O Grande Mikhail Gorbachev

Um dos maiores nomes da história, Mikhail Gorbachev, faz 80 anos. Devemos celebrar. Gorbachev é um dos responsáveis pelo fim do império do mal, a União Soviética.
There are many celebrated leaders—Churchill, de Gaulle, Thatcher, Kohl, Reagan, Havel, and Walesa—who in decisive moments determined the course of their countries’ history. But only one leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, determined the long-term history of the global order. What did he actually do? He concluded that force is a dangerous means of doing politics, both domestic and international, particularly when nuclear weapons are at play.(...)He developed his own “triad” that not only contradicted Soviet principles but was also unusual in Western democracies. First, Gorbachev recognized that the arms race was doomed to fail and that nuclear war was pointless. It was he who came up with the idea of a “nuclear-free world” as early as 1986. His second major breakthrough was his conviction that every nation is entitled to freedom of choice. He arrived at this evident truth at a time when the Western community was happy to implement Kissinger’s realpolitik, which justified the division of the world into “spheres of influence.” Finally, by proclaiming glasnost, Gorbachev laid the foundations for the birth of civil society in Russia for the first time in its history.