amounts of money while ignoring social and economic responsibilities, has manifestly failed. It generates social injustice, inequality, confrontation and crises and is fraught with catastrophic consequences. Transition to a different model, staged but fairly urgent, struck me as inescapable. That, as I wrote in an article published in the International Herald Tribune and Rossiyskaya Gazeta in late 2009, will require a change in our system of values, a search for new drivers and incentives for economic development:

Another issue needing to be rethought in the light of the crisis was the role of the state. ‘Return of the State’ was the title of an article I wrote at the very beginning of the crisis. More than 30 years ago, I said, ‘an attack was launched on the role of the state. Economists, businessmen and politicians declared it to be the source of nearly all the economy’s woes.’ In those years, the electorate was choosing to vote for politicians who promised to cut back state bureaucracy and give greater freedom to entrepreneurs. This was exploited by people who, under the slogan ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’, wanted to give maximum freedom of action to large corporations, to exempt them from important obligations to society, and to dismantle structures safeguarding the welfare of workers.

Next, as the wave of globalization swept over the world, monetarist principles and a weakening of the role of government started to be introduced on an international scale. The Washington Consensus, I wrote, was an expression of these principles, imposed on many countries. What was the result?

Squeezing the state out of various areas of business and finance led to many organizations functioning entirely without regulation. Bubbles followed one after another: the dotcom bubble, the stock market, mortgage lending and financial bubbles. Although sooner or later all these bubbles burst, in the process a small group of individuals succeeded in accumulating fabulous wealth while the living standards of the majority, at best, stagnated. The obligation to assist poorer countries was simply ignored.

Weakening of the role of the state has fostered rampant financial fraud and corruption and facilitated the invasion by organized crime of the economies of many countries, as well as disproportionate growth in the role of corporate lobbies. Lobbyists are in reality a gigantic bureaucracy outside the state with huge resources at their disposal and levers for influencing politics. This distorts the democratic process and has serious consequences for society.

The crisis brought a period of sobering up. It was states and their leaders who were obliged to take over responsibility for rescuing the economy from the most dangerous deadlock in decades. Unfortunately, world leaders have not so far gone beyond firefighting measures, but sooner or later they will have little option but to return to doing their duty by society and the environment.

Only the state can lay down the ground rules in such matters, aggravated by the crisis, as equitable sharing out of the tax burden, stimulating economic growth, and ensuring the necessary level of social welfare safeguards. Only the state can deliver access for everyone to education and healthcare, and the development of fundamental science. Only the state can mobilize the resources and tools to promote and implement innovative technologies. Only the state is capable of establishing the robust standards and regulations without which there is no hope of effectively combating the ecological disaster threatening the world.

And, of course, only through the efforts of states, constantly driven on by the active involvement and unrelenting pressure of global civil society, will we find our way to a new political framework for international security and world governance. This must be based on repudiation of confrontational thinking, of the urge to dominate international affairs, on respect for freedom of choice and a plurality of cultures and models of development, a willingness to engage in dialogue and extensive cooperation. Which again brings us back to the ideals and principles of New Thinking.

Over the years, I have pondered how relations between states will evolve in the foreseeable future, and what role in building a new global architecture will be played by the countries that bear the greatest responsibility for good order in the world. Let me say at once that all nations, large, medium and small, can and must contribute to the process. The principle of sovereign equality of states, set down in the UN Charter, remains as valid today as ever it was. There is, however, also no doubt that the world’s major powers, and Russia among them, must play the leading and most demanding role. It is they who have most to answer for to history.

The unipolar world, with one country invariably having the last word, did not come to pass. In the last two decades we have witnessed a gradual shift in the global balance of power. The ‘collective West’, the United States and the European Union, have increasingly to consider the opinions of other players on the stage of world politics. Primarily, that means Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all of whom are seeking to coordinate their policies within the new and, in my opinion, promising association of BRICS. At the same time, the centre of gravity of the global economy is increasingly shifting towards the Asia-Pacific region, where Japan remains prominent, but where other powerful countries are appearing: not only China, but also the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and, on the other side of the ocean, the countries of Latin America. All this is, of course, certain to have political repercussions.

In the past decades I have visited almost all the countries mentioned, met their leaders, representatives of civil society, scientists, artists and young people. I feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity. Nothing can replace seeing the world for yourself, sensing through personal contact what people are feeling, and entering into dialogue with them.

George Shultz and Ronald Reagan

Remembering my first trips after relinquishing the presidency, rereading my speeches, press reports and interview, I can see that much of what was said is still relevant today. I hope that my reflections on the part played by the principal actors on the stage of world politics in the movement towards a new, more secure and just world order will be of value to those who take the responsibility for peace on our planet upon themselves.

In all the changes that have taken or will take place in the world, the United States remains the most important player, in politics, the world economy, science and technological innovation. To attempt to deny that would simply be unrealistic. Much in the world depends on how the United States uses its potential, whether constructively through cooperation and dialogue, or by imposing its will on others. I took that as my starting point in preparing for my first ‘post-presidential’ visit to America.

I had no shortage of invitations, and was able to accept about a dozen of them. Then there was the question of when to go. I even had a visit from the US ambassador to Moscow, Bob Strauss. He conveyed President Bush’s request that my trip should not take place until after an official visit by Yeltsin. The ambassador made it clear that this was being done at the insistence of the Russian side. I found such touchiness rather surprising, but Yeltsin and his entourage were already trying to isolate me and went to great lengths to avoid all contact. In practical terms there was no problem, because Yeltsin was going to the United States in February 1992 and my visit was scheduled for the first half of May.

It has to be said that later, during my trip, there were occasional, well, hiccups, caused by the eagerness of the Russian authorities of the time to cut Gorbachev down to size. The Russian ambassador to the United States, Vladimir Lukin, was instructed not to take part in any activities related to my visit. He was absent from the dinner to which President George Bush invited me at the White House, but then asked for a meeting at the hotel where I was staying in Washington, DC. Frankly, I found this silliness distasteful, and it did nothing to enhance the reputation of the Russian state authorities.

For me, the main thing was for the visit to be conducted in a way that would maximize its benefits for Russia and relations between our two countries. An extensive programme of meetings and speeches was arranged, and in two weeks we travelled 14,000 kilometres. I and my companions visited 11 of the greatest US cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Boston, and others. There were many speeches and meetings, including a speech to leaders of the US Congress. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who headed the committee preparing my visit, did a great deal to achieve this result.

I would like to single George out. I remember our first meeting in 1985 very well. It occurred during his visit to Moscow to attend the funeral of General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko. Of course, we already knew that he belonged to the realists in Ronald Reagan’s administration and advocated looking for a way out of the current deadlock in Soviet–US relations. From that first acquaintance it was difficult to tell how well we might be able to cooperate.

At the time, there were not a few among the leaders and our experts who believed we would get nowhere with Reagan and would just have to wait for a different, less conservative, less anti-communist president. I disagreed. I felt strongly there was no time to lose. I said that to George Shultz when we met, and it seemed to me I had found someone interested in continuing that conversation.

Preparations began for the first Soviet–American summit in six years. Shultz came to Moscow and Shevardnadze went to Washington, DC. It was heavy going. We had a sense that the idea of a substantive meeting, not just a first acquaintance but a serious discussion leading to meaningful results, was coming up against major obstacles in Reagan’s administration. The Americans had a particularly sour reaction to our proposal that the summit should conclude with a joint statement announcing a programme to break the deadlock in negotiations on disarmament and restoring normal relations between our countries. Who needs rhetoric? What the Americans needed was action. By action, they meant unilateral concessions by the Soviet Union, while their own position remained unchanged.

In the end, however, common sense prevailed. Literally at the last moment, Shultz told us that the Americans were prepared to work on the joint statement. We discovered that Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger and other ‘hawks’ in the administration were furious that Shultz had managed to persuade President Reagan to take this step.

When we began work on the text, we found Shultz to be a constructive partner. We were able to document the vitally important principles that nuclear war was totally unacceptable and that the two sides would not strive to gain military superiority over each other. We recalled that work many times in our conversations in later years, and I am glad to say that Shultz never departed from those principles.

We agreed that the negotiations would be conducted through official channels, that our chief negotiators would be the USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs and the US Secretary of State, and also our countries’ ambassadors in Moscow and Washington. Shultz was against secret diplomacy, ‘back channels’ and similar methods. I was all in favour of his approach. Negotiations should be conducted honestly and, as far as possible, openly, without offstage plots and surprises.

In the course of my numerous meetings with George Shultz, I gradually built up an understanding of his negotiating style and approach to the big issues of world politics. He showed himself to be a true diplomat, able to defend his negotiating stance, while at the same time looking out for points of contact with the position of the other party. It was crucial that at moments of heightened tension, which most often resulted from attempts by opponents of improved Soviet–American relations to put a spanner in the works, George showed restraint and tolerance and tried to keep the temperature down. This was much in evidence, for example, during the ‘spy ring scandal’ in autumn 1986, which almost torpedoed the Reykjavik summit.

Before Eduard Shevardnadze left for the UN General Assembly session in New York in September 1986, I instructed him to convey to Shultz the question, partly rhetorical but important, of who needed to provoke a bout of spy mania on the eve of a meeting on which the fate of negotiations on nuclear disarmament depended. I was not, of course, expecting a direct answer to the question, but to give Secretary of State Shultz his due, he participated personally in negotiations which succeeded in untying the knot. It was a real diplomatic marathon, and reports of the conversations were forwarded urgently to Moscow. Ultimately, a solution was devised that enabled both sides to save face.

In the spring of 1987, when George Shultz arrived in Moscow to discuss preparations for my first visit to the United States, literally on the eve of his arrival, a new ‘sex for secrets’ spy scandal broke. Opponents of better Soviet–American relations behaved like personal enemies of Shultz. The Secretary of State found himself in a difficult position and obliged to read out in Moscow a text with accusations against the Soviet Union. We could see he was doing so without the least enthusiasm. Most of our time was spent on specific issues relating to the negotiations on nuclear weapons. We were able to make progress not only on the issue of medium-range missiles, but also on a number of problems concerning strategic weapons.

Many years later, George and I met in Moscow and were reminiscing about the dramatic months before the signing in Washington of the first agreement on real nuclear disarmament, the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate- and Shorter-Range Missiles. George told me:

In early 1988, it became clear that Shultz wanted Ronald Reagan’s presidency to end with the signing of the strategic arms reduction treaty. It seemed that was also what the president wanted, but it was Shultz who shouldered the main burden. He came to Moscow several times, accompanied by large groups of experts, and the negotiating was very intense.

Meeting Shultz during those months I could see that the burden was taking a toll on him physically. He often looked fatigued. In his memoirs, he later wrote candidly about how bitterly opponents of the treaty had resisted it in Washington, and this at a time when 98 per cent of the provisions of the treaty had already been agreed. This time, alas, the Washington ‘hawks’ defeated the Secretary of State. He told me later that it had been his greatest disappointment in all his years in Reagan’s administration.

Even after retiring, Shultz has retained enormous authority in American politics. His opinion on important international problems is listened to. He has also retained his interest in our country. All these years we have kept in touch, by correspondence, meeting at international conferences, during my visits to the United States and his to Russia.

My visit to the United States in May 1992 began with a meeting with Ronald Reagan, which was to prove our last. Ronald and Nancy invited us to the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. A large building with an exhibition, library and archive, it is a political centre open to the public. Presidential centres are an important American tradition, built with donations from sponsors and funded in part by the state. I have been in several, and each in its way reflects not only the career but also the personality of the president. Nancy showed us the place next to the Reagan Library where, as she put it, ‘we shall some day be laid to rest’. ‘But’, she added, ‘we are in no hurry.’

We also visited the Reagan ranch near Los Angeles. Over the years of our joint efforts we had come to understand each other better. It was not easy for a right-wing American conservative and a person whose career had developed inside the Soviet Communist Party to achieve mutual understanding and trust, but we were conscious of our responsibilities towards our countries and the world, and that made the difference.

I remember a few years ago asking George Shultz: ‘What if the president had been someone other than Reagan, do you think we would have been able to make progress on nuclear disarmament and get that first treaty signed?’ After a moment’s reflection, he replied:

The Reagan Presidential Library awarded me a Freedom medal. I wanted to make my speech on receiving the award more personal than the usual diplomatic courtesies. I reminded my audience that by no means everywhere in the world had the four freedoms triumphed that Franklin D. Roosevelt had proclaimed in 1941: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. All these freedoms, I said, are constituents of the concept of freedom of choice. Our generation had not found it easy to turn the course of global events in a direction that would make it possible to implement those principles.

I believe that came about because we listened to ordinary people.

The Cold War and how it had been overcome was the main topic of my speech in Fulton, where we went from California. Westminster College in this small town in Missouri is where, 46 years before me, Winston Churchill gave his famous speech about the descending of an ‘iron curtain’ in Europe. On the slope of a gentle hillside were long rows of benches for an audience of some 15,000 people, many of whom had come from other cities.

At the back of the platform from which I was speaking rose a massive concrete wall with gaping openings in the shape of human figures. The artist’s imagination had found a succinct way of expressing the drama of the Cold War, the irrepressible desire of human beings to break through the wall of alienation and confrontation. It was symbolic that the designer of this monument was a granddaughter of Winston Churchill. She was present in the audience and, of course, there was good reason for her sculpture to have been erected in Fulton.

