Mikhail Gorbachev's speech at the International Government Communication Forum in Sharjah, UAE

On February 23, 2014, Mikhail Gorbachev spoke at the International Government Communication Forum in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Below are excerpts from President Gorbachev’s speech:

The 20th century proved to be the most violent and bloodstained century in the history of mankind. It was a century of transformative changes, but also a century of upheavals.

Today, we live in a global, interdependent world; however, we have not yet learned to live in it. And the consequences of this - politically, economically and environmentally - are becoming increasingly dangerous. The end of the Cold War’s global confrontation gave a huge impetus to globalization. Having brought the Cold War to an end through joint efforts, we started making plans for rebuilding the world. We hoped it would open the way to effective solutions to global problems.

Unfortunately, global processes have taken a different path. Globalization has become a spontaneous, blind process, exacerbating many conflicts and rivalries and widening the gap between different parts of the world.

The world’s leading industrialized nations and their multinational corporations were able to harness globalization to their benefit and gain the most from it. Large developing nations like China, India, and Brazil have managed to adapt to global processes and make significant headway in poverty reduction. Nevertheless, there are more losers than winners among the developing countries as a result of globalization; many of them consider globalization to be new colonialism.

The Islamic world is struggling to adapt to the challenges of modernity. Islamic nations are unhappy to have been sidelined from the mainstream of historic development. In large countries like Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, the contradictions of this process have become particularly painful. We see the worsening problems of migration, ethnic conflict, religious strife, a struggle for resources, and so on.
The assumption that globalization in its current form would trigger accelerated growth and help reduce inequalities within and between nations has turned out to be wrong. The process of nuclear arms reduction has lost momentum. The non-proliferation regime has been increasingly under strain; there has been a buildup and modernization of conventional arms and the development of new types of weapons. Old conflicts have not been solved; the Middle East peace process has been stalled for decades; new hotbeds of tension emerge, leading to refugee flows and bloodshed.

In general, we can state that international politics is lagging behind the events and we have not learned to manage the processes of contemporary global, interdependent world. Even the crisis that started in 2008, and still is not fully over, has not jolted us, the world community, into action.
It would be wrong to say that nothing at all has been done. However, the steps taken to date are not adequate to the scale of today's challenges and threats. No major structural decisions have been taken. We have failed to develop a common platform, a program of action for the international community to address the main problems faced by the world today.

And so the world today is in turmoil, like a raging sea.

Tensions that have built up literally everywhere can come to the surface in a most dramatic way. It is difficult to predict where it will happen. In recent months, we have witnessed a worsening of the situation, mass civilian protests and violence in countries such as Thailand, Greece and Turkey, and most recently in Ukraine.

I understand that you expect me to share with you my view of the tragic events in Ukraine. Their comprehensive analysis is yet to be done. I think these events have shown what happens when the government is reluctant to build and consolidate democratic institutions, to engage in honest dialogue with citizens, address urgent problems and fight corruption.

I see the root cause of it in the interruption of Perestroika. Almost everywhere it also meant the disruption of the democratic process. Institutions of a democratic state have become a cover for clan politics. Undemocratic government has proved unable to carry out economic reforms and achieve better living standards for the people. Ukraine’s foreign policy was reduced to maneuvering between Russia and the EU, which, we have to admit, willingly played along.

I was extremely upset by the drama unfolding in Kiev. I made appeals to the leaders of Russia, the United States, and the EU to help the Ukrainians stop the dangerous escalation and find a bloodless way out of the crisis. Such assistance was not provided in a timely manner. A tragedy occurred. Lessons should be learned by everybody: the Ukrainians, who need to restore civil accord to save the country, and the external forces that have made many mistakes that contributed to the dramatic course of events. And the main conclusion is that in the absence of democratic, transparent, open policies we have no guarantees against repetition of what has happened.

Back to global problems, I must state that no real progress has been achieved in global poverty reduction. Although tens of millions of people have been pulled out of poverty in China, India, and Brazil – mostly through national efforts, poverty remains the lot of hundreds of millions.

The Millennium Development Goals, solemnly proclaimed by heads of state at the UN summit in 2000, have not been fulfilled everywhere. Declarations are not followed by actions. Today, more than half of humanity lives on the brink of survival, with 85 richest people in the world having as much wealth as 3.5 billion of the world’s poorest people, half the global population. Billions of people do not have access to clean water or basic sanitation. The planet is facing a growing threat of environmental disaster as a result of the global warming caused by human activities.

Today, all problems - security, terrorism, poverty and backwardness, environment and others – are joined like a tight knot. They cannot be tackled by fragmentary, non-systemic solutions, to say nothing of the use of force. Nevertheless, states still rely on old tools: force, pressure, attempts at domination, etc. Their leaders lack intellectual and moral depth, responsibility, and patience in search for political solutions. But has the use of force ever led to resolution of problems? No, it has only exacerbated them.

