Peter Southwood notes with deep regret the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union (1985-1991), which was reported yesterday.
As sole General Editor of Briefing No. 1 of the Project on Demilitarisation (Prodem) he had described Gorbachev in March 1993 as ‘…one of the greatest peacemakers of modern times.’ This Final Conclusion to Briefing No. 1 is available here.
Now that Gorbachev has died Western leaders are prepared to acknowledge his decisive role in ending the Cold War. Back in the 1990s, though, it was their forbears who claimed to have ‘won’ and that view of Gorbachev as a great peacemaker was deemed controversial by the English charity regulator.
The world is living with the consequences of the West’s failure to face up to its share of responsibility for creating the current climate threatening a Great Power war, as foreseen in 1993-1995.