With a background of conflict, military budgets in the USA continue to grow, and you produce more weapons. The next president must show courage and responsibility to resist increasing your arms expenditures. Most serious nations in the European Union are studying the proposal by Schultz and Kissinger, and the USA should heed this proposal.
You must bear in mind, that many nations find it difficult to trust America if it insists on maintaining its weapon superiority.
After January 1, 1986, when I proposed an abolition of Nuclear Weapons, there was an immediate reaction, that many didn't trust me, because of the USSR's massive ground forces and conventional weapons. I responded by making some large cuts in spending for conventional weapons, and eventually we signed a treaty in this context in Paris.
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At the beginning of today's Press Conference in Santa Fe, Gorbachev defended Putin's concern over USA building extensive missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, but said that it was good that Bush and Putin took the time to recently meet one more time before Bush leaves office.
He also stated that the USA needs to "elect a President who gets along with the world, and doesn't brandish a big stick and make threats."
This is "up to the American people to persuade its leaders, and this burden can't be shouldered by others." After 15 years of "pushing" since leaving office in 1992, Gorbachev now believes that most world leaders and heads of state are "lagging," and that what we really need next is "Planetary Glasnost."
Gorbachev is encouraged by the progress in Russia of the political party he started, the Union of Social Democrats, given that more than 100 nations have the same kind of party: the Social Democrats. He said the history of the USSR was a 70 year experiment with Communism in its extreme Bolshevik form, and that Russia had "paid the price" for doing so.
Gorbachev reminisced on Yeltsin being pressured by the International Monetary Fund and a few US Think Tanks which came to impose on Russia a free market approach, which did a lot of good. He called it the "Washington consensus" that was really the opposite ideology and effect of Bolshevism.
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From Stephen Fox:
I have met several Nobel Peace Laureates and several others I thought should have won that honorable prize. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to 95 individuals and 20 organizations since 1901.
The Nobel Peace Laureates with whom I have exchanged extensive correspondence include: His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and Kofi Annan. I have talked at length with Jody Williams, Founder of the effort and author of the international treaty to ban landmines. When he came to lecture in Santa Fe, I asked Oscar Arias Sanchez, now President of Costa Rica, to help create a branch in Santa Fe of the United Nations University for Peace.
In the two year effort to establish that pacifist precept school, Dag Hammarskjold's nephew, Knut, served on the Board of Honorary Advisers of this conception, as was Gandhi's grandson, Arun, and Einstein's granddaughter, Evelyn. So was former USA Secretary of Interior, Stewart Udall, and World Chess Champion, Anatoly Karpov.
As an organization making a huge difference in the world, Doctors without Borders is among my highest inspirations daily in my work to get the neurotoxic artificial sweetener aspartame off the market by rescinding its approval to be sold.
Mairead Corrigan of Ireland was the first Nobel Peace Laureate I talked with, for several hours at the Second United Nations Special Session on Disarmament in 1978.
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