Gorbachev: US Needs to Have Enemy to Return to Policy of Pressure
Source: RIA Novosti
MOSCOW, December 19 (Sputnik) — Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet Union's last leader, told RT TV channel in an interview that the United States wants to 'run the world show' despite the fact that any attempts to create a unipolar world are 'nonsense'.
Gorbachev, speaking about his attitude to US policies and the current situation in the world, noted that the United States has certain rights to make decisions in the interest of the whole world, but if the country wants to be a leader, it should not be the only one.
"The Americans suddenly began to assert themselves… And the most extreme, so to say, thing is that they started to offer creation of a new super-empire… America wants to run the world show," Gorbachev told RT.
The last leader of the Soviet Union added the United States need to have an enemy to return to the policy of pressure and command. Gorbachev also explained expansion of NATO to the east by its political and military culture.
He also said that NATO is seeking to reach Russia's borders, and while watching this, Russia sometimes makes unnecessary steps. The ex-president stressed that Russia and the United States can negotiate when there is trust.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/politics/20141219/1016018344.html
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Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)One of the worst things our leaders ever did in foreign policy was to respond to every positive action Gorbachev ever took by humiliating him and insisting that his country play the role of the vanquished nation.
We should NEVER have insisted on being "the world's ONLY superpower".
The world shouldn't have superpowers at all.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)The Neocons believe the whole planet is their spoils from the Cold War.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)As people stepped across the threshold into civilization, they inadvertently stumbled into a chaos that had never before existed. The relations among societies were uncontrolled and virtually uncontrollable. Such an ungoverned system imposes unchosen necessities: civilized people were compelled to enter a struggle for power.
The meaning of "power," a concept central to this entire work, needs to be explored. Power may be defined as the capacity to achieve one’s will against the will of another. The exercise of power thus infringes upon the exercise of choice, for to be the object of another’s power is to have his choice substituted for one’s own. Power becomes important where two actors (or more) would choose the same thing but cannot have it; power becomes important when the obstacles to the achievement of one’s will come from the will of others. Thus as the expanding capacities of human societies created an overlap in the range of their grasp and desire, the intersocietal struggle for power arose.
But the new unavoidability of this struggle is but the first and smaller step in the transmutation of the apparent freedom of civilized peoples into bondage to the necessities of power.
The Parable
The new human freedom made striving for expansion and power possible. Such freedom, when multiplied, creates anarchy. The anarchy among civilized societies meant that the play of power in the system was uncontrollable. In an anarchic situation like that, no one can choose that the struggle for power shall cease. But there is one more element in the picture: no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)
joshcryer
(62,270 posts)Is globalization not somehow real?
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)It's immoral.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)If the global economy is (IMO properly) viewed as a thermodynamic heat engine, the question is meaningless.
Capitalism is the most thermodynamically dissipative economic system developed so far. That means that it will persist until one of two things happens:
Economic systems, like all dissipative systems, persist until either they are replaced by a system that is more dissipative (i.e. more efficient at turning resources into products and waste) or increased dissipation by the system is no longer possible
.
When increased dissipation is no longer possible, the system loses resilience and falls to a lower level of organization, where the decreased dissipative potential is sufficient to maintain it.
In general, so long as the resource base and environment remain the same, dissipative systems are never supplanted by less efficient systems, only by more efficient ones. More efficiency in the case of the global economy implies increased growth rates.
Morality describes how we feel about the system, it says nothing about how it functions.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)They may have a few more controls in place around the edges, but China, Japan, Germany, Australia, Chile, Denmark and Canada all look just as inherently capitalistic to me as the good old US of A.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)It used to be about having people with a good idea seeking investment to take it to market.
Now it's about speculation on future value of projected earnings on the potential collection of maxed out credit.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)
pampango
(24,692 posts)It deflects criticism away from domestic political leaders and even creates a "rally around the flag" emotion that serves their purpose.
bulloney
(4,113 posts)What do you call a 50% cut in military spending? A good start!
pampango
(24,692 posts)(who cares about the economy or the middle class) to restore "national pride" - 'we are not soft anymore', 'we should be feared and/or respected for our power', 'we can't be pushed around anymore', etc.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)At the time, Taguba was working for Major General Mike Myatt, a marine who was the officer in charge of strategic talks with the South Koreans, on behalf of the American military. “I needed an executive assistant with brains and integrity,” Myatt, who is now retired and living in San Francisco, told me. After interviewing a number of young officers, he chose Taguba. “He was ethical and he knew his stuff,” Myatt said. “We really became close, and I’d trust him with my life. We talked about military strategy and policy, and the moral aspect of war—the importance of not losing the moral high ground.” Myatt followed Taguba’s involvement in the Abu Ghraib inquiry, and said, “I was so proud of him. I told him, ‘Tony, you’ve maintained yourself, and your integrity.’ ”
Taguba got a different message, however, from other officers, among them General John Abizaid, then the head of Central Command. A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. Abizaid’s driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”
“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/25/the-generals-report
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)BBC documentary. It explains it all.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)jakeXT
(10,575 posts)U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop
A One-Superpower World
Pentagon’s Document Outlines Ways to Thwart Challenges to Primacy of America
By Patrick E. Tyler
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, March 7 – In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting phase, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territories of the former Soviet Union.
A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.
http://work.colum.edu/~amiller/wolfowitz1992.htm
