Can Russia Change? (Routledge Revivals): The USSR Confronts Global Interdependence by Walter Clemens

Author:Walter Clemens [Clemens, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Political Ideologies, Political Science, History, General
ISBN: 9781136451584
Google: DG3_TaAIUNwC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-12-06T06:53:46+00:00

Gorbachev Broadens his Horizons

Vladivostok: Power of the East

Gorbachev’s July 28, 1986 speech in Vladivostok (“Power of the East”) applied new thinking to the Far East.33 In April 1986 Izvestiia captioned a major article: “The USSR and China—On Principles of Equality and Mutual Advantage.”34 At Vladivostok Gorbachev affirmed that the Soviet Union “is also an Asian and Pacific country.” It makes no “selfish attempts to strengthen [Soviet] security at others’ expense” but rather seeks to gain from cooperation with others to build “new and fair relations in Asia and the Pacific.” Moscow sought to stem the militarization of Asia spearheaded by U.S. efforts to create an “iron triangle” with Japan and South Korea. Recent military activities in the Soviet Far East were strictly defensive. Still, Gorbachev allowed that the United States is “a great Pacific power”—its Little Diomede island located just seven kilometers from the Soviet Big Diomede. Gorbachev recognized that efforts to create an Asian-Pacific security system would be impossible without U.S. participation. He proposed a Helsinki-type conference with all countries having a relationship to the Pacific Ocean.

Despite his conciliatory tone, Gorbachev included many planks sure to raise American suspicions. He suggested that the Pacific security conference meet in Hiroshima. He proposed a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean and on the Korean peninsula, two areas where Moscow has nothing nuclear to lose but the United States has a good deal. Still, he said, if the United States gave up its bases in the Philippines, “we would not leave this step unanswered.” He also accused Washington of manipulating India’s (not Sri Lanka’s) Tamil problem and bullying New Zealand.

Gorbachev declared Moscow’s readiness to deepen economic and other ties with China. Responding to Beijing’s “three conditions” for improved relations, Gorbachev promised to withdraw significant Soviet forces from Afghanistan before year’s end. He hoped for normalized relations between Hanoi and Beijing and between all of Indochina and ASEAN. He promised a “positive reply” regarding assistance in construction of a railroad linking [China’s] Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region and [Soviet] Kazakhstan. He reiterated Moscow’s willingness to cooperate with China in space, including the training of Chinese cosmonauts.

He emphasized Moscow’s desire for “extended cooperation” with Japan in many fields, from ocean resources to outer space.35 On a topic of interest to Japan as well as China, Gorbachev promised that if an INF treaty were signed, missiles withdrawn from Europe would be destroyed, not transferred to Asia. In a subsequent message to the mayor of Hiroshima Gorbachev underscored the USSR’s devotion to a moratorium and then a formal ban on further nuclear testing.36

In November 1986, as he visited India, Gorbachev and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi issued The Delhi Declaration calling for the creation of a “post-nuclear age”: “a nuclear weapon-free world, free of violence and hatred, fear and suspicion.”37 This statement, in conjunction with others by Gorbachev, suggests that his first approximation of Utopia was a nuclear-weapons-free world rather than a global classless society. Considering the murders that characterize daily life in a country

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