In his speech, Churchill had called for the world to be saved from the communist threat. The decisive role, he believed, would be played by power, and primarily by armed force. Indeed, he titled his speech ‘The Sinews of Peace’. Reminding my audience of this, I told them of my own view of the situation at that time. ‘The world community had a unique opportunity to steer the world in a different direction and radically alter the role of force and war. That, of course, ultimately depended on the Soviet Union and the United States.’ That opportunity had not been taken. Stalin’s government saw the victory over fascism as tantamount to a victory for socialism and embarked on a course of spreading its own kind of ‘socialism’ to the rest of the world. The West too, however, and first and foremost the United States, also blundered. ‘The conclusion that military aggression by the USSR was likely to follow, was fallacious and dangerous. That was out of the question.’

The outcome of mutual distrust and misinterpretation of events was the Cold War. ‘Under the guise of protestations of peace-loving intentions and the need to protect the interests of the world’s peoples, both sides took decisions that split the world. Their antagonism was misrepresented by both sides as a necessary confrontation between good and evil.’

I urged my listeners to acknowledge an important reality: it was not possible in this day and age for ‘particular states or groups of states to reign supreme on the international stage’. My speech in Fulton was less a polemic against Churchill than against those hatching plans for global domination.

This speech was followed by meetings at two major American universities, Stanford in California and Emory in Atlanta, Georgia. University and student audiences are always wonderfully attentive and lively. Such wise and experienced politicians as Jimmy Carter and George Shultz as well as university professors and government representatives were there, and actively joined in the debate.

One of the main points I wanted to make in my speeches was that we cannot afford to adopt a fatalistic attitude towards the future. Those who believe it is unpredictable and that human beings are powerless to alter the inexorable course of events are plain wrong. It is no good trying to support this view by referring back to history. History was not fated. We had succeeded in overcoming the ‘logic of fatalism’ and put an end to the Cold War, but now, I warned, events were developing ever more rapidly, and we must change in order not to allow the intellectual and moral development of mankind to lag behind changing existential conditions. Mankind has no right to refuse to rationally regulate impersonal processes. That would be a fatal mistake.

I spoke to the students about the state under the rule of law (a topic suggested by George Shultz) and about democracy. ‘There is nothing automatically safeguarding democracy from defeat. It will always find itself being tested. It has no shortage of open or covert opponents and false friends. Democracy does not just arrive by itself. It needs constantly to be cultivated and nurtured.’

The twin American capitals of New York and Washington, DC were, of course, the most critical stops of the trip. They are where the American elites are concentrated, with their enormous potential, but also certain quirks and delusions. Would I succeed in conveying my thoughts and conclusions to these influential people?

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, I focused mainly on the relationship between the United States and Russia. As far as I can tell, I said, two basic approaches have evolved to relations between our countries: ‘The first aims to profit from the current state of the Russian Federation by preventing her from enjoying to the full the status of a great power. The second is based on the premise that a strong, rejuvenated, democratic Russia is in the national interests of the United States.’ I urged my audience of experts in international relations and military politics to make a firm decision. You have great scope, I said. A great deal remains to be done before the partnership proclaimed between our countries ceases to be mere rhetoric and becomes a reality. The top priority should be

Reading that speech today, I can only regret that those suggestions were not acted on at the time, and today it seems completely utopian to many. I believe that now, when the situation is largely changed, this is a task that will have to be returned to, if only to avoid making new mistakes.

The discussion at the Economic Club of New York was meaningful and at times heated. It was taking place at a complicated and bewildering moment. Economic reforms had begun in Russia and I was in favour of their overall direction, but critical of the ‘shock therapy’ approach. I was equally critical of the hopes placed on the magic wand of recommendations from American advisers and donor aid. I told the assembled businessmen and economists:

Unfortunately, American business was clearly in no hurry to enter Russia. I pointed out that there was almost no American capital invested. Such diffidence on the part of American entrepreneurs might lead to imbalances that would benefit neither them nor Russia. I urged them to act. ‘Today a campaign in the East is a bold venture, but not a gamble. There is risk, but it is entirely quantifiable. Anyone who comes into the Russian market and, despite all the difficulties, stays, will soon be in a position to implement large-scale projects.’

Regrettably, not many American corporations went down that road, but for those that did, it paid off, as I was told by the chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Alan Mulally, when we met some years later. He spoke admiringly of Russian engineers and said many components of the latest Boeing aircraft were being manufactured in Russia. This, of course, raises the question of why Russia’s leaders missed the opportunity to develop our own aircraft industry. I believe our dealings with the world’s giants could have been handled much more to Russia’s benefit.

In Washington I had a meeting with President George Bush, visiting the White House, which I had previously visited during my two official visits, in a private capacity, without any claim to an official role. It was nevertheless no mere diplomatic courtesy visit. I spent more than two hours in the residence of the president of the United States, and our conversation was serious and meaningful.

First there was lunch in one of the rooms, attended by Barbara Bush, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, an adviser and close friend of the president, the president’s brother, Preston, and son George W. Bush, at that time still only preparing to run for governor of Texas. George W. Bush behaved modestly and gave the impression of being very polite.

We talked about the prospects for relations with Russia, Scowcroft particularly asking questions. He wanted to know how robust the Commonwealth of Independent States was organizationally, and asked whether it was necessary to build a relationship with it. That was a difficult question to answer. Of course, I could see even then that the CIS was something of a formality. I advised that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union it was now necessary to have relations with the individual states, but primarily, of course, with Russia. It would be there that the main events that would decide the fate of democracy in the vast post-Soviet space would be played out. It would be with Russia too that the major issues of military politics would have to be agreed, and in cooperation with Russia that regional problems would have to be addressed. At the same time, I said I was sure that the states that had emerged after the dissolution of the USSR would eventually have to find some form of integration, and America should not interfere with that.

Then there were just the three of us, Bush, Baker and myself, and we recalled what we had managed to do together. This was not mere reminiscence, however. We talked about my impressions on this trip and exchanged views on international issues. James Baker expressed astonishment that the question of who owned and controlled the nuclear weapons in the CIS inherited from the Soviet Union seemed not to have been cleared up. Leonid Kravchuk and other Ukrainian figures appeared to be envisaging almost joint control: ‘three fingers on the button’. Clearly, the only sensible solution was to concentrate all nuclear weapons in Russia. I was shocked that ‘the heirs of the Soviet Union’ proved incapable of reaching agreement by themselves and needed Baker’s mediation.

I talked to Bush and Baker frankly about my concern over events in Yugoslavia. So far, in Russia we had got by without a lot of bloodshed, I said, but in Yugoslavia everything was building up towards a major disaster. Bush replied that he was concerned about this himself and the US did not want to force the pace. As a year earlier, during our summit meeting in Novo-Ogarevo, he complained that some European countries were doing precisely that. I told him about my talks in the Kremlin in November 1991 with the leaders of Serbia and Croatia, Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman. It seemed to me then, and later, that the international community was not doing enough to move developments in Yugoslavia in the direction of negotiations.

Partners should be equal

I was to speak in the US Congress, and prepared meticulously. I was given a warm and dignified reception at the highest level. Members of both houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, assembled in the historic setting of the Statuary Hall and I was welcomed by the leaders of the majority and minority parties. I knew many of those present from meetings and negotiations in Moscow and Washington. I recognized that this was not so much personal to me as to the change for the better in the relationship between our countries.

Tom Foley, the speaker of the House of Representatives, referred to that in his welcoming speech:

Foley’s speech showed a much deeper understanding of what happened in 1991 than many of our so-called analysts:

Politicians, I said in my speech, have a responsibility to ensure that their nation has a correct understanding of its own vital interests. ‘It is dangerous to pretend these coincide with the opportunistic, selfish needs of particular influential groups or sections of society.’ The Russian Federation, looking to establish itself as a new state with its own national interests, is seeking a partnership of equals with the United States. This is also in the interests of America, not least, I said, because ‘Russia will undoubtedly be a large, prosperous state whose weight in the world will be in accordance with its immense potential.’ I expressed that view in the United States on many occasions, both during my first trip and later. It is a conviction I still hold.

Returning to the main theme of my speech, the issue of an equal and mutually beneficial partnership between our countries, I said:

Reading these words, spoken more than 20 years ago, some will doubtless wish to accuse me of naivety in the light of much that has happened in the world and been done in US foreign policy in the meantime. I do not take them back. The United States chose to go in the opposite direction, behaved like a ‘hyperpower’, and got its fingers badly burned in the process. The world will, in the end, be obliged to return to the principles of international law, equal partnerships and shared security. Today, many in America have come to recognize this. It would, of course, have been much better if it could have been recognized sooner and by all of them.

My trip was coming to an end. The last venue was Boston, for a dialogue with the students and professors of Harvard University and a visit to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. For many of my generation, Kennedy was special. I still remember the impression his death made on us and cannot believe, as I have said openly, that his assassination was the deed of a loner. Some years ago, I visited the Sixth Floor Museum at the School Book Depository building in Dallas, now a memorial to Kennedy, and looked down at the street from the window from which Oswald shot. A chill ran down my spine. I wrote in the visitors’ book, ‘He looked far ahead and wanted to change a great deal. Perhaps that is the key to the mystery of the death of President John F. Kennedy.’[5] Later, when I met Oliver Stone, who directed a film about Kennedy, I told him what I had written. Stone agreed.

The hours spent at the Kennedy Library were amazingly warm and sociable. Our trip had ended, I said, among friends. We were welcomed by the president’s widow, Jackie Kennedy, a woman of great charm, his brother Senator Ted Kennedy, whom I already knew well and appreciated, and other members of the extensive Kennedy family which has suffered so many tribulations. Raisa and I made no attempt to conceal our respect for them.

I felt it was important to talk of the continuing relevance of the heritage of John F. Kennedy. I recalled his words two years into the presidency that the problems had been more difficult than he anticipated, and that the resources of the United States for solving them were not limitless. I said these words encourage us to reflect seriously. ‘Already in those days the world badly needed states to cooperate in combating the challenges it faced. The world needed thinking that looked beyond pretensions to dominate and solve all problems single-handed.’

I recalled, as I was often to do subsequently to American audiences, the president’s advice, referred to above, at the American University in Washington, DC on 10 June 1963, ‘not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats’.

In the light of how swiftly negotiations proceeded to conclusion of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, or in space, it is particularly noticeable how many opportunities were missed during the decades that followed, I said.

On this last day of my major visit to America, I attempted a summary. I shared my impressions with the guests at this concluding lunch:

Many Americans I spoke to told me that the ending of the Cold War had changed their lives. The explanation was simply that for decades people had been living under the constant shadow of the nuclear threat. In the United States, just as in the Soviet Union, people were instructed on how to behave in the event of a nuclear attack, what supplies they would need to stock up on, how to shield themselves from deadly radiation (assuming they were not killed instantly). The end of the Cold War freed them from a nagging fear which, over time, they might get used to or forget but which was always subconsciously there.

The role of the United States in the world

Since then, I have been back to the United States many times, visiting dozens of towns and states, giving lectures to students, business associations, Russia analysts and international relations researchers, and social activists. Americans are good listeners: you can always tell from the reaction of the audience how they are responding to what has been said. After the talk there is always time to answer questions, most of which show a genuine desire to make sense of what is happening in the world and to understand the speaker’s standpoint.

American newspapers, as a rule, report the talks objectively and in detail, and after these sessions I am curious to know what people are saying about them. I remember the comment of one American who had come from another city to hear me in Denver, Colorado. He said, ‘When Gorbachev is visiting, I always try to get to his talks even if I have to travel miles. I don’t always agree with what he says, but always find it interesting. I respect his opinion because I can see he is stating it honestly and directly. Including when he is criticizing America.’

I have, of course, often criticized US policy. When you meet Americans you notice that literally all of them, ordinary people and politicians alike, believe that America is a special country, exceptional, as Barack Obama once said, and that it has a right to lead the world. That can sometimes grate, but what is more important, I think, is not which words are used but what kind of world leader America wants to be: an exclusive, monopolistic leader or a leading partner cooperating with other countries and taking account of their opinions. After the Soviet Union disappeared off the political map, that question became supremely important.

My spring 1992 visit to the United States coincided with the presidential election campaign which, this time, in addition to the two main party candidates, President and Republican George Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, included a third candidate, multimillionaire Ross Perot. One journalist even asked me, no doubt in jest, whether I might stand as vice-president on Perot’s ticket. I told him I had higher ambitions than that, having already been a president.

More seriously, the first election campaign in the new circumstances showed that Americans expected their politicians to focus mainly on domestic social and economic issues rather than foreign policy. I was often asked, though, for my thoughts on Russia’s role in the world now that the Cold War had ended. My answer was that America should not try to play the role of global policeman. I detected that, in any case, American people were disinclined to support any such behaviour, but added that the role of the United States in the new world order could be even greater than before if they joined in multilateral efforts to promote the values of democracy and global problems that affect all mankind.

The opinion polls were suggesting George Bush was lagging behind Bill Clinton. That may be why, in the final stages of the campaign, he rather went over the top and, in a bid for votes, started talking about how the United States had won the Cold War. It did not help him to win the election.

I expressed my view on this subject unambiguously: the ending of the Cold War had not been a victory for one side or the other. It had been our shared victory, a victory for common sense. If one side was going to declare itself the winner, if the opinion took root that America was always right, that her democracy was the most democratic and her ideals the most ideal, and if she decided to promote her ideals through the use of force as the most effective argument in international affairs, disaster would be sure to follow. The only proper way, I stressed again and again, was cooperation and partnership based on the principles of international law.

Bill Clinton won the 1992 election. He had no international experience and at first focused, with considerable success, on America’s domestic problems. Economic growth resumed, education, science and new technology were given significant support, and that served to ensure that four years later he was re-elected with a substantial majority. As far as his foreign policy was concerned, as I told him bluntly when I got to know him better after his presidency, there was much I disagreed with strongly.

