LITMIR.BIZ

The Militarization of World Politics

      World politics is moving in an extremely dangerous direction. Militaristic and destructive tendencies are on the rise. The system for nuclear arms limitation is being dismantled. The decision of the United States to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles was a major blow to the world’s security.

      The INF Treaty, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) for reducing strategic nuclear weapons and the initiatives of the presidents of the USSR and the USA for eliminating tactical nuclear weapons made it possible to rid the world of thousands of nuclear weapons that had been amassed during the Cold War.

      At our first meeting in Geneva in 1985, Ronald Reagan and I articulated the idea that would later lead to the INF Treaty: ‘A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.’ At the same time, our two states were revising their military doctrines in order to reduce dependency on nuclear weapons.

      Compared with the peak of the Cold War, the number of nuclear weapons in Russia and the USA has shrunk by more than 80 per cent today – a historic achievement.

This process did not apply only to nuclear weapons, however. There was also a convention for the elimination of chemical weapons, and the countries of Eastern and Western Europe agreed to radically reduce their armed forces and military spending. This was the ‘peace dividend’ reaped above all by Europeans after the end of the Cold War.

      Since the mid-1990s, however, a countertendency has emerged: the gradual remilitarization of thought and action, a continual increase in military spending and the dismantling of the arms control system.

      Of the three main pillars of global strategic stability – the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the INF Treaty and START I – only the latter remains. But the future of the New START Treaty, signed by Presidents Medvedev and Obama in 2010, is now also being questioned. Judging by statements from representatives of the American administration, it too could soon be history.

      Today’s military activities have come to resemble preparations for an actual war. Documents published by the Trump administration show that US foreign policy is increasingly being geared towards political, economic and military rivalry all over the world. The goal is to develop new, more flexible nuclear weapons, which simply means continually lowering the threshold for the use of such weapons.

      In light of this, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced to the Federal Assembly that Russia is developing a number of new weapons systems. He explained at the same time that Russia was not looking for a new arms race, an attitude that undoubtedly reflects that of the population. In the past, our country never initiated a competition in building up arms. Instead, it was forced to play catch-up, responding to the challenge from the other side. Today, not only Russia but the entire world is facing a new politico-military challenge.

The USA wants to dominate world politics by relying on military superiority. At least, this is the impression one gets from recent events.

      In the process, the USA wants to marginalize the United Nations and the Security Council and, in effect, replace them with NATO – a military alliance that is not only enlarging its own territory but that also aims to expand its ‘sphere of responsibility’ all over the world.

      I have never made any secret of my opinion that the decision to expand NATO was a major strategic blunder on the part of the West and a move that tended to destabilize the political and military situation in Europe and beyond its borders. In connection with this, I would like to explain once again how this issue was discussed as the Cold War was coming to an end and what conclusions are to be drawn from that today.

      In the years when I was the leader of our country, the issue of NATO was being addressed within the context of German reunification. The prospect of a unified German state joining NATO – an organization born during the Cold War – was viewed with serious misgivings by many in our country. We talked frankly about this with our negotiating partners and proposed possible solutions. After long and hard discussions, we agreed that, as a sovereign state, a unified Germany should decide for itself which organizations and alliances to join. But there was more to our agreements than that.

      In the early 1990s, we agreed that the territory of the former German Democratic Republic should be given a special politico-military status. Germany

Скачать книгу