{"id":115562,"date":"2018-07-30T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=115562"},"modified":"2018-08-06T13:01:47","modified_gmt":"2018-08-06T12:01:47","slug":"russia-and-the-u-s-are-not-condemned-to-confrontation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/07\/russia-and-the-u-s-are-not-condemned-to-confrontation\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia and the U.S. Are Not Condemned to Confrontation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Mikhail Gorbachev\u2019s Address to Participants in the Conference Marking the 30th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan\u2019s Visit and the Moscow Summit<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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4 Jun 2018 –<\/em> I welcome all who have gathered to mark the thirtieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan\u2019s visit to Moscow and the US-Soviet summit. I think it was a truly historic event. It was a kind of summing up of the work we had done, starting in Geneva and then going through Reykjavik and Washington to Moscow.<\/p>\n

It was not an easy path. Its first major milestone was the Joint US-Soviet Statement which declared that \u201ca nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought\u201d and that \u201cthe two sides will not seek military superiority.\u201d<\/p>\n

This gave ground to the world media to speak of the spirit of Geneva.<\/p>\n

But the spirit of Geneva was severely tested. The entry of US Navy ships in our territorial waters, spy scandals, propaganda campaigns in the in the media \u2013 all that and a lot more was done in order to push us off track. The negotiations could have turned into unproductive routine. It took Reykjavik to prevent a new deadlock and open up prospects.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t describe all the ups and downs of the historic meeting in Reykjavik.<\/p>\n

We came there with constructive proposals, which opened the way to agreements on INF and START, but stumbled on the US President\u2019s commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative and his attempt to obtain our consent to deployment of missile defenses. Nevertheless, the Reykjavik agreements were a breakthrough toward the first real arms reduction treaties.<\/p>\n

Of equal importance was the fact that in Reykjavik Ronald Reagan showed himself to be a proponent of a world without nuclear weapons. That brought us closer together.<\/p>\n

The summits in Washington and Moscow pointed to a new level of trust in our relations. It was not an accident that Ronald Reagan, standing next to me in the Kremlin, near the Tsar Cannon, answered the question whether he still considered the Soviet Union an evil empire by saying \u201cNo, it was another time, another era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody put those words in his mouth. While this was not yet the final line drawn under the Cold War, the acute phase of the confrontation was over. I think this is a unique example of such a turnabout in relations between two major powers.<\/p>\n

Why did it happen within such a historically short time? The short answer is: Because both sides had the political will. Without it, it would have been impossible to remove all the barriers and obstacles accumulated during the decades of the Cold War.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n