The US political elite, having claimed victory in the Cold War, drew the ‘appropriate conclusions’ from this delusion. Overconfident about its power, it embarked not only on military intervention in the Yugoslav conflict, but launched missile strikes against Iraq. Its ‘victory complex’ did nothing for relations with Russia.

On the surface, everything seemed to be going on satisfactorily. A regular exchange of visits took place, like a well-rehearsed stage production, with hugs and mutual praises, but this became an irritant. There was no sense of genuine equality, no real sense of partnership, and when, in the second half of the 1990s, the US Ambassador in Moscow asked me what advice I would give President Clinton, who was about to visit Russia, I said it would be best not to pat Russia on the back. Compliments on the policy of shock therapy, I told him, which had weakened Russia and plunged huge numbers of our citizens into poverty, would only annoy people who were beginning to wonder if a weak, half-strangled Russia was what America wanted.

Behind the facade of amity, American policy took no notice of Russia’s interests. This was apparent not only in the decision to press ahead with expanding NATO. An attempt to isolate Russia from the new states of the former Soviet Union was increasingly obvious. Anti-Russian sentiment and behaviour were encouraged in Ukraine; there was an anti-Russian tinge to the US flirtation with the president of Uzbekistan; negotiations over oil in the Caspian Sea region excluded Russia completely. Russia’s weakness was exploited in order to exclude her from influence in global politics. In the late 1990s , a respected Russia analyst delivered a paper with the title, ‘World Without Russia’.[6] Politicians, he claimed, might have to get used to the idea that the world’s major issues would have to be resolved with little or no Russian involvement.

I spoke against this possibility. In my speeches while travelling around the United States, in articles and interviews, I argued that Russia would revive. In her history there had been times of troubles and severe ordeal, but she had always emerged from them to became a strong, influential power, a nation without which no world order was imaginable.

‘America needs its own Perestroika’

In the final stages of his presidency, Bill Clinton seemed to have understood that a foreign policy of unilateral interventions was, in the long run, unsustainable. At the 1999 Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, he recalled the Charter of Paris for a New Europe and spoke of the need for mutual consideration of the interests of all countries. The baton was, however, already passing to a new president, George Bush Junior.

What course of global action would the new president choose? What kind of relations would he develop with Russia? It was impossible to know the answer in advance. On the one hand, he was saying US foreign policy should be more humble and modest. As secretary of state he appointed Colin Powell, whom I knew well as a politician whose thinking was realistic and balanced. One could hope that George W. Bush had inherited the gene for moderation from his father. On the other hand, it was known that he was susceptible to the influence of neo-conservatives, supporters of an aggressive foreign policy, of whom there were many in his entourage. Chief among them was the vice-president, Dick Cheney, whom I well remembered from his role in the administration of George Bush Senior as someone who thought in Cold War categories.

In April 2001, I was on one of my trips to the United States, crossing the country from north to south and east to west. I was told that the State Department and the White House were interested in talking to me. Needless to say, I did not decline the invitations, the more so because this was before the first meeting between George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.

My talk with Colin Powell was thorough and detailed, and certainly not limited to reminiscing about our joint efforts to end the Cold War and nuclear arms race. In respect of relations with Russia, Powell seemed to me to be thinking constructively, emphasizing opportunities for working together to resolve regional problems, particularly in the Middle East. The secretary of state very much wanted his term in office to culminate in a settlement of the Israel–Palestine conflict, but subsequently he found himself drawn into quite other matters.

My visit to the White House, which I had not entered since 1992, began with a conversation with Condoleezza Rice, who had been appointed national security adviser to the president. She had begun her career in national politics in the administration of George Bush Senior, taking part in the negotiations on disarmament. Bush and his adviser on national security matters, Brent Scowcroft, had a high opinion of her. The newspapers wrote that she had claims to great influence on the president.

Some time after the beginning of our conversation, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card came in. Such an august delegation was a signal in itself, and our meaningful conversation was no mere diplomatic nicety. Bush said he understood the importance of Russia and her role in the world and was minded to cooperate with her. There needed to be a meeting with President Putin as soon as possible, he said, and hoped there would shortly be an announcement about it.

What he then went on to say was obviously intended to be conveyed to the Russian president: ‘I am a direct man. Putin is also a direct man. I think we will manage to cooperate.’ That was, of course, an important signal and I communicated it to the addressee. On 7 May, when I returned to Russia, I had a meeting with Vladimir Putin during which I passed on to him my impressions from the trip and, in detail, my conversations in the State Department and the White House.

I am absolutely certain there were opportunities at that time for a move to all-round, serious interaction between Russia and the United States and, more broadly, with the West. These increased after the events of 11 September 2001 and Vladimir Putin’s subsequent overtures towards the United States. They came to nothing. Despite all efforts, with many summit meetings, no real collaboration came about and there was no improvement in relations. Why? I think because, despite the assurances of a willingness for cooperation and partnership, US realpolitik was directed towards creating a unipolar world.

In February 2007, President Putin raised this in a speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy. He spoke about the unilateral, non-legitimate use of military force in international affairs, about ignoring principles of international law, about the fact that the dominance afforded to military power was fuelling the urge in a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. He spoke of efforts to turn the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe into a tool for securing the interests of one country or a group of countries. He expressed Russia’s objection to the continuing enlargement of NATO and the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

In response, Putin was practically accused of restarting the Cold War. I did not agree with those accusations. ‘The president of Russia’, I said in an interview for Argumenty i Fakty, ‘was talking in Munich about something quite different: how to prevent the appearance in the world of new lines of division and a resumption of confrontation. The danger of that is real enough.’ I pointed to the fact that surveys in several countries had shown that people there shared our president’s concern about the situation in the world. In Germany more than 60 per cent of respondents agreed with his point of view.

There were some fairly blunt phrases in Putin’s Munich speech, but that was entirely understandable: in spite of all his overtures to the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush, the US administration has not compromised with Russia on a single one of the issues important for our country’s security. On the most important, the issues of enlargement of NATO and anti-ballistic missile defence, we have simply come up against a brick wall. I think this was just one manifestation of triumphalism after a supposed ‘winning’ of the Cold War and ‘superpower illusions’ (using the succinct wording of former Ambassador Jack Matlock), which reached their apogee during the Bush administration.

It was during this period that we began to hear talk to the effect that the United States was no longer just ‘the only remaining superpower’, but a ‘hyperpower’ capable of building a new kind of empire. Global politics very quickly supplied proof that this was not the case. In an article published in 2008 in the world’s leading media, I wrote:

The aspiration to dominate the world proved an unsustainable burden even for the United States with all its huge potential. The result, as Putin said in Munich (and I mentioned this in literally every speech I gave in the United States), was that the world has not become safer. On the contrary, the consequences of the policy have been disastrous for America itself. There has been an increase in anti-American sentiments in every region of the world, and acute financial and economic problems associated with astronomical spending on arms and military campaigns thousands of miles away from the American continent. Many social problems remain unresolved in the richest country in the world. Most importantly, as I wrote in an article published in the International Herald Tribune, ‘the rest of the world did not agree to play the role of “extras” in a film script written by Washington’.

Speaking in the United States, I never tired of reminding Americans of John F. Kennedy’s words in his 1963 speech in Washington to the American University:

In other words, there will either be peace for all, or peace for none.

I would ask my audience a question, ‘Do you want an America that acts as a global policeman, imposing democracy on other peoples with tanks and missiles?’ Never once did I find anyone wanting to answer that question affirmatively. Probably some agreed with me and others, at least, thought it over. The unwisdom of the pursuit of ‘a monopoly of leadership’ and its dire consequences were becoming increasingly obvious to many Americans, both members of the political elite and, particularly, ordinary citizens. People were aware of the need for change.

Before the beginning of the 2008 presidential campaign, two young people in the audience asked me after a speech in St. Louis: ‘What advice would you give America today, when we all feel that something is not right in our country?’ I tried to dodge the question by saying this was something new – usually it was America that gave advice to other countries – but my questioners persisted. So I said: ‘I am not going to try to tell you what you should do or offer you a blueprint, but one thing I am sure about is that America needs its own, American, Perestroika.’ People rose from their seats and gave those words a standing ovation.

The election of Obama

It was no surprise that, during their campaigning, both presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, spoke of the need for change. Even the Republican McCain felt obliged to distance himself from his predecessor.

Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election was an important milestone. I remember a conversation I had with an old friend, an American who always voted Democrat. During the primaries he supported Hillary Clinton. ‘Obama appeals to me’, he said, ‘but I just do not believe a black candidate with a name like Barack Obama could be elected president in our country.’ And yet, a few months later, that is exactly what happened.

Obama’s election generated great expectations around the world. Awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize was a kind of advance payment, an expression of hope and support for someone who was promising to end wars and focus on ‘nation-building’, that is, finding solutions to urgent problems not on faraway continents but at home.

I paid attention to the advice some veteran US policymakers were giving Obama during the first days of his presidency. Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example, advised him to pay particular attention to relations with China. A speech by Brzezinski in Beijing could be seen as a call for the creation of a kind of ‘G2’ consisting of America and China. Reacting to that proposal, I wrote: ‘Of course, China’s global economic and political importance will keep growing, but I think those who would like to start a new geopolitical game will be in for a disappointment. China is unlikely to accept; more generally, such games belong to the past.’

Henry Kissinger’s proposals too were effectively assuming a new geopolitical division of the world which was unlikely to bring us to anywhere we would want to be. What we need, I wrote, is new, modern approaches. I pinned great hopes on Obama, and was not alone in that.

I have had two meetings with President Obama. The first was in spring 2009 during a trip to the United States. I first talked in detail to Vice-President Joe Biden, and we covered a whole raft of problems, after which I had a brief conversation with the president. Taken together these conversations merited a telegram, which I duly sent the following day from our embassy to President Medvedev. What seemed particularly important to me was that Obama understood the need to break the stalemate in reducing nuclear stockpiles. For that, I said in our talk, the United States needed to take some constructive steps on anti-missile defence. I had the impression that the president and vice-president were both listening.

My second conversation with the president came during his visit to Moscow in summer 2009, and confirmed my impression that he was a serious person with a modern outlook, open to dialogue and capable of taking far-reaching decisions.

Obama was an hour late arriving at the old Gostiny Dvor commercial centre, where he addressed students and where we met. The delay was caused by a long conversation with Prime Minister Putin. I told the president I fully understood the importance of this conversation for both of them. He replied: ‘I was more inclined to listen, because it seemed to me it was very important to Putin to have an opportunity to get many things off his chest. We had a frank and friendly discussion and I was pleased with it.’

The president added that he had a lot of concerns and complicated matters to deal with back home, but thought it very important to come to Russia and not put off making a start on improving relations after eight years during which the previous administration had let them drift, which had led to their present state. I supported the president and said that, of course, there are always many problems and, as we had discussed in our first meeting at the White House, approval ratings may fall but action has to be taken here and now, without any pauses for reflection such as had been favoured by the administration of President Bush Senior. I told Obama he would see in his meetings with representatives of Russian society that people here wanted good relations with the United States, but on an equal footing, with Russia being listened to.

In our short conversation I managed to raise several important issues: nuclear disarmament and its link with anti-missile defence and the problem of conventional weapons; the triangular relationship of Russia, the United States and China; and President Dmitry Medvedev’s initiative for a new pan-European treaty. I said it was important for dialogue between the United States and Russia not to be restricted to acute immediate problems like the nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran, and for both sides to feel they were achieving real benefit from it.

Obama said he would pay constant personal attention to relations with Russia, and I think that, subsequently, this was clearly evident.

I believe Barack Obama succeeded in doing a lot during his first presidential term, despite extreme opposition from conservatives and the far right. That was true of both his domestic and foreign policy agendas. At home he introduced and pushed through important social reforms, particularly in respect of healthcare, where he introduced a system of statutory health insurance. His political stance was that the market system should be subject to rational regulation, whereas Mitt Romney, his opponent in the second election campaign, advocated giving priority to market forces which would supposedly sort everything out for the best if they were just left alone.

Obama has had his successes in foreign policy too. He honoured his promise to withdraw from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He openly supported the idea of a world without nuclear weapons, spoke out in favour of ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and decided against deploying anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. It is too soon to judge whether Russia and the United States will find a mutually acceptable solution to the ABM problem. Other systems are being deployed in Europe that may yet affect the overall strategic balance. Nonetheless, Obama’s decision was an important step in the right direction and paved the way for signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Prague in 2010.

When Obama was victorious in the November 2012 election I sent him the following message:

I expressed confidence that ‘the prerequisites are there for our countries to cooperate, both bilaterally and on the international stage’, and that, cooperating on a basis of mutual respect and trust, they ‘can do much to advance their own interests and those of the whole world’.

In late summer 2013, Obama found himself in an awkward situation in connection with the Syrian crisis. Responding to reports that Syria had used chemical weapons, he rushed, without waiting for the conclusions of UN experts, to lay responsibility on the Syrian government and declare he was prepared to authorize a missile strike even without the authorization of the UN Security Council. When I was asked to comment on this (I was in Geneva for the celebration of Green Cross International’s 20th anniversary), I called on the president to tread warily and make sure he fully understood the situation. At the time, most commentators were saying a military strike on Syria was unavoidable, but I was hoping for a different response. I suggested the opportunity should be taken at the imminent G8 summit in St Petersburg for the presidents of the United States and Russia to meet.

This happened, and it would seem that it started the search for a solution to the problem. Before that, Obama had proposed to Congress, including his opponents from the Republican Party, that they should take a vote and arrogate responsibility to themselves. Instead, he gained a tactical advantage, a temporary pause which, especially thanks to Russia’s initiative in joining the search for a solution to the conflict, allowed the problem to be dealt with through political and diplomatic channels. There was an important, identifiable result in that Syria announced its accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Its existing reserves will be destroyed. (The experts at Green Cross International believe that task, although difficult, is feasible.)

