"A resolution should come from Trump and Putin, presidents of two nations holding 90 percent of world's nuclear arsenals and therefore who bear special responsibility. While state budgets are struggling to fund people's essential social needs, military spending is growing" In 2008 I spoke with Mikhail Gorbachev about him getting the US out of Middle East; his recent opinion piece in Time Magazine is totally incisive & vital.

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[Author's note: This breakthrough effort by the Russian Nobel Peace Laureate from 1990 is personally very important to me, having met Gorbachev in 2008 after 8 years of George Bush, and a few months before Barack Obama was elected, and having been privileged to ask him a detailed question about how to guide the next USA President out of the Middle East and out of Afghanistan. His answer is quoted in my article from back then, at the end of this new OpEdNews article. Gorbachev is remarkably consistent in the tenor of his insights and his conclusions over the past 8 1/2 years since I asked him my one question, which he seemed to enjoy answering as his reply took 20 minutes to deliver!]

Mikhail Gorbachev recently wrote in a Time Magazine opinion piece that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump should and must get together create a Resolution to ban nuclear war.

"Politicians and military leaders sound increasingly belligerent and defense doctrines more dangerous. Commentators and TV personalities are joining the bellicose chorus. It all looks as if the world is preparing for war," and further stated that the most urgent problem we face today is reversing the "militarization of politics."

He was critical of governments for taking huge amount of money out of crucial and needed infrastructure and putting them into weapons production and research.

"While state budgets are struggling to fund people's essential social needs, military spending is growing. Money is easily found for sophisticated weapons whose destructive power is comparable to that of the weapons of mass destruction."

He specifically asked the United Nations Security Council to take up the leadership to establishing a resolution stating that nuclear war is "unacceptable and must never be fought," and that Putin and Trump should be the first leaders to embrace this.

"I think the initiative to adopt such a resolution should come from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin -- the presidents of two nations that hold over 90 percent of the world's nuclear arsenals and therefore bear a special responsibility."

This kind of agreement was established between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1980's, but has since been eroded along with the relations between the two powers, Gorbachev said. Here is most of the text of his opinion piece verbatim:

It could have been different

In the second half of the 1980's, together with the U.S., we launched a process of reducing nuclear weapons and lowering the nuclear threat. By now, as Russia and the U.S. reported to the Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference, 80% of the nuclear weapons accumulated during the years of the Cold War have been decommissioned and destroyed. No one's security has been diminished, and the danger of nuclear war starting as a result of technical failure or accident has been reduced.

This was made possible, above all, by the awareness of the leaders of major nuclear powers that nuclear war is unacceptable.

In November 1985, at the first summit in Geneva, the leaders of the Soviet Union and the U.S. declared: Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Our two nations will not seek military superiority. This statement was met with a sigh of relief worldwide.

I recall a Politburomeeting in 1986 at which the defense doctrine was discussed. The proposed draft contained the following language: "Respond to attack with all available means." Members of the politburo objected to this formula. All agreed that nuclear weapons must serve only one purpose: preventing war. And the ultimate goal should be a world without nuclear weapons.

Breaking out of the vicious circle

Today, however, the nuclear threat once again seems real. Relations between the great powers have been going from bad to worse for several years now. The advocates for arms build-up and the military-industrial complex are rubbing their hands.

We must break out of this situation. We need to resume political dialogue aiming at joint decisions and joint action.

There is a view that the dialogue should focus on fighting terrorism. This is indeed an important, urgent task. But, as a core of a normal relationship and eventually partnership, it is not enough.

The focus should once again be on preventing war, phasing out the arms race, and reducing weapons arsenals. The goal should be to agree, not just on nuclear weapons levels and ceilings, but also on missile defense and strategic stability.

In modern world, wars must be outlawed, because none of the global problems we are facing can be resolved by war -- not poverty, nor the environment, migration, population growth, or shortages of resources.

Take the first step

I urge the members of the U.N. Security Council -- the body that bears primary responsibility for international peace and security-- to take the first step. Specifically, I propose that a Security Council meeting at the level of heads of state adopt a resolution stating that nuclear war is unacceptable and must never be fought.

I think the initiative to adopt such a resolution should come from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin -- the Presidents of two nations that hold over 90% of the world's nuclear arsenals and therefore bear a special responsibility.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that one of the main freedoms is freedom from fear. Today, the burden of fear and the stress of bearing it is felt by millions of people, and the main reason for it is militarism, armed conflicts, the arms race, and the nuclear Sword of Damocles. Ridding the world of this fear means making people freer. This should become a common goal. Many other problems would then be easier to resolve.

The time to decide and act is now.

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from: click here

April 14, 2008 - Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the USSR, was asked today in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to lead the next USA President out of the USA's present Middle East conflicts; "USA needs to elect a President who gets along with the world, and doesn't brandish a big stick and make threats;" World needs "Planetary Glasnost"

Stephen Fox, alternative newspaper managing editor and gallery owner of Santa Fe, this afternoon in Santa Fe asked former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev if, after November, he would please be so kind as to lead and advise the next USA President as to how to get out of our quagmire. This is most of what he replied in Russian, through a translator:

"The Middle East is what the entire world is watching. If things go badly for the USA, things go badly for all of us. America must not abuse the trust it has from its allies, much of which has virtually stopped.

I am glad to see in this election a resurgence of interest in international affairs. As I will say in my talk tonight, judging from the USA's military budget, your nation seems to be at war with the world, and I sense that the American people don't like this at all.

The size of your weapons budget is larger than it was at the peak of the Cold War, and larger all of the rest of the nuclear nations put together. Why do you continue to build these weapons? This is amazing to me!

I think that [former Secretary of States] George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, [former US Senator] Sam Nunn, and [former Secretary of Defense] William Perry have put together recently a very interesting plan in this regard, and I appreciate their initiative.

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.

So I would put the same question to America and to Americans!

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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.

Yet, somehow, to me , former President Mikhail Gorbachev is the most compelling of them all!

I do believe that because I was asking for tens of millions of Americans and several billions people in hundreds of nations, Mr. Gorbachev really will help to advise and guide the next USA President to bring the USA out of the Middle East, and to end the war in Iraq. What choice is there?

Authors Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Authors Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev