Sunday Times 2
Mikhail Gorbachev rewrote the global order
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Mikhail Gorbachev who died on Wednesday is being mourned and hailed around the Western world but not in his home country or even Third World countries which benefited from the Soviet Union with the munificence of Soviet leaders before Gorbachev.
Western nations are hailing many of Gorbachev’s singular historic achievements as a world leader, the greatest of which is the stopping of the Doomsday Clock which was ticking dangerously away towards midnight — a nuclear catastrophe that threatened the very existence of humanity.
It is believed that a global nuclear catastrophe was avoided in 1987 with the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and the President of the United States Ronald Reagan. It provided for the elimination of all US and Soviet intermediate-range missiles in the range of 500-5,500 kilometers and other activities that could lead to the production of such armaments.
A portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev displayed in his memory at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow. AFP
This agreement’s fallout had even a greater beneficial impact — the end of the Cold War that began after the end of World War II, resulting in much improved relations between the two superpowers of that time — the US and the Soviet Union. The developments that followed these events still have a fallout even on today’s international relations.
A significant proportion of the world population would not have been born when the INF treaty was signed 37 years ago. Many of those who were alive but far removed from the geopolitics of that day may not remember the existential threat posed against humanity at that time by the two rival powers with their allies and their nuclear armouries poised against each other exchanging harsh rhetoric.
Since the end of World War II, the Soviet Union with the bloc of socialist countries (Warsaw Pact) and the allied Western powers (NATO) headed by the United States, believing in different political ideologies had been building up their stocks of nuclear armaments and delivery systems fearing attacks by each other and preparing for counter-offensives.
Gorbachev, born into a very poor peasant family, struggled hard in his youth working for the Communist Party Youth organisation, gained entry into the prestigious Moscow University, graduated and rose through the ranks of the Communist Party and emerged as the General Secretary of the Party succeeding legends such as Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov — all old, dour, hardline, dogmatic communists. Gorbachev by contrast became the General Secretary at the age of 51 and was considered ‘young’, fresh and a visionary who brought about changes in the 69-year old Soviet Communist party, which if attempted earlier, would have risked being accused of being ‘heretical’ and qualifying to be ‘shot at dawn’.
Some of his achievements now hailed by Western nations are: Halting the global arms race; Ending the one-party rule in the Soviet Union, not deploying military forces to prevent Eastern European countries from breaking away from the Warsaw Pact, ending the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ — a fundamental maxim of Marxism and ending the Cold War which ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The paradox about Mikhail Gorbachev was that although his decisions as the leader of the Soviet Union resulted in the collapse of the country and the demise of the party, he was committed to the Communist ideology and remained so even after losing power three decades ago. His doctrine of Perestroika was aimed at the reformation of the Communist Party and the system of governance within the system that existed — not destroying it although his contribution unwittingly was precisely that.
In his book Perestroika, he says: “…. the world is no longer the same as it was and new problems cannot be tackled on the basis of thinking carried over from previous centuries. Can we still cling on to the view that war is a continuation of politics by other means?
“In short, we in the Soviet leadership have come to the conclusion — and are reiterating it – that there is a need for new political thinking…… Soviet leaders are vigorously seeking to translate the new thinking into action, primarily in the field of disarmament…
“Politics should be based on realities. And the most formidable reality of the world today is the vast military arsenals, both conventional and nuclear, of the United States and the Soviet Union. This places on our two countries a speical responsibility to the whole world….. We openly say that we reject the hegemony-seeking aspirations of the United States. We do not like certain aspects of American politics and way of life. But we respect the right of the people of the United States, as well as that of any other people to live according to their own rules….”
While Gorbachev remains a hero to Western nations, not so in his country, Russia, now under President Vladimir Putin who was a KGB operative in East Berlin when the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred. The fall of the Soviet Union, Putin considers is one of the biggest political calamities that took place in contemporary history and his objective is to restore Russia to the state the former Soviet Union was before it collapsed. The conquest of Crimea, which became a part of Ukraine after the Soviet Union collapsed, and now the war against Ukraine are Putin’s efforts to make his dream a reality. There are no tears being shed for Gorbachev in Russia.
The political fallout of Gorbachev’s impact on the geopolitics of the Third World is not as great as in the West though not being commented on as much in the international media.
The country that lost most with the collapse of the Soviet Union was Cuba, considered its proxy not only in South America but the entire African continent.
The end of the Cuban Missile Crisis did not terminate the Soviet-Cuban nexus. It is said that while the US kept Cuban activities in South America under close supervision, Africa became an open playing field with no referee for the Soviet Union and Cuba from the mid-1970s. Leonid Brezhnev was the leader and not Gorbachev at that time.
During that period Cuba was involved in 17 African nations and three African insurgencies. During the 1982-84 period, the Soviet Union was providing military hardware valued at $2 billion free of charge. In 1977, there were over 12,000 Cuban troops in Ethiopia and in 1975 Cuba began assisting the successful insurgency led by Agostinho Neto in Angola.
Following the demise of the Soviet Union, countries that were its proxies projecting Soviet power found themselves cut off from the military and financial assistance that used to come their way. Cuba is one such country today attempting to sustain itself.
India under Indira Gandhi having assumed leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement had a foreign policy that was strongly tilted towards the Soviet Union. Much of its armaments were purchased from the Soviet Union. The support of the United States for Pakistan enabled Gandhi to justify at home her anti-American stance. The US sanctions imposed on India’s nuclear weapons development infuriated the Indian defence establishment. But the collapse of the Soviet Union consequent Gorbachev’s policies saw India’s gradual shift in alignment towards the west.
The rise of China as a superpower on its northern borders also resulted in India becoming a partner of the US-led alliance of Japan and Australia to act as a countervailing force to China’s expansion in the Asian continent.
Such developments are not a direct result of Gorbachev’s policies but are fallouts which he did not envisage.
Mikhail Gorbachev wittingly or unwittingly rewrote the global order that existed.
(The writer is a former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island and consultant editor of the Sunday Leader)