By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
Russia has a new figurehead to condone its actions and degradation. His credentials include: the Nobel Peace Prize and he has a host of other awards and honorary degrees from all over the world. He is the Former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union, President, Mikhail Gorbachev. His mission is to congratulate the Russian Federation’s actions and the leadership of Vladimir Putin and at the same time, he is to blame the West for all of the faults and failures of the new Russian empire. Gorbachev is apparently here to approve of this new empire.
It is not only Mikhail Gorbachev’s long list of Soviet Union reform accolades that place him in a position of prestige and secular moral authority, but the power that the West gave him by acknowledging his role as the pivotal figure for ending the Cold War. Meanwhile, U.S. President Ronald Reagan can be cited by American textbooks as an instigator of the Cold War conflict while all the praise and about-face action of the Soviet Union is accredited by Mikhail Gorbachev’s benign vision for world peace is highly celebrated. U.S. President George H.W. Bush does not get enough credit either. It was Reagan that demanded Gorbachev “tear down” the Berlin Wall as a symbol to set Eastern Europe free, but it was the reality and conditions facing Gorbachev from all sides that forced his hand into what resulted as positive action.
The present Russian establishment is blatantly using the aging Mr. Gorbachev as a mouthpiece for the purposes of legitimacy and for the West to second-guess any military resistance to escalating Russian aggression. The sad irony is that the West has over decades given them this ability to do so; although, at the time, the purpose of awarding Gorbachev with prizes was for reconciliation and encouragement of liberal values and the elimination of a totalitarian Soviet Union. But even from the start, Gorbachev was a reform Marxist who favored “socialist markets” and strong state political control to be held out as long as possible and under his domain. He did not desire to destroy a tyrannical Soviet system in with any “Moscow Spring” but to make it more efficient or by extending its life. After all, reform was a way of life after Joseph Stalin. It was Boris Yeltson’s opposition that eventually stole Russia from underneath Gorbachev’s grasp. But Gorbachev’s political pickle between hardline conservatives who attempted a coup and liberals who took advantage of his every move that acted as the real domestic political climate.
So, in reality, Mikhail Gorbachev’s bitterness and reluctance to implement grand reforms known as glasnost and perestroika could be seen and felt even at the time of his short reign from within the Soviet Union. Even democratization was just another political ploy and intended only as a vehicle to promote his political agenda, not a stamp of approval for the development of liberal democracy in Russia.
Everything Gorbachev did was to accelerate himself, his agenda and prevent the fall of the Soviet Union and not to endorse any true liberal equivalent. He has never been nor will he become anytime soon a liberal. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was internally a result of Boris Yeltson’s position of power after the conservative coup against him. Before that, he experienced the bitter defeat in Afghanistan due to hard resistance and Western intelligence operations. By officially allowing for their self-determination inside the Eastern Bloc countries, Gorbachev was attempting to ensure communist party influence without the use of military force against anti-communist militancy or the potential for it. And it failed to win any gains with communists but the uprisings that followed did throw off the yoke of communism and the Soviet choke hold were largely peaceful. Nevertheless, the whole purpose and stated reason was of limiting Soviet military interventionism and preventing future revolts or uprisings in Eastern Europe, like in the past, but that could become Afghanistan and destroy Russia.
So it was not out of any deep love for human rights and peace but a result of fear that Gorbachev based many of his political actions. Those fears were the result of communist mismanagement as well as external military pressure and response readiness from a committed Western alliance. Otherwise they equated to what President Ronald Reagan called the “Evil Empire” in spite of decades of varied reforms.
Gorbachev’s true views of favor bestowed on his one-time Soviet Union are out in the open with what he calls the Western “triumphalism” and how bad of shape the world is in now because of a lack of a bi-polar counterbalance and the U.S. not listening. The outdated message is an anachronistic derision of 2003 unipolarism and the Invasion of Iraq, but which no longer applies in the case with of the present Western-Russian stand-off. This thinking alone would indicate his strong support for the Soviet Union as a critical and positive player in global affairs if there were not already so much evidence for this perspective. Also, this pervasive defeatist resentment by the hands of the Americans and Europe is shared by the current Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian population at large.
The current Russian ethno-nationalism and expansionism to revive Soviet Union geopolitical claims have nothing to do with U.S. actions and everything to do with negative Russian Federation misperceptions and over-aggression. NATO expansionism is consensual and not coercive. The states turn to NATO to get away from Russian intimidation. These recent aggressive Russian actions are the result of a dictatorial cult-of-personality with President Vladimir Putin at the epicenter of it all. Unfortunately, this rally-round-the-flag has infected most of Russia, and particular their political elite, both old and new.
But Gorbachev is more than just another voice of calling in the distant Russian winds, he now has the capacity to acts as a very powerful “voice of Russia.” Most importantly, he has been empowered by the Western embrace for over two decades. Now he is in a perfect position to bite the proverbial liberal hands that have fed him political praise, which equates to legitimacy power, and placed him on the pedestal of history, only so he can now blame Europe and the Americans for Russian militancy while he watches his nation return to the authoritarian or totalitarian rule, he is celebrated as leaving. It is indeed an interesting twist.
Vladimir Putin represents the total and complete opposite of everything the Gorbachev character in the revised Western history books tell us that he stood by. In fact, if there is one person that Gorbachev should utterly hate the most and speak out against with all his might, that person is Vladimir Putin, whose is directly responsible for sending Russia back in time into its dark ages.
At the 25th anniversary summit of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev said that “the world is on the brink of a new Cold War.” That is true, but only because Russia is provoking one with land grabs, mock elections, aerial incursions, show trials, nationalization of industries, human rights abuses, political assassinations, etc. The new Russian pope asks the West to make the efforts to drop sanctions against Russia and return to the negotiation table and not for Russia to reverse course.
The very man credited with bringing down the Berlin Wall risks helping Putin build another one.
Comments are closed.