America under Obama is still only feeling its way to a new role in a world where the policy of unilateralism is guaranteed to fail. In my opinion, not everything is being done as it should be. There was a relapse into the policy of trying to impose democracy with tanks and bombs in Libya, but where we see realism and a willingness for dialogue as, for example, in recent years between the United States and Iran, we should all support leaders who assume the responsibility to find a peaceful, rather than a military, solution.

All these years, Europe has been a major focus of my reflections, speeches and contacts. What will happen to the pan-European project? Will the move towards a Greater Europe continue? These questions have occupied me, not least because I was directly involved in the initiatives that gave impetus to what happened and is happening in Europe.

Speaking in December 1984 in the United Kingdom Parliament, I uttered a phrase that attracted a lot of attention: ‘Europe is our common home.’ That went on to become an important plank of Soviet foreign policy and integral to our new diplomacy.

The 1975 Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, and then the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, adopted at an OSCE summit in November 1990, opened up the possibility of overcoming the artificial alienation of Russia from Europe caused by ideological confrontation and the preceding decades of the Cold War. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Helsinki process stalled and people stopped mentioning the Charter for a New Europe. European integration came to centre exclusively on the European Union and a policy of drawing the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics into it. Europe increasingly came to mean Western Europe, in effect denying Russia the status of a European nation. New barriers replaced the old: less obvious, perhaps, but entirely real.

We continued, of course, to hear talk of willingness to develop relations with Russia and the importance of cooperation, but it seemed little more than a nod in the direction of political correctness. I saw this as a worrying development, and tried to draw our Western partners’ attention to possible undesirable consequences, to coax them back to a pan-European perspective, and make them see how essential and potentially rewarding increased cooperation with Russia might prove.

In summer 1993, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute invited me to give a lecture on the topic of ‘European Security’ in their series dedicated to the memory of the assassinated Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme. I wanted to convey my anxiety to the audience, and expressed a firm belief that developing pan-European integration would be essential if we were to successfully tackle the new challenges in different parts of Europe, not least the issue of relations with Russia. I felt those were short-sighted who wondered whether supporting the revival of Russia was wise, and whether it might not be better to keep her as a weak neighbour and source of raw materials for Western Europe.

We were approaching or had reached a threshold for deciding the future of Europe for years to come, I warned at a conference in Barcelona in April 1994. I repeated that message in Frankfurt in September 1996, speaking at a forum I had helped to establish there two years before. This time the topic was, ‘A United Europe: Reality or Utopia?’. The question had been raised of whether there was such a thing as Greater Europe. Those trying to draw Europeans into discussing this topic were implying, of course, that Europe ended at the Russian border.

My old acquaintances, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, spoke along those lines. If General de Gaulle had had a vision of a ‘Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals’, then my opponents were more in favour of a ‘Europe from Brest to Brest’. Others spoke as if there were already three or four Europes, but in all the arguments there was a sense that Russia was being fended off as something dangerous.

I have never doubted that Greater Europe already exists, its shared civilization a fact of history. Its foundation is its Christian roots and European cultural heritage, which means that Europe’s future must be built not only from the West eastwards but also from the East westwards.

I said I saw European union not as just parallel development of separate nations on the territory of our continent, but as movement towards a qualitatively new history. It is obvious, I said at that forum in Frankfurt, that the path to a united Europe is going to be long and arduous. We should have no illusions on that score, but to reject the goal is dangerous and, at the very least, unproductive.

My thinking was shared by another of the forum’s participants, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, whom I had first met in 1986, and already then found we had much in common. He was a man chastened by experience and politics, a man of profound intelligence, capable of seeing far into the future, as he had shown in the past and was to prove again in the years that followed.

Most national politicians in Western Europe favoured a different logic. After the Maastricht Treaty, which came into force in 1993, the European Economic Community became the European Union, which implied more fundamental integration. It continued to expand and, after the number of West European member states reached 15, the process spread to countries of Eastern Europe. In 2004, the EU admitted ten new states, including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and the three former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In 2007, they were joined by Bulgaria and Romania.

At the same time, the degree of integration increased to affect all the main aspects of national life, economic, political, legal and social. The European Union became a major economic power and an independent and substantial player in global politics. This was a new situation that had to be given due weight. In 1997, three years after it had been concluded, the Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation between the European Union and the Russian Federation came into force. The Cooperation Council held its first meeting the following year.

The policy of rapidly expanding the European Union was not without problems. It became clear that the pace and scale of the process had not been carefully thought through. Without doubting its positive aspects, I had to point out that, although the first decade of the twenty-first century had seen the European Union advance triumphantly, problems had been accumulating which eventually broke through to the surface. First, in referendums the citizens of France and the Netherlands voted against the draft European Constitution. Economic growth began to slow. EU countries became less competitive relative to other rapidly developing economies.

Speaking in 2009 at a public meeting in Strasbourg, I said:

People appeared on both sides who questioned the need for close cooperation between Russia and the EU. In a 2005 article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, I noted that among Russian politicians and analysts the view was gaining ground that we should probably take a break in developing our relations with the EU, be in no hurry to integrate further, and turn our attention in other, more promising directions. Some European politicians were beginning to express doubts about whether closer relations between the EU and Russia were even possible.

Criticism of Russia, sometimes justified but more often over-hasty, was accompanied by lofty generalizations. Russia was deemed incapable of mastering democratic principles and institutions, establishing civil society, abandoning imperial ambitions, and accordingly had little to offer Europe. I asked what could be behind these recriminations and the policies to which they gave rise. My answer was, ‘I believe there is a desire to keep Russia half-strangled for as long as possible.’ Not a pleasant conclusion, but one for which there was then, and still is, good reason.

The next question I posed was whether it was wise to alienate a partner like Russia, ‘a partner that, on most international issues, takes a stance close to, and often complementary to, the policy of the European Union, and accordingly affords opportunities for both sides to promote their policies more effectively’.

I remember participating in 2002 in a forum in Passau in southeast Germany on ‘The Individual in a United Europe’. Helmut Kohl and I were asked point blank what forms convergence and partnership between Russia and the EU could take. I always enjoy taking part in discussions with Kohl. His remarks reflect his great experience of affairs of state, but he also has a dazzling personality, instant reactions, and is never at a loss for words. Kohl said new, effective relations with Russia were essential and I agreed with him. At that, a young man said: ‘Well, if you both think Russia and the EU have a lot in common and should come closer, why not admit Russia to the EU?’ You should have seen Kohl’s reaction! Despite his enormous bulk, he almost jumped out of his seat and blurted something like: ‘That is not going happen: it could never possibly come about.’ I was stunned, but that was his completely honest reaction.

Unfortunately, in the years since then, relations between Russia and the EU have become no more straightforward. In fact, they have become more convoluted. New questions are asked and doubts expressed about how European Russia is interested in being. Some observers found grounds for such doubts in Vladimir Putin’s speech to the members of the Valdai Club in October 2013. There, he criticized Europe not only in political and economic terms, but also on ideological and philosophical grounds. Some are concluding that Russia is ‘withdrawing from Europe’ and looking elsewhere.

I think it is important for that not to happen. More precisely, I believe we should prevent it from happening. Both sides need to think this through carefully, and vigorously renew efforts to find ways to be partners. In the longer term, Greater Europe and the countries of the North American continent need to aim to establish a transcontinental community, a partnership extending over a huge geographical area.

At one of the assemblies of the World Political Forum, I recalled the goal of creating a belt of security and cooperation from Vancouver to Vladivostok. A difficult but feasible task in which I hope new generations will be successful.

Germany

Speaking of Europe, I need to give a special mention to Germany, with which Russia has a very particular kind of relationship.

It was Germany I visited in May 1992 on my first trip abroad after resigning the presidency. I was flying on a standard, scheduled flight. In the past, as general secretary and later as president, my status had entitled me to a personal aircraft. Raisa and I were not too bothered by this, never having been particularly attached to privileges of that kind. The only snag was that, after take-off, we found a whole bevy of Russian and German journalists had booked seats on the same flight. Hearing of our visit, they had been detailed by their editors to ‘accompany’ the Gorbachevs, and now, at 35,000 feet, they came in relays to say hello to me or Raisa, to chat and, if possible, fit in a flying interview.

Before we arrived, the German press had been cautious in its comments. Germans still had, of course, reason to be grateful to Gorbachev for his contribution to German reunification, but now he was out of office and his visit was purely symbolic. The newspapers implied that no great public interest should be expected, and that its political significance would probably be negligible. Moreover, as we discovered, ambassadors of the Russian Federation had been given strict instructions to offer no assistance to Gorbachev if he were to visit the country in which they were posted.

The helicopter taking us from Frankfurt to Bonn landed directly in front of our hilltop hotel. We already knew the Hotel Petersberg, the official residence for guests of the federal government. We had stayed here during an official visit in autumn 1990 and this was where the grand treaty on Soviet–German relations was signed. This time too we were accommodated in the presidential apartments.

I had a long, frank discussion with Helmut Kohl. He is rightly ranked among the major figures of world politics of the second half of the twentieth century. Initially, our relationship was dented by a not very clever slight directed at me and our Perestroika, but he soon had second thoughts and withdrew it. After our first meetings in person, I saw him as someone willing to talk openly who was seriously seeking cooperation. We developed a relationship of trust that continued after I ceased to be president. On visits to Moscow, Helmut invariably looked me up at the Gorbachev Foundation. In 2002, in our small dining room there, we arranged an intimate supper with just him, his assistant, myself, my daughter Irina, and a member of the Foundation staff. He cheerfully drank two or three glasses of vodka, followed by beer. Kohl was very proud of his role in the creation of the Euro, and signed a 20-Euro banknote, added the date, 1 January 2002, and gave me it as a souvenir.

Another episode I remember had taken place a few years earlier, in 1998. That summer, Cologne was celebrating the 750th anniversary of the foundation of its renowned cathedral and Raisa and I were invited. We arrived in good time and were sitting in pews at the front, next to our good friends the German social democrats. These included Johannes Rau, the minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia. The cathedral gradually filled up and behind we heard what sounded like the clatter of hooves as a large group moved towards the front rows. Federal Chancellor Kohl and his retinue had arrived. When he saw me, he stopped in theatrical amazement. Our invitation on this occasion had come from Germany’s social democrats and Kohl had not been advised personally of my arrival, although he might have read about it in the newspapers.

If he did already know, he gave no sign of it, registered astonishment, and gave me a mock rebuke for all to hear: ‘Mikhail, next time you come to Germany, do warn me in advance so that we can arrange a meeting.’ He was evidently displeased to have found me consorting with his political rivals. Elections to the Bundestag were just a couple of months away, and the main contenders, the CDU-CSU and SPD, were in the middle of a battle to decide the outcome. It was unclear who would win, but, after 15 years as Chancellor, Kohl evidently considered himself invincible. Nodding just a little dismissively to Johannes Rau and his comrades, he addressed me again, and again for all to hear: ‘Tell your neighbours there in the pew to forget it: the outcome of the elections is a foregone conclusion!’ He swept off.

Helmut Kohl was chancellor of Germany for 16 years, an unsurpassed record for West Germany, but lost the elections by a landslide. The social democrat, Gerhard Schröder, became chancellor. A year later, Johannes Rau was elected federal president.

In March 1992, two-thirds of my conversation with Helmut Kohl concerned the progress of reforms in the Commonwealth of Independent States, which he was very interested in. My account of the consequences of the Soviet Union’s collapse made quite an impression on him. For example, the fact that someone living in Moscow could not transfer money to his own mother in Ukraine. The Germans did not need to have it spelled out to them what it means when a country is torn apart: they had only very recently got rid of the Berlin Wall.

After a private talk at the Schaumburg Palace, the official residence of the German chancellor, the Kohls invited us back to their home for dinner. Our relationship with Helmut and Hannelore Kohl meant this was entirely natural. Kohl had visited my native Stavropol region, and Raisa Maximovna and I had been to the home of Kohl’s mother in Deidesheim during our official visit in autumn 1990.

Late that evening we got back to Hotel Petersberg to find a dozen and a half Russian and foreign journalists waiting for us in the lobby. Back to business. Most of the labour was mine, but the questions were of all kinds and Raisa had to step in too.

‘Mikhail Sergeyevich’, one of the journalists said, ‘quite apart from political issues, your friends in Germany want to know how you are both personally feeling after leaving the political stage?’ I turned to my wife. ‘I would like Raisa Maximovna to answer that.’ ‘Incidentally’, the journalist added, ‘how is your health, Raisa Maximovna?’ She was often asked that. People knew that after the August 1991 coup, when there was a real threat to the life of our whole family, she had had serious health problems, been in hospital several times and received treatment at home. By this time the worst was behind us, so she did not dwell on it:

In the Petersberg lobby, journalists came to sit close to us one after the other. It was like one long, relentless interview. The clock struck midnight, 2:00 am in Moscow…

The second day of our visit was taken up with talking to the leaders of West Germany’s main political parties. After every meeting there seemed to be an impromptu press conference. It was not only presently active politicians who wanted to meet us. We had a conversation with Chancellor Helmut Shmidt. He was a social democrat, but, after resigning in 1982, seemed more or less to have retired from politics. He published and contributed to Die Zeit, a weekly newspaper much respected in Germany, particularly in elite intellectual circles. Even after becoming an ‘ordinary citizen’, Schmidt remained a highly respected authority.

