Gorbachev at George Mason University Part 2

The last post about Gorbachev talked about his policies of glasnost and perestroika, this time I’ll tell you what he had to say about point number two (of a total of five points) on the event’s agenda:

President Gorbachev dedicated himself to building a relationship of mutual trust between the Soviet Union and the United States, signing two broad disarmament pacts that dramatically reduced the danger of worldwide nuclear destruction. For his extraordinary efforts, he was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, if you recall from the last post, I attended a lecture given by Gorbachev at GMU, see the first post for more on this, and I have now set out to explain the message he and the coordinators of this event had in mind.  But first, let me say something about this:

Obama, Medvedev to sign declaration on nuclear arsenals

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama will sign a declaration next week committing them to talks on reducing their countries’ nuclear arsenals, a Kremlin aide said on Saturday.

Gorbachev actually talked about this during the event. He had just met with Obama and Biden himself, and he told the crowd, and this is a direct quote from the translator:

I am optimistic about the strengthening of the relationship between the United States and Russia

This seems all fine and good, but what does this entail?

Now we can address Gorbachev’s ideas for disarmament. And, remember, this is all from the notes that I took during the event.

Gorbachev said that:

As long as the nuclear club does not fulfill its obligation of non-proliferation, there will be dozens of countries with nuclear technology.

When he says “nuclear club” he means, first and foremost, the USA, then England, France, China and Russia. He surely does not mean any country with nuclear weapons and or technology, e.g. North Korea, Iran, etc. If that is what he meant, then he would have no point other than the tautology, “If nations keep their nuclear weapons, then nations will have nuclear weapons.” That would have been an absurdly obvious point. No. What Gorbachev was saying is, as long as the United States, the UK, France, etc. have nuclear weapons, then other nations will have nuclear weapons too, therefore, if the “nuclear club” got rid of their nukes, so would the rest of the world.

This argument, of course, is dangerously flawed.

But that’s not it.

Gorby went on to say that that is not enough:

If we could somehow get rid of all nuclear weapons, then the United States would still possess more weapons and more powerful weapons [sic] than the rest of the world combined. Would the other nations think that acceptable? No. Therefore, we need to focus on the de-militarization of the U.S.

Is there really a need for me to comment on this? I was left speechless, and felt like leaving after I heard him say this. What makes it worse is that immediately after this quote in my notes, I record the comment about him meeting with Obama and Biden and being “optimistic.” To be honest, though, I don’t think Obama will take this de-militarization idea as far as Gorby would like. I hope not, at least.