Lack of responses to global challenges has cast serious doubts on the collective ability of the international community to identify real solutions of global problems. Does this mean that the goals of economic prosperity, national security, environmental sustainability, and social justice are so at odds with one another that solutions do not exist?

I do not think we can afford such an answer. So why in all those years we have not proceeded from declarations to adequate actions? What do we lack to make it happen?
I think what’s lacking is political leadership, political will, and courage. The current generation of leaders is content with small steps and often tries to seek selfish gains. They have failed to realize that in today's world leadership can only be collective.

We must also criticize the academic and intellectual communities and leading think tanks. Their recommendations are mostly fragmentary and ignore the systemic nature of the global challenges.
The business community, too, deserves criticism. While some shifts are taking place, overall they are not nearly enough to meet the requirements of social and environmental responsibility. I am convinced that in order to achieve a real improvement in the situation we need to realize that the cause of our difficulties is rooted in the current model of development, which does not provide for a sustainable economic growth and at the same time leads to mounting social and environmental problems.

It is a model leading us into a dead end. It evolved in the 20th century and was consolidated during its final decades. It is based on the pursuit of excessive profits and encourages overconsumption. In fact, it is clear to me that it is simply impossible to address development problems by continuously increasing production and extending Western standards of consumption to the developing world. We have already strained the Earth’s resources and environment to the point of near-collapse.

Therefore, we need to shift to a new model, a new development paradigm. This, however, cannot be done without changing our values system.

In my opinion, the future world can not be based solely on self-interest and the continuous growth of material needs met through ongoing industrial expansion.

I think we’ll have to redefine the goals and criteria for evaluating economic development. Ultimately, we need to re-orient the global economy from excessive individual consumption to public goods such as environmental security, quality of life, access to education, healthcare and culture, human development, equal opportunities, and social cohesion.

All this is vital to society not only because of moral imperatives. The economic benefits of these public goods are enormous. However, economists are yet to learn how to measure them. An intellectual breakthrough is needed to develop new ideas along with new mechanisms for their implementation.

Today, we see only the outline of this new model. However, I am confident that we’ll have to shift to it because the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario is extremely dangerous for mankind. The transition to the new model should be gradual, but quite rapid. This is the main challenge to mankind!

We are already 20 years late with the transition to a new model of sustainable development, and some effects are already irreversible. This is where states and their organisations, above all the United Nations, civil society, the academia and the business community must focus their efforts. An ongoing dialogue between them is needed. We also need what I call planetary glasnost, an open, honest dialogue between the government and the public on global challenges and responses to them. This is an essential prerequisite for success. Governments should not hide from the people the extent of the problems and threats; they should involve people through democratic processes in the search for responses to the challenges of the 21st century.

This process should be led by people with credibility and moral integrity recognized by society. And if the current ruling elite is not capable of producing such people, a dramatic change will be needed. I think the arrival of a new generation of leaders is not far off.

Will they – and the humanity – be able to cope with the challenges the scale and urgency of which I have just tried to describe? The task may seem daunting. But let us remember that quite recently by historical standards, we were facing an equally dangerous threat and succeeded in stepping back from the brink. I am referring to the situation the world faced in the mid-1980s.

By that time, the arms race had become a juggernaut that seemed unstoppable. Tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and their delivery vehicles had been stockpiled – mostly in the USSR and the United States, and the build-up was continuing. The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a stand-off on almost every continent - from Asia and Africa to Latin America. And for over six years, the heads of the two superpowers had not met one another!

We felt it was our duty to our people and to the world to take the first step towards dialogue and cooperation with the United States. Of key importance was my first summit with President Reagan in Geneva in November 1985. The beginning was difficult but at the end of the two days of discussions, we made a statement: "Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." Another important provision was included in our joint statement – that the USSR and the United States would not seek military superiority over each other.

That was the beginning of a dialogue that later led us to Reykjavik. It was a difficult path but we did not retreat from it. As a result, we not only signed agreements on unprecedented cuts in nuclear arsenals but also normalized the situation in the world, putting an end to conflicts in different parts of the globe.

This is one of the examples that history is not preordained, that it always has room for alternatives and alternative solutions. Today, we must look for solutions that would provide governance in our global world; otherwise we are heading for chaos and "global turmoil."

I want to emphasize that global governance is not the same as "world government" nor does it mean rule by any single power centre or a group of states. It is a complex multi-level system that includes both the national level and regional systems of international organisations and the UN system, based on international law. The path to such a system is through dialogue, through democratization and demilitarization of international relations, reaching a new level of understanding of universal interests and global solidarity. I am confident that if we firmly embark on this path we will be able to look to the future with optimism.