Each of the 16 West German Länder, or provinces, had an office in Bonn, and the minister-president of the Saarland, Oskar Lafontaine, gave a lunch in our honour at their legation with the leaders of the Social Democratic Party. The most striking figure at the table was Willy Brandt, honorary chairman of the party and someone who has his place in the history of Germany and Europe. It was he who, with like-minded colleagues, succeeded in ending the seemingly unchallengeable 20-year dominance of the Christian Democrats to become the first Social Democratic chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.

It was Brandt too who, during an official visit to Poland, as a sign of penitence, demonstratively knelt down at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw ghetto, although he personally would seem to have had nothing to repent. At a young age, the left-wing socialist Herbert Frahm (Brandt’s real name) fled from the Nazis to Norway, then Sweden, and became a political refugee.

Brandt was the first major West German politician to visit the German Democratic Republic. It was he who gave the impetus to West Germany’s ‘New Eastern Policy’, when, despite the atmosphere of the Cold War, he began building good relations with the Soviet Union and the other East European countries.

Willy Brandt and I had long had an affection for each other. I knew he was seriously ill, but at the dinner he and all the others seemed to have forgotten about that. There were jokes and jibes and tall stories and a wonderfully easy atmosphere. Brandt drank a couple glasses of wine and laughed happily and infectiously. On this occasion there was hardly any mention of politics. Only when the dinner was almost over did Brandt extend to me an invitation to come to Berlin in the autumn to the next congress of the Socialist International to give a major speech. I promised I would, and kept my promise. Alas, Brandt was unable to attend that congress, his illness having entered its final phase.

We bade each other a warm farewell in Bonn, neither of us aware that we would never meet again.

That evening, the official programme specified there was to be ‘a dinner hosted by Minister of Foreign Affairs Genscher and Mrs Genscher for M. S. Gorbachev and R. M. Gorbacheva at the home of the Minister of Foreign Affairs’. Among all our warm German acquaintances, Barbara and Hans-Dietrich Genscher are linked to us, I am not embarrassed to say, by a bond of true friendship. Of course, it helped that I saw Genscher as someone who had a profound understanding of our policy of New Thinking. That did not mean our relations were always blissfully idyllic: I had the interests of my country to defend and Genscher those of his. Sometimes these did not coincide. At times, Genscher was defending the position of Chancellor Kohl in dialogue with me when it was not difficult to imagine that his own views differed from those of his chief. Genscher gave no hint of that, however, and conducted himself with meticulous political propriety.

Over the years that Genscher negotiated with the Soviet leaders on behalf of his government, I came first to trust him, and then to like him, as I do people of integrity who are open and honest.

At the time of our arrival, Genscher was on business in Copenhagen, but flew specially to Bonn to see us, before returning to Denmark to continue his visit. That gesture by the deputy chancellor and foreign minister said a great deal. Early the next day, we visited Villa Hammerschmidt, the presidential palace. Richard von Weizsäcker, the president of West Germany and, after 1990, the first president of reunified Germany, and his wife invited me and Raisa to breakfast.

In 1941, at the age of 20, Weizsäcker was an officer in Hitler’s Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, in Russia. He was no admirer of Hitler, but neither was he a member of the Resistance, although some of his friends were involved in plans to assassinate the Nazi dictator. Weizsäcker learned from his experiences, proof of which was evident after he became president of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was he who formulated a different understanding of the significance of 8 May 1945 for the present generation of Germans: ‘As time has passed, it has become increasingly plain that we all need to declare today, 8 May, the day of our Liberation, the day we were all of us liberated from the inhuman system of national socialism’s violent domination.’ Anyone familiar with the post-war development of West Germany will confirm that, even in a country that had advanced along the road to democracy, for a politician of such a rank this was a bold political act.

From Bonn we travelled to Munich. At the airport, in spite of the rain, hundreds of people were waiting just to say a kind word, shake our hands, or give us some small souvenir. Throughout our three days in Bavaria, we felt we were at the epicentre of some great earthquake, not frightening, not terrible, but engulfing us in paroxysms of friendliness. On Max-Joseph-Platz we had a ceremonial meeting with the townspeople. Thousands had gathered. Every window of the adjacent houses was thronged with people who wanted to watch the proceedings. Great bunches of people festooned every conceivable eminence, kerbs, concrete flower containers and balconies. The people of Munich greeted their guests from windows and roofs, waving flags, scarves and even bedsheets.

On 6 March, the minister-president of Bavaria invited us to a lunch at the Antiquarium, a huge vaulted hall built in the sixteenth century as a museum for antique sculptures, but soon converted into a banqueting hall. Destroyed during the war, it was restored and is now used for the minister-president’s receptions.

After lunch, we were to visit the town hall on Marienplatz. We went out on to the balcony under the famous chimes of the Town Hall. I was asked to say a few words to the city’s residents gathered in the square and waiting for me to appear. I said the first words in German: ‘Liebe Münchner!’ ‘Dear people of Munich!’ This gained me an ovation. My speech could hardly have been more brief. I said only: ‘I am extremely moved by your wonderful reception. This expression of your warm feelings for me and my wife gives us great joy.’ The burgomeister welcomed us in the great hall, where prominent citizens had assembled:

On Saturday, we were offered an entirely tourist programme: Neuschwanstein Castle, located in the pre-Alpine region, then the Wieskirche which, we were told, is the most beautiful rococo church in Bavaria, and in the evening a visit to the theatre. We were relieved to be having a day off after all the excitement of the previous day’s receptions in Munich. We thought this would be a respite, but it was not to be.

The helicopter bringing us to the foot of the ‘Cliff of the Swan’, 100 kilometres south of Munich, landed in what appeared to be deserted mountainous terrain, but within a couple of minutes there appeared out of nowhere dozens, then hundreds, of people who surrounded it and began chanting the, from yesterday already familiar, ‘Gorby! Gorby!’

Soon the helicopter took us on to another niche at the foot of the Wieskirche church. We were now no longer taken aback when we saw how many people were waiting, but the surprises were not over yet: a whole class of children from a nearby school welcomed us with a huge banner that read, in Russian, ‘Welcome, Gorby and Raisa!’. The burgomeister of Wildsteig, Josef Taffertshofer, greeted us in Russian.

Accompanied by the priest, we went into the church as the organ began to play. Many people were intrigued to see how the former general secretary of the CPSU would behave in a church. The following day the newspapers reported, ‘In the recently restored church, Gorbachev, whose outlook is atheist, joined in reciting the prayer of the United Nations.’ Father Georg Kirchmeier had learned the prayer in Russian and recited it together with us, although we had to read it from a leaflet. It is only a few lines, and I will quote them here in full:

The following morning we left hospitable Bavaria. Our route was northwards, to North Rhine-Westphalia and although this Land is barely half the size of Bavaria, it has a considerably larger population of 18 million. The Land’s capital is the fine city of Düsseldorf, but our destination was the less well-known city of Gütersloh in eastern Westphalia, home to the publishing concern of Bertelsmann, whose board of directors had a programme for our visit scheduled, as in Bavaria, down to the last minute.

We were not destined to impress the Germans with Russian punctuality. Dense fog diverted our plane from Gütersloh to the nearby airport at Paderborn, where no one was expecting us. We finally arrived rather late at Bertelsmann’s headquarters, but to traverse the 10 metres or so separating us from the entrance took a good 10 minutes: the cars were mobbed and we could barely get out. Cheers and handshakes, requests for autographs, television cameras, photographers. The police had to clear a way through for us.

In Gütersloh, we found a real sense of solidarity with Russia. We met Peter Dangman of the Humanitas association, who sent 22 aircraft laden with charitable aid to Russia. Another civic group, Help Without Frontiers, in two years sent 140 tons of food and medicines to St Petersburg. Mr and Mrs Higson and the British-German Society sent 7.5 tons of relief supplies to Ukraine. It is impossible to list all the acts of kindness. On this, our first unofficial visit, we found immense willingness on the part of the Germans to come to the aid of our compatriots, and they were keen to show us that. In the evening an official reception in our honour was given by the minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau.

Our next, and final, destination was Hamburg. Knowledgeable people warned us that Hamburg was not Bavaria: it was ‘the North’, where people were reticent about showing their feelings. In fact, however, Hamburg defied all the predictions and met us with what I can only describe as Italianesque brio.

Hamburg made a great impression on both of us. I had never realized the city was so beautiful. I had imagined its mighty industry would have left its stamp on everything, but found instead that its natural surroundings had been preserved with extraordinary success, and that its architecture was not in conflict, but very much in harmony with them.

In the evening, tired by our official meetings, we decided just to go for a stroll round the city. This was easier said than done. An unplanned walkabout caused some perplexity among the German security officers charged with protecting these guests, and it was decided we should at first only go for a drive. We went round the Inner Alster lake, past a monument to Bismarck, and suddenly came out onto a broad, brightly lit street with all the colours of the rainbow, where crowds were taking the air at this hour of the evening. We agreed not to get out of the car and drove on to St Michaelis Church, a baroque church and one of the city’s symbols. From there we did get out for a stroll. The weather was drizzly, which it often is in Hamburg. We spotted welcoming light shining from the windows of a pub. ‘Let’s go in’, Raisa suggested.

Everyone agreed, although our German detectives ‘strolling’ behind wondered whether to call for backup, just in case. It was warm and cosy in the pub, but not busy, with only two of the tables occupied. The owner recognized us and was at first taken aback, perhaps surprised that a visit of this kind could just happen, but pulled himself together and served us with professional amiability and without fuss (although he did absent himself for a moment to fetch his camera).

The next day I took part in a discussion at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, which at the time was headed by Egon Bahr, a well-known social democratic politician who made a great contribution in the early 1970s to developing the New Eastern Policy of Willy Brandt’s government.

That morning we also visited the Ohlsdorf cemetery on the outskirts of Hamburg, where 384 Soviet soldiers who died in German captivity during the Second World War are buried. We laid a wreath at the monument, inscribed to ‘Soviet soldiers, victims of fascism’. The Germans tend their graves carefully, seeing it both as a human duty and a gesture of reconciliation.

Our programme included a trip on the yacht of Hamburg’s governing Senate but, just as we were due to go on board, there was a great flurry of large wet snowflakes. This was promising to be some lake trip! Raisa made what might have seemed a rather sensible suggestion: ‘Perhaps we should cancel it?’ ‘Absolutely impossible’, she was told. At every pier on the lake and the adjoining canal we were to sail past, already, in defiance of the weather, many people had gathered to greet us. It really was out of the question to let them down.

The previous day, after meetings in the city hall and a speech I had given, there was a grand reception in Grüner and Jahr’s huge House of the Press, built in exuberant accordance with the norms of modernist architecture. At the end, there was a short concert, the highlight of which was a performance by Wolf Biermann and Nina Hagen. Nina Hagen was a young actress and singer, the daughter of Eva-Maria Hagen, a famous actress in the days of the German Democratic Republic. Wolf Biermann was a man with a guitar, what in Russia we call a bard, and he too had lived almost his entire life in the GDR. He sang barbed protest songs, for which he had constantly been subjected to such restrictions as house arrest.

He and Nina Hagen surprised us by performing in German and Russian something I had never heard before: ‘A Song about Gorbachev’. We were given a Russian translation of the text, and Wolf gave us a note of how it had come to be written. It read:

The song is quite long, so I will not quote it in full. Like much else, it is symptomatic of the times. From Biermann’s letter it would seem to have been written in 1989 or thereabouts and reflects the euphoria, the doubts and anxieties of that time:

On a solid foundation

‘Europe, Germany and Russia between the Past and the Future.’ This was the title I gave to my speech in Frankfurt-on-Main at the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of German reunification. The first thing I said, after congratulating the Germans on this occasion, was: ‘You have done yourselves proud. The commitments that you, the German nation, undertook you have successfully fulfilled. You are an example to all countries following the path of democracy or seeking it.’

For all that to come about, much had had to change in the world, with huge changes in Soviet society and among the peoples of the Soviet Union. At the same time there had had to be changes in international relations, the end of the Cold War, and changes in the two German states. For us, the leaders of that generation – George Bush, Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl – Germany presented a major challenge. For many years it had been an acute European and global problem, a bare nerve in international politics, I said.

I recalled the milestones along the way that led to the historic threshold crossed when Konrad Adenauer visited Moscow in the mid-1950s and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and West Germany, the Eastern Policy of Willy Brandt and Leonid Brezhnev’s meetings with Helmut Schmidt. I spoke of the role of the German Democratic Republic in overcoming the hatred of Germany left by the war in the hearts of many Soviet people, especially those who had fought in the war. As late as June 1989, Helmut Kohl and I were agreeing that reunification of Germany would be a matter for the twenty-first century, I recalled.

This was particularly evident during a torchlight procession on the occasion of the German Democratic Republic’s 40th anniversary. Representatives of all the regions of the GDR came together in Berlin. Together with the country’s leaders and other guests, I was standing on the podium. I saw the faces of thousands of young people and sensed their mood. One of the slogans they were shouting was: ‘Gorbachev, stay here another month!’ People were openly chanting in support of reunification. I was standing next to Wojciech Jaruzelski and the Polish prime minister Mieczysław Rakowski. Mieczysław turned to me and said, ‘You do know this is the end?’ I replied: ‘Yes, I understand what is happening.’

No one can ignore such determination on the part of the people, and we recognized it. If we had embarked on democratic change to give people freedom in our own country, we could not refuse it to citizens of the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and could not deny the German people the right to reunification. In my Frankfurt speech, I repeated words I had said many times before:

Nowadays, when you read some of the commentaries or memoirs of those days, you might imagine the process of German reunification was plain sailing, that it dropped like manna from heaven, that it was all just the result of a lucky coincidence or even of the naivety of some of those involved. Not so. I said:

In the years immediately after reunification, Germany faced serious ills but overcame all the fundamental problems. I recalled that Raisa and I were in Bonn in the early 1990s and were told by Helmut Kohl: ‘You know, Mikhail, we expected to face difficulties in the economy because huge expenditure was needed. We had to accept that, and the whole country shouldered the burden. What I found extraordinary, though’, he continued, ‘was that East and West Germans met like different peoples. Only 40 years had passed, yet we are still only finding our feet. We see many things quite differently.’

