Gorbachev: claims that nuclear weapons guarantee peace are a delusion

MOSCOW, November 15. /TASS/. The Soviet Union’s first president, Mikhail Gorbachev, has called for demilitarization of world politics. He dismissed as a myth all speculations to the effect nuclear weapons are a safeguard of peace and security. Gorbachev reiterated his opinion in a message of greeting to Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev and participants in the conference of the Global Alliance of Leaders for Nuclear Security and a Nuclear Weapons Free World, uploaded to the website of the Gorbachev Foundation on Monday. The Global Alliance’s conference opened in Kazakhstan’s capital on Monday. Nazarbayev’s initiative has received wide support from political leaders in many countries. As he dwelt on the global threats (pandemic, poverty, water shortages and global warming) Gorbachev suggested fundamentally reconsidering the understanding of security, which has so far been confined to the military aspect. He said that all efforts to give people better security would be doomed, if governments continue to "throw mammoth amounts of cash into the furnace of the arms race, in the first place, nuclear arms race." "The proponents of nuclear deterrence argue that it is a safeguard of peace and security. I reply to them: to say that nuclear weapons saved peace is tantamount to repeating a dangerous myth in a dangerous world," Gorbachev said. He recalled that nuclear weapons were the root cause of the Caribbean crisis in 1962. In his message Gorbachev expressed the certainty that "there should be demilitarization of world politics, international relations and political thinking in order to save them from the nuclear sword of Damocles." Also, Gorbachev expressed the hope for "real results" of the Geneva talks, where the Russian and US presidents discussed nuclear affairs. Read more