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2 - Mikhail Gorbachev

The Anatomy of New Thinking

from Part I - Sources of Continuity and Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2021

Nuno P. Monteiro
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Fritz Bartel
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
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Summary

This chapter recounts Mikhail Gorbachev’s vision for the post-Cold War world order, focusing in particular on the disarmament negotiations and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The chapter argues that Gorbachev’s foreign policy was underpinned by the ambition to recapture moral leadership in the world (which, for the Soviet leader, was closely linked to the legitimacy of the Soviet project, and indeed to his own political legitimacy). This ambition was clearly discernible in his approach to disarmament. The vision of a nuclear-free world (as presented by the General Secretary in 1986) was instrumental to the broader agenda of global leadership, which, Gorbachev felt, the Soviet Union had long abandoned. The same agenda animated his approach to the war in Afghanistan: Leaving Afghanistan was important for moral reasons, as a practical manifestation of the new spirit Gorbachev purported to represent. The exit was delayed, however, when the Soviet leader realized that quitting the war carried its own implications for Moscow’s global standing, and, in particular, undercut Soviet credibility in the third world. By recentering the Cold War endgame on Gorbachev’s global ambitions, the paper seeks to contextualize the General Secretary’s approach to foreign policy within the broader tradition of Soviet political leadership during and after the Cold War.

Type
Chapter
Information
Before and After the Fall
World Politics and the End of the Cold War
, pp. 45 - 61
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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