How easy it is to cleave something with a single blow, and how difficult afterwards to put it back together! I was conscious that this was only part of the problem. Later, in 1997, I was in Leipzig, also on 3 October, the anniversary of reunification. In my speech, I recalled what Kohl had said, and after the talk my audience asked questions and made comments.

‘You know,’ I admonished them, ‘I can only say that all these are at least your own problems. If you like, I will make you an offer. We can have this all looked at in Russia and get a decision on whether to swap your problems for ours.’ That got a laugh, and we parted with a better understanding of each other’s situation.

In my speech, I talked about Russo-German relations and noted they had been developing successfully all these years. In that connection I mentioned my involvement in the Petersburg Dialogue forum established by Germany’s ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Russian President Vladimir Putin. At Putin’s request, I was the Russian co-chairman of the forum for eight years, while my health allowed.

Year by year it was attended by an increasing number of highly authoritative representatives of civil society on both sides, including scientists, businessmen and leaders of nongovernmental organizations, members of the youth Workshop of the Future, cultural figures, and representatives of the media, education and healthcare. In 2006, we were able to claim: ‘The Petersburg Dialogue has been a great success. It is appreciated by society in both our countries and has every prospect of continuing to work fruitfully for the benefit of the citizens of Russia and Germany.’

The work of the Petersburg Dialogue has received public recognition. The European Cultural Foundation gave it a prestigious award in a ceremony held in the Church of Our Lady in Dresden. This is one of Dresden’s finest architectural treasures. It was destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilding had been completed shortly before, coinciding with the 800th anniversary of the founding of Dresden. Besides being an architectural masterpiece, it was a masterpiece of restoration. As co-chairmen of the Petersburg Dialogue, I and Lothar de Maizière, former prime minister of the GDR, accepted the award from German ex-President Richard von Weizsäcker on behalf of the forum.

Chancellor Angela Merkel plays an important role in the development of Russo-German relations. We have met on many occasions and discussed meaningfully and frankly the ties between our countries and civil society in Russia and Germany. Angela has told me about her life, growing up and developing as a person and future politician in East Germany. Today she is a strong, visionary politician, not only in Germany but also in Europe, and seems to me an ideal example of the role of the human factor in politics.

I believe we can expect major joint initiatives from Russia and Germany in the building of Greater Europe, a Europe without lines of division, where the legacy of the Cold War will finally be overcome. If two such countries work jointly towards that objective, there will be a great chance of success.

Major figures in European politics

In Greater Europe, as I envisage it, the role of sovereign states must be retained. Pan-European organizations and integrated associations cannot replace them or squeeze them off the international stage. Countries like Britain, France and Poland, because of their great traditions and extensive contacts, have every right to play an important part in the development of Europe, and Russia should pay particular attention to relations with them.

I have strong, longstanding relations with these countries and their leaders. I have been a regular visitor to them also since leaving the Kremlin. Much links me with the United Kingdom and London, which is where I first encountered Margaret Thatcher, a unique and outstanding politician. I have been to London many times, and enjoyed memorable visits to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. I have warm memories of charity evenings to raise money for the Raisa Gorbachev Children’s Institute of Transplantology and Haematology, which were attended by the elite of British society: prominent politicians, cultural figures, businessmen and writers.

Almost every time I was in London, I met Margaret Thatcher. In the United Kingdom, her legacy as prime minister is controversial and our contacts were by no means all sweetness and light. I have not forgotten how, during my first visit in 1984, at an official dinner at Chequers, we quarrelled so violently that we turned our backs on each other. Raisa, sitting on the other side of the table talking to Denis Thatcher, told me afterwards she had noticed and feared it might torpedo the visit. There were other fraught moments in our relations, but there was no denying that Margaret Thatcher was an outstanding political leader with a clear outlook, strong will and determination to achieve her goals.

She never wavered in her support for Perestroika, never questioned our sincerity, accepted that the Soviet leadership was firmly committed to reform, that success in that area was a possibility and that it would benefit everyone, including the West. Moreover, she never tried to offer glib advice about how we should act.

I remember shortly before my resignation she said at a pan-European meeting in Paris: ‘I understand that things are not easy for you at present, but what you are doing is laying foundations for many decades into the future. I am sure everything will work out.’

She was far from approving uncritically of all the ways Western leaders behaved towards us after she was forced to resign as prime minister. Shortly before I was due to leave after the London G7 summit in July 1991, she asked to meet me at the Soviet Embassy and, without warning, started laying into other Western leaders for failing to genuinely support Perestroika. ‘Look what they have done!’ the already former prime minister, Baroness Thatcher, exclaimed. ‘Now, just when things are most difficult for you, they have confined themselves to rhetorical support. As politicians they are not worth tuppence! They are incompetent. They have let you down!’

Of course, like any other leader, she did not always get things right. Suffice it to recall her reaction to the Reykjavik summit: ‘One more Reykjavik and we will be finished!’ I told her more than once that she seemed to enjoy sitting on a nuclear powder keg. Her neo-liberal approach to the economy, although it played a role in correcting the British system as she found it, has not on the whole stood the test of time and exacerbated many social problems.

We remained friends for many years. In October 2005, I stopped in London on my way to the United States to give Margaret my best wishes on her 80th birthday. My daughter Irina was with me and we pondered long and hard over what to give her, before settling on a beautiful vase of fine porcelain. Of course, our conversation was not confined to birthday pleasantries and we discussed current political events, issues and leaders. Margaret was very definite and critical and suddenly said, ‘Mikhail, do you really not wish you could be at the helm again?’. I was surprised. To be honest, Margaret did not look all that well and her memory sometimes let her down. In any case, I felt we had to give a new generation of leaders their chance, and said as much. ‘Well I do!’ Thatcher replied emphatically.

I have often met Margaret Thatcher’s successors and visited No. 10 Downing Street. All of them have tried to do their best for their country, but in terms of force of personality and leadership qualities, Thatcher remains unchallengeable.

A leader of similar historical significance was François Mitterrand in France. In our conversations there was always time to discuss big ideas and concepts. He reflected profoundly on the future of Europe and the world and formulated far-reaching ideas. One of the most central was his idea for a European confederation, which was close to my own proposals to build a common European homeland. It is a pity Mitterrand’s successors were unable to develop and place it firmly on the European agenda, but I believe the time for such visionary thinking will yet come.

Mitterrand wanted France’s voice to have a special tonality on the world stage, for his country to raise major issues affecting the interests and future of all mankind. In our conversations, global problems always featured prominently: the need to overcome poverty, and threats to the environment. He remained true to the ideal of social justice. At the London G7 meeting, which I joined, he was one of those who spoke in favour of substantial measures to support the reforming Soviet economy.

Mitterrand was seriously ill for the greater part of his second term as president, and that was noticeable during our meetings. The last was in 1995 in Colorado Springs. We had been invited there by George Bush Senior, along with Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney, the ex-prime minister of Canada, to record the memories of world leaders for a television programme. Before the recording, Baroness Thatcher was very anxious, but Mitterrand was outwardly calm. Raisa was talking to him when she suddenly sensed he was unwell. She asked him what was wrong. ‘It is old age, Madame Gorbacheva’, he replied and then, summoning up his willpower, accompanied us through to the television studio. For over an hour, under the powerful, even dazzling, lights he joined in the discussion, answering the presenter’s questions. A few months later he was gone.

Another major figure among my European partners was Wojciech Jaruzelski. My contacts with Poland were primarily through him. I met him as the head of the Polish state during the mid-1980s, which were fateful years for Europe. It was an uneasy period, and at such times trust between leaders of states is particularly important. It was established between me and General Jaruzelski almost immediately. This was a time when the relationship between our country and Poland was freed from the shadow cast by the so-called [Brezhnev] Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty. Relations between our countries have an onerous historical legacy, darkened by major tribulations and tragedies. We must never forget these, but they must not be allowed to permanently poison relations between our peoples. The first, indispensable step was truthfulness. Jaruzelski and I agreed to establish a joint commission of historians and, when documentary evidence was found in our archives testifying that the Stalin regime had been guilty of the Katyn massacre of the Polish elite, I passed it on to the president of Poland. This was reported by the TASS news agency.

In my eyes, Jaruzelski was a staunch Polish patriot, a major politician who understood the importance of good neighbourly relations with Russia in his country’s national interests and for peace and cooperation in Europe. That is why I could not help but express astonishment at the campaign launched against him later, which turned into something little short of inquisitorial persecution.

In April 2007, I sent a letter to the Marshal of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland and the deputies of the Sejm. I wrote:

I drew the deputies’ attention to the role General, later President, Jaruzelski had played in the movement towards political reconciliation and national harmony in Poland, facilitating the first bloodless transition to democracy in Eastern Europe and the attainment of national independence and sovereignty.

I remain convinced that a continuing urgent task for relations between our peoples is to strengthen understanding, good-neighbourliness and mutually beneficial cooperation. ‘Nobody else is going to do this for us citizens of Russia and Poland’, I wrote in my letter to the Polish parliament. My experience and deep conviction is that this is, without exaggeration, the historic duty of true patriots of Russia and Poland and our duty to future generations of Russians, Poles and, to a large extent, the whole of Europe.

China

Since resigning the presidency, I have had no occasion to visit the People’s Republic of China. My unforgettable visit in May 1989 was the only one, but in the course of it, after meetings and negotiations with Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders, relations between our countries were restored and set on a friendly footing after 30 years of estrangement.

People often ask me why I did not conduct our reforms in the same way as Deng Xiaoping conducted his in China, and my reply is that it would only have been possible if the people living in Russia were Chinese. Different countries, different cultures, different initial circumstances: it would take a long time to list them, and, on top of all that, before the reforms began in China there was a ‘cultural revolution’ that shook to the foundations the entire political elite, the party bureaucracy and all the institutions of government and society. I too was sometimes urged to ‘open fire on enemy headquarters’. We chose not to.

Needless to say, the reforms there are an immense achievement, a huge step forward. What has occurred in China and India is the world’s most spectacular achievement in the fight against poverty and backwardness. Literally hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. China has become the workshop of the world, creating modern infrastructure and with cities sprouting outwards and upwards.

China’s leaders have not forgotten what was done in the years of Perestroika to normalize relations between China and the USSR. Here is a quote from a book written by Qian Qichen, the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1988–98:

Later in the book, he says: ‘In this way, normal interstate relations of friendship and good neighbourliness developed.’ The Chinese minister makes one further very important comment:

Qian Qichen quotes what I said at the press conference in Beijing: ‘Normalization of Sino-Soviet relations is not directed against the interests of any third countries, is not prejudicial to the interests of any third countries, and is an organic development of trends in the modern world.’ I repeated this to President George Bush Senior, and have no doubt that is the way the relationship should be developed in the future.

I am glad that the impulse given by my visit to China and the talks I had with Deng Xiaoping has survived, and that relations between Russia and the People’s Republic of China are now developing on a basis of strategic partnership.

In the 1990s my books were not published in China, but in 2002 Xinhua News Agency published Reflections on the Past and Future, a book very important to me. It contains my thoughts about history and revolution, and how the modern world is developing. After that, my other books were translated into Chinese and published there. Chinese journalists and diplomats began to ask my opinion and there was meaningful communication with Chinese scholars and politicians at the World Political Forum.

In connection with the centenary of the birth of Deng Xiaoping, Xinhua News Agency asked me to share my reminiscences of the meeting with him, my opinion of the reforms he initiated and the state of Russo-Chinese relations. I think it is worth quoting the gist of my response, which dates from 19 August 2004.

This was published in the Chinese press.

I cannot fail to mention here my liking for another great Chinese politician, Zhao Ziyang, the former general secretary of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee, who died in 2005. At the request of Interfax, I recalled our meetings in 1989 and spoke of the positive impression left by our conversation. ‘Our meetings’, I reminisced, ‘were taking place against the background of demonstrations many thousands strong in Tiananmen Square, and Zhao Ziyang was following them closely and anxiously. I believe that, of all the Chinese leaders, he was closest to those protesters and was emotionally inclined to democracy.’ At the same time, at every press conference Zhao Ziyang stressed that he stood alongside Deng Xiaoping. It seemed to me he found that situation very painful.

China will face enormous, extraordinarily complex issues some time in the future. No nation’s history develops in a continuous straight line: it comes to forks in the road, when difficult decisions have to be taken. Sooner or later China will have to decide the country’s future political arrangements: not to put too fine a point on it, whether or not to become a democracy. We should recognize that we all have an interest in the stable development of this great land. The question of political reform, of how and when to embark on such a fraught move, is something only the Chinese can decide for themselves.

In China’s current political model, based on a one-party system, there are some important aspects that have already served the country well as it modernizes. I am thinking of the regular turnover, every 10 years, of the upper echelons of the Party and state leadership. The retirement of Deng Xiaoping, then Jiang Zemin, then Hu Jintao demonstrated that generational change, turnover of the top team, does not undermine stability but, on the contrary, maintains it and avoids stagnation. The new leaders are free to take new decisions and the old leaders are accorded respect and dignity. This and other features of the Chinese political model show an ability to learn from mistakes, not least the mistakes of Russia. It seems to me that, when the time comes, the Chinese will show themselves able to respond flexibly to the requirements of a new stage in the country’s development.

