Lisa Arthur. "Gorbachev laments world''s ''wasted'' time"

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tells a crowd at Miami Dade College that governments have squandered the opportunity to move the global community forward after the Cold War.

     Governments have squandered the opportunities borne by the end of the Cold War and are mired now in global crisis, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said Wednesday during a speech at Miami Dade College.
     ''People were hoping we would be able to build a new world order,'' said Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and saw the Soviet Union through a breathtaking revolution. He's credited, along with President Ronald Reagan, with ending the Cold War between the two superpowers that had the globe confronting the prospect of nuclear war for decades.

UNREALIZED HOPES

      But after the stunning turnabout, the global revolution Gorbachev envisioned stalled.
     ''Today I can say that a lot of time has been wasted,'' he said. ``The hopes of the people of the planet Earth have not been realized.''
    Gorbachev, who spoke at the Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami as part of the college's Leadership Roundtable series and also received MDC's Presidential Medal, sees the world community backsliding, once again deciding war is a way to solve problems. He chided those who believe that democracy can be spread by force.
     ''Never before has the world community been in such a state of alarm and concern,'' said Gorbachev, who in 1992 became president of the Gorbachev Foundation, a nonprofit think tank, and in 1993 founded Green Cross International, an environmental organization with the mission of cleaning up military toxins.
     ''Never before has there been such a yearning for peace.''
     Asked during a news conference later if he was referring to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he replied: ``I meant that, among other things.''
     Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. During that time he moved the Soviet Union away from a totalitarian state and toward more openness with the West. Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika policies -- openness and restructuring -- coupled with pressure from then-President Reagan, eventually led to the collapse of the communist superpower.
     Gorbachev argued Wednesday that the West did not hold up its end of the reshaping of the global community.
''The Soviet Union changed. . . . The West decided it needed no change, that it was doing everything right,'' he declared.

COOPERATION

     What's needed now, Gorbachev said, is for the world's great powers to move away from unilateralism and work collaboratively.
     ''No one country can solve the problems that plague us: terrorism and weapons of mass destruction; poverty and backwardness; and a global environmental crisis,'' he said.
    ''The stranglehold of the past on politics is slowing down the democratic process. We need to overcome the intellectual paralysis,'' Gorbachev said.  ''I think very soon the people will be pushing out the hawkish politicians.''

"Miami Herald", March 30, 2006