Looking back to the revolutions that shook Europe and the world 15 years ago this month, we should rejoice in what has been gained -- freedom, democracy, and transcendence of Europe's 40-year division. But we should also take stock of missed opportunities in the wake of the Cold War's peaceful end.
Ultimately, the end of the Cold War came because of the revolution underway in the Soviet Union. But the pro-democratic policies of glasnost and perestroika that I unveiled in the mid-1980s did not appear out of thin air. They arose from Nikita Khrushchev's reforms of the 1950s and 1960s, and from Alexei Kosygin's reforms later on.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Many people now view such efforts to "renew" the socialist system -- to make it actually work for the people -- as having been doomed from the start. But these earlier reforms were in fact more difficult to undertake than the ones that I launched in the 1980s and 1990s. During my presidency, we had to nurture a democratic atmosphere, but this was possible only because fear was no longer overpowering.
We also tried to curtail the arms race and address other areas of conflict between East and West. But the Berlin Wall remained, standing in the heart of Europe as a symbol of division. When German chancellor Helmut Kohl and I talked about this in July 1989, we thought that the time had not come to end the division of Germany. Dismantling the Wall, we agreed, would likely be an issue for the 21st century.
Of course, the German people decided otherwise; they took history into their own hands by insisting that the Wall come down. The rest of Eastern and Central Europe quickly followed, knocking down their own barriers to freedom.
My conception of my role as Soviet president compelled me not to intervene. I believed that I could not open our country while dictating to others. Indeed, from my first appearance as general secretary of the USSR, at the funeral of my predecessor, Constantine Chernyenko, I said that every country should be responsible for its own politics.
So the fall of the Berlin Wall less than half a decade later was a consequence of these thoughts. But, even here, my ideas and policies were not novel: in 1955 Khrushchev talked -- albeit in a very different context -- about uniting two Germanys. My task, as I saw it, was to ensure Central and Eastern Europe's peaceful return to full sovereignty with a minimum of Soviet interference. To the surprise and delight of the world, the changes did take place peacefully almost everywhere.
But did the Cold War's end merely make the world a more dangerous place -- one of terrorism, insecurity, uncertainty and growing disparities of wealth? My response is to remind people what terrors the Cold War held. The threat of nuclear Armageddon was real, with US$3 trillion spent on the arms race that could have been used to help the world's poor.
On the other hand, an opportunity to create a safer, more secure post-Cold War world was lost. In the 1980's, when the communist-capitalist confrontation ended, there was a chance to create a "new world order." But the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that there was no negotiated settlement of this new order. As a result, the subsequent spurt of globalization has proceeded with no one steering the wheel -- and thus with no means to implement new thinking for a better world.
We Russians obviously bear the most responsibility for the USSR's collapse, but the US should also be called to account. When change came, instead of following a slow democratic process, Russia replaced its discredited communist model overnight with a Harvard-designed blueprint that was also unfit for the country. Eventually, the plan threw the country on its back.
This was no US-led conspiracy, but the collapse of the Soviet Union was convenient for the US. The US conceived of itself as the Cold War's winner, and winners, it seems, make the rules. The Iraq War proves this: a new American empire is asserting itself. The victor of the Cold War now expects other nations to indulge its philosophy of self-righteousness.
Unfortunately, this type of old thinking breeds more crises than it can ever resolve. Indeed, unilateral policies can never succeed in a global world defined more and more by shared concerns rather than national interests.
So, 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world remains more in need of new thinking than ever. We need a new world order that benefits all, a global civil society that will help fight terrorism. We know that bombs and special operations alone won't make us safer, for we must fight the poverty that breeds terrorism.
That is no easy task. On the contrary, as in 1989, we are faced with the urgent need for change and responsible leadership.
Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, is the president of the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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