I believe China will play an increasingly important role in global politics and in dealing with global environmental issues. In my interviews I have often said that we cannot make the same environmental demands of countries like China and India that we do of the industrialized countries that are most to blame for global warming, but the Chinese understand that, as their economic might increases, so they must take increasing responsibility for the environment. They will be further prompted to do so by the dire environmental pollution in many Chinese cities.

I note that the world’s great powers are minded to cooperate with China. It is vital that in the process they do not start playing geopolitical games and trying to gain advantage for themselves by setting up various axes and triangles. On this, I find myself in complete agreement with George Bush Senior. I have talked to Barack Obama about this and found he too agreed.

In March 1994, the main Taiwanese newspapers invited me to visit Taipei. The highlight of the visit was perhaps a speech I gave in the memorial hall dedicated to the first president of the Republic of China, Dr Sun Yat-sen. The vast hall was full, and representatives of all the Taiwanese media were in attendance. My topic was ‘The Prospects for a World Community’. I said there was every prospect of a global community now the Cold War was over, with the world no longer divided into blocs and groups bent on intimidating, suppressing and annihilating each other. A profound change of direction had come about in how the world was developing, whether some people liked it or not, under the impact of Perestroika in the USSR.

After the speech, I was asked a lot of questions. One was: ‘How do you picture China after Deng Xiaoping?’ In reply, I wished Deng Xiaoping the best of health and, no less importantly, all success with the great and far-reaching reforms begun under his leadership. The whole audience gave these remarks a standing ovation.

Several television stations broadcast live on air meetings with students, scholars, politicians, businessmen and members of the public. I had an interesting meeting with General Jiang Weiguo, the Director of the Institute of Strategic Studies, who was the son of Chiang Kaishek. The general, who had visited Moscow, was responsible for the defence of Taiwan and so had an informed view on the dangers of nuclear confrontation. ‘Few people can imagine what it might develop into’, he said. He believed even a local nuclear conflict would be likely to develop into a global nuclear catastrophe. He spoke nostalgically about how much the communists in Russia and the revolutionary Kuomintang had had in common at one time, and was in favour of strengthening and developing relations between Russia and China. In the course of our meeting, he uttered never a word of criticism of Beijing.

I vividly remember the people I met in Taipei, most of whom considered Taiwan to be part of China. Sometimes their warmth reminded me of the people I had met in Beijing and Shanghai in 1989.

There are many sides to Asia, which is increasingly becoming the centre of world politics. I have always been fascinated by it and in the years after I left office I have stayed in touch with such politicians in India as Sonia Gandhi, Charan Singh and I. K. Gujral; and with political leaders in Japan and other Asian countries. I have tried to keep up with what is happening in these countries, but what I am mainly interested in, of course, is how they are getting along with Russia. I have no doubt our relations with India will develop steadily. They are already very good, and new opportunities for us to cooperate are now arising there.

Russia and Japan

The situation is more difficult with Japan. There is great potential for our relationship, but major obstacles in the way of developing it. The main one is well known: the ‘territorial problem’. When I went to Japan in 1992, I still had fresh in my memory the many hours of discussion of the issue with Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu during my visit in April 1991.

The Japanese side raised the question of the ‘Northern Territories’ very stridently, demanding that we should confirm a Soviet–Japanese Declaration of 1956 which foresaw the possibility that the islands of Habomai and Shikotan might be transferred to Japan. My position was unequivocal: the Joint Declaration of 1956 had become null and void as a result of changed circumstances since that time. ‘Let us’, I urged the Japanese prime minister, ‘develop relations between our countries, reach a new level of trust and mutual cooperation, and perhaps when our cooperation covers the Far East, Siberia and the European regions of Russia, this dispute may no longer be so bitter and we will be able to find a solution satisfactory to both Russia and Japan.’

Now, just one year later, I was back in Japan. A public committee under former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone had been established to prepare for and coordinate my visit. Nakasone was a high-profile and greatly respected politician. In conversations with him and many other Japanese politicians I noticed two points of interest.

The first was that the changes that had occurred during the years of Perestroika had created an opening for putting Russo-Japanese relations on a new footing. I detected a change of tone on the most sensitive issue, those four islands in the Kuril chain. As I said at a press conference on my return to Moscow, I had the impression that instead of the previous rigidity, a more flexible policy might be considered that did not exclude compromises and transitional arrangements. Accordingly, our work in April 1991 during my many hours of talks with Prime Minister Kaifu showed some initial results. But second, I added: ‘We have to be realistic and not fall prey to wishful thinking. The politicians on the other side are very rigid, very specific, very rigorous and they will demand equal rigour from our side. So perhaps all we can say for now is that this is in the early stages.’

The trip took place in a good atmosphere, with a lot of interest from the Japanese public. We personally received a lot of sincere sympathy and kind feelings from thousands of people. For me, this was all rather unexpected. The only person to show no interest whatsoever in my visit was the ambassador in Japan of the Russian Federation.

Since then, I have visited Japan often. I have many friends there, and the Gorbachev Foundation maintains relations with Japanese universities and research institutes. Together with Daisaku Ikeda, the leader of one of Japan’s major religious political movements Soka Gakkai, I coauthored a book of dialogues titled Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century, in which I gave a detailed exposition of one of my most important tenets: the need to bring politics closer to morality.[1]

During my visits to Japan, I spoke to hundreds of Japanese people, and I can testify that most of them respect my position on the issue of the islands, which I first stated in 1991. I see a continuity with the principles laid down back then in the current position of the Russian government.

Russia and Japan to this day do not really enjoy good-neighbourly relations, but good-neighbourliness and cooperation are in the interests of both our countries. A rapprochement between Russia and Japan is indispensable also to maintain equilibrium in the region.

Egypt and Syria

Looking back today, I cannot help wondering whether global politics will continue to be dominated by force, primarily military. Is it really not yet abundantly clear that it does not solve, but instead aggravates problems and conflicts, and is completely inapplicable to the new, primarily environmental, problems and challenges we face? Must we really depart again and again from the principles of New Thinking, dialogue and multilateral cooperation, in order to be persuaded again and again that they are imperative? Year after year, and indeed decade after decade, that is what is repeated in the Middle East.

From my contacts with the leaders of countries in the region – and I have met on several occasions the late King Hussein of Jordan, his successor Abdullah II, the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and the Palestinian leaders – I have come firmly to the conclusion that peace in the region is possible. At the Madrid Conference of 1991, co-sponsored by the USSR and the United States, the outlines for future peaceful negotiation were agreed, but then the United States again decided to go it alone and impose peace and order in the Middle East unilaterally. I could not help recalling what the then secretary of state, George Shultz, had told me in Moscow in 1988: ‘We tried to resolve the Middle East problem on our own. We wanted to squeeze the Soviet Union out of the region. I myself flew between the capitals of the Middle East and devoted dozens of hours to shuttle diplomacy. In the end we concluded we should not attempt to squeeze you out. Let’s work together on this.’

Alas, the temptation to act unilaterally proved too great. The United States decided to ‘democratize’ the region with missile strikes, followed by military intervention in Iraq with results that are well known. This brings me to the whole question of the future of democracy, and ways of achieving democracy, in this endlessly simmering region and in the world at large. It is a question we discuss continuously at the World Political Forum, and one of the central issues of the present century.

Democracy, I said at one of the Forum’s conferences, has certain basic principles and values, but there is nothing uniform about it: ‘It has to reflect the cultural characteristics, the traditions and mentality of peoples. Only then will it succeed, only then will it avoid the slippery slope to authoritarianism. That is particularly the case for countries in transition.’ I offered another no less important proposition:

The Arab Spring, whose events we all watched closely, confirmed the truth of these conclusions

Early in 2011, I responded to the popular protests in Egypt with an article published in the International Herald Tribune and other newspapers around the world. ‘A lot of anxiety has surfaced’, I wrote, ‘in comments by politicians and the media. Many voice the fear that the popular movement could lead to chaos and then to fundamentalist reaction and confrontation between the Islamic world and the international community.’ It has to be admitted, there were solid grounds for such fears.

I wrote in that article:

In Egypt, subsequent events confirmed the apprehensions of those who suspected that change would be difficult and painful, and beset by failures and setbacks. One of the reasons the wind of change did not sweep the Arab world and soon weakened, apart from the fact that not all countries are equally ripe for change that in the longer term is inevitable, was probably the intervention of external forces that only hampered and distorted the process. This was particularly glaring in Syria.

On the one hand, Syria is one of those countries where the ruling regime has held on to power for decades, where the leaders come to identify themselves with the nation and fail to respond adequately to accumulating social and economic problems. Sooner or later, social unrest is inevitable. On the other hand, external interference in the affairs of such countries has practically never ended well. It is unacceptable not only because it is against international law, but also because its instigators have no understanding of the complexities of the situation, the intertwined and entangled relationships, interests, historical grievances, religious and cultural tensions. In this respect, Syria is a prime example. A former US ambassador to Syria was only too right when he remarked: ‘We know little about this country and have a poor understanding of what is going on in it.’

But as soon as the unrest began in Syria, outside forces started competing with one another to aggravate it, their priority being to ensure they had a strong position in ‘Syria after Assad’. This approach is one of the main problems in the Middle East, and indeed elsewhere.

The UN Security Council paid lip service to the idea of convening a conference on the future of Syria, bringing together all the interested parties, but it was not realized. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was appointed joint special envoy of the UN and Arab League to Syria to bring about a settlement of the conflict, but he had to abandon his mission. While in Moscow recently, he told me with dismay that he had no sense of genuine support from the leading powers in his efforts to initiate dialogue.

Matters reached a dangerous level, beyond which there was a likelihood of missile strikes, loss of life and a widening of the conflict. That this did not occur was largely thanks to Russian diplomacy and all the political and social forces that protested strongly against escalation of the Syrian conflict. Its root causes have not, however, been tackled. Ongoing military action, hundreds of thousands of refugees, the unwillingness of the greater part of the Syrian opposition to come to the negotiating table in Geneva: all together add up to a situation that may at any moment deteriorate into a regional catastrophe.

In Egypt, the reasons for the breakdown of the democratic process are mainly domestic. People are not always ready to avail themselves skilfully and responsibly of the opportunities that their freedom offers them. Leaders are not always forthcoming who are capable of leading them through the vicissitudes of the process of transition. In my 2011 article I wrote: ‘Just as everywhere else, the only way forward in the Arab world, with its tortuous history, unique culture and numerous risks and dangers, is towards democracy, with the understanding that the path is difficult and that democracy is not a magic wand.’

During the first phase of the events, the main forces of Egyptian society were united, but already when it was time to draft a new constitution, and subsequently, before and after the presidential election, differences began to surface. Protests began, clashes between the representatives of different groups and faiths, and people were killed. The Coptic Christians were in a particularly bad situation. Most seriously, people had no sense that the transition to democracy was delivering, if not an improvement in their lives, then at least the prospect of improvement. The president, although democratically elected, failed to behave like a genuinely democratic leader. The urban middle class and the military joined forces against him and, when he was overthrown, there was almost no one willing to give him support.

It is very difficult to say now how events will develop. The rolling back of a wave of democracy is not uncommon, but this does not mean the leaders of authoritarian regimes can look forward to an easy life. All these regimes have one shared weakness: the gap separating those in power from society at large, a breakdown of feedback of popular opinion, which, sooner or later, causes the government to get out of control.

Of course, the leaders can continue to tell themselves things are not that bad and that they ‘have the situation under control’. But they cannot but wonder just how stable that control is. I have little doubt that, deep down, they know it will not last forever, that it is increasingly an illusion. So then the question is, what to do next? Continue by inertia, further strengthening the structures and machinery of authoritarianism? Or look for ways to make the transition to democracy?

The second way is far from easy, and even agonizing. It implies that, sooner or later, power will pass to the opposition. Misconduct will be exposed; the chains of corruption leading to the top will be broken; someone will have to answer for everything. That is not an attractive prospect for an authoritarian regime.

Nevertheless, you need to have the courage to go for real change, because ruling without accountability for the rest of time is, in any case, not an option.

Russia and Ukraine

I have to admit that I did not anticipate the events that are severely testing not only the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, but also the prospects for global politics in general, and which could bring the world to the brink of a major disaster.

Everything I see happening causes me immense pain. The stakes are too high, the risks and dangers too great. I feel an obligation to explain how I see the situation, and my ideas on how to find a way out of it. For every Russian, Ukraine and our relationship with it is very special. Historical, cultural and family ties between our countries, which for so long existed within the framework of a single state, are so longstanding and close that we empathize very directly with what is happening on our neighbour’s territory.

The crisis was precipitated by Ukraine’s signing an association agreement with the European Union. I was disturbed from the outset that this matter was not considered in the context of the other, no less important, issue of how that would affect Ukraine’s relations with Russia. A framework for negotiation and coordination was needed that created a triangle of Russia, Ukraine and the European Union and paid due attention to the interests of each of the parties.

That, unfortunately, was not done. The European Union rejected the very idea of cooperating with Russia and involving her in negotiations. President Yanukovych of Ukraine intrigued, put his own political interests first and finally decided against signing an agreement with the EU. Many people in Ukraine disagreed with that decision and found it inexplicable. Demonstrations and protests were peaceful at first, but later the initiative passed to radicals, extremists and provocateurs. The situation became increasingly tense, but I hoped, nevertheless, that Ukraine’s politicians would themselves find an honourable way out of the situation. It was soon apparent that they were not up to the job.

