COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, October 13, 2006

Gorbachev Knocks America

From Reuters:
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who played a key role in ending the Cold War, said the United States had squandered an opportunity to improve global politics after the Cold War, a paper said on Friday.
In comments that were among the harshest he has made about the United States, Gorbachev compared U.S. foreign policy to one of the deadliest diseases on the planet -- AIDS.
He also said:

...that America is suffering from "an an illness worse than AIDS. And I would say this is the victor's complex,"

...the United States was playing a dwindling role in world politics, while Russia, China, Brazil, Europe, India and Japan were becoming stronger, Gorbachev said.

...Only China and Russia were in a position to handle Pyongyang, he said.

...Washington will in future have to act less on its own and get used to a position of diminished importance, he said.

"The Americans will have to understand that in future they will have to cooperate and make decisions jointly, instead of just always wanting to give orders," Gorbachev said.

He said the United States and other Western countries had missed an opportunity to make the world a better place after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 ushered in the end of communism.

"At that point, the West focused more on its geopolitical interests," Gorbachev said, adding that Western countries had been more interested in cashing in on the "unbridled burst of globalization" that followed the end of the Cold War than in improving the international political climate.

2 comments:

  1. Is he still suffering from that map of Iceland on his head?
    All hail Misha

    Gorby,Time Mags top 100

    ReplyDelete
  2. I thought it looked like South America.

    ReplyDelete