The course of events was becoming increasingly threatening and, on 23 January 2014, I sent an open letter to Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Barack Obama of the United States, urging them to take the lead in negotiations, put an immediate end to the violence and prevent bloodshed on a massive scale. The letter read:

My letter was truly a cri de coeur, but it fell on deaf ears. Events continued to develop as if under their own momentum, as out of control as an avalanche. The unforgivable thing I warned the two presidents about became a reality. While the foreign ministers of three EC countries, Germany, France and Poland, conducted talks in Kiev, the chaotic situation in Ukraine worsened. The agreements they reached proved ineffective, Yanukovych fled the country, and the parliament, pressured by radicals, started rubber-stamping resolutions that infringed the rights of many citizens and jeopardized the status of the Russian language.

Even in these circumstances, I remained hopeful that the crisis could be halted and things begin to return to normal. In an interview for Associated Press news agency on 23 February 2014, I again called for outside mediation. I insisted that everything possible must be done ‘to ensure that the crisis in Ukraine does not lead to a tragic division. People must be given an opportunity to reach agreement.’ I have no doubt that if this principle had been taken as a basis from the outset, many bad things could have been avoided, but with every day that passed the situation deteriorated. Events developed close to a worstcase scenario.

Why?

In the West, by which I mean the ruling elites of the United States and the countries of NATO, everything was blamed on Russia. Everywhere they saw the ‘long arm of Moscow’, but this conflict was not of Russia’s making. It has its roots within Ukraine itself.

I see the main, deep cause of the Ukrainian events in the disruption of Perestroika and the mindless, reckless ‘disbanding’ of the USSR. The primary responsibility for that lies with Russia’s then leadership, which exacerbated centrifugal processes in the Union. At the same time, I remind my readers that the Ukrainian leaders sabotaged transformation of the Union, both before the August 1991 coup and after it, in spite of the fact that the text of a Union Treaty had been agreed with a majority of the republics. I fought to preserve the Union state with all the political, and I stress, political, means at my disposal. I proposed negotiations with Ukraine on an economic union, a common defence and foreign policy. In the course of such negotiations we could have resolved all the thorny questions, like the status of Sevastopol and Crimea, and the Black Sea Fleet.

My suggestions and warnings at that time went unheeded. Forgetting that in relations between peoples you need to apply the utmost circumspection, to evaluate the consequences of every move, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation rose to its feet to applaud its approval of the destruction of the Union. Some may say that this is all in the past now. Actually, no, the past has many threads tying it to the present; it gives us cause again and again to recall old mistakes politicians made.

How is the conflict in Ukraine to be resolved and the international consequences overcome of the crisis those events have caused? There is only one way: dialogue, a search for consensus.

What is essential is a coherent, constructive dialogue both at the international level and between the political forces in Ukraine. The foreign ‘players’ have much to answer for over their behaviour at every stage of the Ukrainian crisis. The country has been tested to destruction and now it is time for some constructive help. Next, we need the broadest possible dialogue between all responsibly minded forces in Ukraine on how to rescue the country and rebuild a national consensus. After all that has happened, the mutual recrimination, the hostility, the bloodshed, that is going to be extremely difficult. We should have no illusions, but at the same time, there is no alternative. We have to get on with it.

In May 2014 Ukraine elected a president who found himself saddled with huge responsibilities. Much will depend on how responsibly and equitably the newly elected parliament behaves. It is vital to get a genuinely representative forum functioning as soon as possible.

I well remember in 1988 discussing the idea of such a forum with the Polish president, Wojciech Jaruzelski. I told the general he could count on total support and understanding on our part. At that time, a great deal of mistrust, even hostility, had built up in Poland between the government and the opposition, but both managed to put the national interest first.

Above all else, Ukraine needs nationwide agreement on its constitutional arrangements and the basic direction of its domestic and foreign policy. The Ukrainians themselves are the only people who can reach such a consensus, but an absolute prerequisite is that the interests of all nationalities, sections of the population and regions must be taken into account. As far as the foreign policy of the Ukrainian state is concerned, one of its first priorities should be getting its relations with Russia right. I have no doubt the majority of Ukrainians not only know that, but desire it. That is something the West too needs to understand: it is time its leaders stopped trying to draw Ukraine into NATO.

I would very much like to believe that Ukraine will get over its feverishness, that the Minsk Protocol of 5 and 19 September 2014 will prove the first step on the road to reconciliation and a better life for all the country’s citizens, and that relations between Ukraine and Russia will again be those of two truly fraternal peoples.

The Ukrainian crisis has provoked a serious and dangerous deterioration of relations between Russia and the West. US President Obama has declared that Russia must be isolated; he and other Western leaders have refused to negotiate with the Russian president in the G8 group of nations. Economic sanctions against Russia have been introduced, cooperation in many areas greatly restricted, and decisions are being taken to strengthen the military presence of NATO in countries adjacent to Russia. All this is very reminiscent of the Cold War era.

What can and must be done to stop a dangerous slide, to avoid a new division of Europe and the world? I note that both Russia and the countries of the West have stated that they do not want a new Cold War. All is not yet lost: a certain level of communication persists.

There have been signs of attempts to break the vicious circle bedevilling relations between Russia and her Western partners. Escalation of mutual sanctions has been halted, thanks to restraint on the part of Russia. Brussels has expressed willingness to negotiate a free trade zone between the European Union and the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Cooperation is improving, albeit with difficulty, within the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to consolidate the ceasefire in Ukraine.

We must, however, face up to the truth and acknowledge that it has not so far proved possible to pull relations back out of their nosedive. That is damaging both for Russia and her Western partners, and for Europe as a whole. Instead of leading change in a globalized world, Europe has become an arena of political upheavals, rivalry for spheres of influence and, finally, military conflict. The inevitable consequence is a weakening of Europe in the face of a rapid rise of other centres of power and influence. Europe is losing its distinctive voice in world affairs.

Today, it is tremendously important to look at things in a sober and balanced way. We need to remember that there are global challenges and interests common to all mankind, problems that it will be impossible to solve if the leading powers in the world fail to cooperate. In other words, it is time to turn again to the basic postulates of the New Thinking we proposed to the world when tensions between East and West were at their height.

At that time the main danger was of global nuclear conflict. We succeeded in reducing that threat, but the problem of nuclear weapons and the threat of a new arms race have not gone away. At the same time, other threats have become more acute: most glaringly, global climate change. The predictions of scientists become increasingly alarming with every year that passes. The most recent, in the report of the United Nations Environment Programme, predicts an increase in the average global temperature of 5º Celsius by 2050 and the melting of all the ice in the Arctic Ocean. Mankind has never faced these conditions before.

To this we must add other global problems: the increasing shortage of fresh water and food resources, the problems of international terrorism, cybersecurity and the prevention of pandemics. Are we really going to allow cooperation in all these areas to fall victim to the present crisis in relations between the great powers?

People say the current deterioration results largely from the fact that Presidents Putin and Obama ‘don’t get on’ on a personal level, so until there is a change of leaders no worthwhile improvement can be expected. I think this approach is profoundly erroneous. We do not choose our international partners, and if that relationship does not gel, it is the duty of the leaders to their citizens and to the world to get over their private feelings and behave like statesmen.

I am certain there must eventually be a return to the principles of New Thinking in international affairs. It is indispensable if we do not want to destroy the world we all live in. I urge everyone to waste no more time. Today that is the top priority.

History is not fated

Almost every year I meet my friends, fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates. These summits have been attended by Jimmy Carter, Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat, Lech Wałęsa, F. W. de Klerk, Kim Dae-jung, the Dalai Lama, José Ramos-Horta, Rigoberta Menchú, Shirin Ebadi, Betty Williams, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams, Mohamed ElBaradei, and representatives of such Nobel Prize-winning organizations as the United Nations, the International Peace Bureau, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the International Labour Organization, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Association of Doctors for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and others.

Every time I meet and talk with them, I come away with new ideas and renewed faith that, in the difficult and not always predictable circumstances of the modern world, we must not give way to disillusionment and panic. History is not fated. There is always a place for initiative, creativity and action. All the Nobel Prize winners I meet want, each in their own way, to continue to be part of the process of human history and, to the best of their ability, exert influence on the course of events. This is a manifestation of active, global civil society, which knows it cannot just delegate responsibility for the world to the professional politicians of today.

There is no question but that the politicians have a difficult job to do, and quite often think that we, with our declarations and initiatives, merely get under their feet. But is it not a fact that politicians, by ignoring the demands and warnings of civil society, have made numerous mistakes, for which most often it is not they who pay, but ordinary citizens, sometimes in their hundreds of thousands, in their millions? That is why we do not keep quiet.

We conclude our meetings by adopting papers, declarations and statements on issues that are causing us concern. Sometimes they relate to issues current at that moment, violent conflicts. Not infrequently, we speak out about fundamental issues of principle and critically important aspects of the contemporary world. Working on our statements is always a creative process of the colliding and reconciling of the views of people not content to stand on the sidelines passively observing what is occurring. The statements I especially remember are those where the Nobel laureates have pronounced on issues I have been reflecting on for decades, namely, how morality relates to politics and the problem of keeping things manageable in a globalized world.

In 2003, the Nobel Prize winners stated:

We stressed that recent events ‘confirm that problems with deep economic, social, cultural or religious roots cannot be resolved unilaterally or by armed force’. We called for rejection of ‘doctrines that lower the threshold of use and promote the creation of new nuclear weapons. This is particularly dangerous when coupled with the doctrine of preemption.’ We concluded that it was essential to undertake a decisive renewal of global politics. We stated: ‘Humanity has developed sophisticated technologies for destruction. Appropriate social and human technologies based on cooperation are needed for survival.’

For too long, politicians and a significant section of society have believed that politics and morality are incompatible. I have never been able to agree with that. The golden rule of morality is: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Another formulation is: ‘Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.’ We stated that this principle should extend to the foreign policy of all nations: ‘Ethics in the relations between nations and in government policies is of paramount importance. Nations must treat other nations as they wish to be treated. The most powerful nations must remember that, as they do, so shall others do.’

Another important point in the declaration states that we believe that both the exploitation of new, unprecedentedly increased opportunities for humanity and the countering of dangers that threaten us all demand an end to laissez-faire, and the responsible management of global processes. For globalization to contribute fully to sustainable development, the international community ‘needs to establish more democratic, transparent, and accountable forms of governance’.[1] Exactly what I understood by this, I made clear in my speech: ‘Responsible management does not mean a world government. We are talking about something different: the preservation and improvement, renewal and adaptation of every level of the complex machinery that currently ensures a degree of orderliness in global processes.’ If instead we saw only a continuation of efforts to give absolute priority to the national interests of a single country or group of countries, that would lead to unmanageable chaos. That, I said, is the choice facing mankind today. The right of might, leading to destructive chaos, or an orderly transition to a new model of global development: a new model of international relations based on the principles of international law and cooperation between states, unshakable, but at the same time constantly adapted and adapting itself to new problems and new challenges. This model would have to be created through the joint efforts not only of states, but also of the institutions of civil society and mass public movements.

I drew attention to the fact that this was beginning to be acknowledged by representatives of the world’s business and political elites. The 2010 World Economic Forum in Davos was held under the motto, ‘Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild’, which was effectively the programme of Perestroika. Immediately before the forum, its founder, Klaus Schwab, called on its participants to find new models for a collective approach to global challenges and a new model of leadership that would be effective in the world today. I have no doubt that the new model called for will incorporate the basic postulates of New Thinking, the experience of the years when we were successful in changing the direction of mankind and ending the Cold War.

In conclusion, I want to ask whether there is any sign in the thinking of politicians and the actions of world leaders of a move away from militaristic approaches premised on the use of armed force, any sign of the world changing course in the way international affairs are conducted.

Right now, I am not ready to give an answer to that question because positive steps are so far too timid and inconsistent. Too often, attempts to reach agreement or find compromise solutions are still terminated or gutter out almost before they are begun. Too massive are the interests vested in the arms race, the arms trade, polluting industries, religious strife and unequal relationships. And yet, there are grounds for cautious optimism.

Chief among these is the fact that today we simply cannot afford to be pessimistic or defeatist or to panic. That, luckily, is not the only reason. It is simply not true that we never learn from history. The second half of the twentieth century, although it was spent under the shadow of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear conflict, was at least not a repetition of the first half of a century scarred by the catastrophe of two world wars. By our joint efforts we kept the world away from the brink and did ultimately bring the Cold War and the nuclear arms race to an end. Although we failed to take full advantage of that great achievement, I believe that all is not yet lost. The possibility of moving forward to a rational and equitable world order is still there.

I am convinced that history is not fated. No doubt it has its own logic, its laws. There is what is called the ‘irony of history’, its caprices, but, more importantly, in the way historical processes develop there is always room for alternatives. The same outcome in history can be achieved at a very different price, depending on the methods used. A great deal depends on the actions of particular individuals, particular leaders, on the choices a society makes (which we can influence), on our own sense of responsibility, wisdom, goodwill and determination.

For the present, it is difficult to say whether the decision not to bomb Syria will be followed up by effective action to resolve the conflict and whether the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme will prove fruitful. It will be even more difficult to disentangle the Arab-Israeli conflict, but for the first time in several years a window of opportunity seems to have opened. Assuredly, the sceptics are saying that nothing has changed, that agreement is provisional and that everything will inevitably get back to ‘normal’. Sceptics are never in short supply: what is needed is realists and optimists capable of defying the dismal chorus of the sceptics and bringing about that alternative.

An optimist, in my understanding, is not someone like Voltaire’s Candide, who at first views the world through rose-tinted spectacles and parrots the mantra that ‘all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’ when beset by one misfortune after another. An optimist is someone dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs who is not resigned to it and consciously looks, to the best of his or her ability, for opportunities to make the world a better place, who helps to find practical solutions to the problems facing people here and now.

In that sense, I declare myself an optimist.