Gorbachev Says Bush Should Abandon `Superpower' Perspective

Gorbachev Says Bush Should Abandon `Superpower' Perspective
By Judy Mathewson and Todd Prince
Aug. 18, 2006
Bloomberg

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said President George W. Bush should stop viewing the world ``from the position of a superpower'' and Vice President Dick Cheney should ``calm down'' and stop criticizing Russian leaders.

The U.S. should understand that ``leadership should be done not by domination, not by becoming a policeman in the world, but by being a partner,'' Gorbachev said in a Bloomberg television interview to air this weekend, the 15th anniversary of a failed coup against him.

Gorbachev said Americans ``should get rid of this disease which I call the winner's complex'' in the Cold War. ``The victory complex is even worse than the inferiority complex,'' he said.

Gorbachev, 75, was Communist Party general secretary, the top Soviet power post, from 1985 to 1991 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his efforts to end the Cold War. When the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, he was supplanted in the Kremlin by Boris Yeltsin, who in turn handed over the Russian presidency to Vladimir Putin six years ago.

Bush and members of his administration, especially Cheney, have been critical of Putin. They say the 53-year-old former KGB colonel is rolling back democratic advances made in the 1990s, a charge that Putin denies. Cheney in May also accused Russia's state-controlled energy companies of seeking to ``blackmail'' other nations in the region that need Russian fuel.

Gorbachev praised Putin's performance when he first came to power, saying he faced ``chaos and disintegration'' resulting from the ``crazy reforms'' of Yeltsin's tenure. Gorbachev and Yeltsin have long had a chilly relationship.

Party Comparison

In a separate interview with a reporter in Bloomberg's Moscow bureau, Gorbachev was less sympathetic to Putin's party, saying the president's ruling United Russia is a ``poor imitation of the Communist Party.''

Gorbachev said Putin's creation of United Russia as a ``party of power'' reflected Russians' loss of faith in democracy because of widespread poverty. People are attracted to ``authoritarian politics'' in times of difficulty and many Russians ``blame democracy for their poverty,'' Gorbachev said.

Putin's party, drawn from high-ranking officials and popular sports figures, is ``largely a party of bureaucrats and won't have much of a future if it doesn't change,'' Gorbachev said. It currently controls more than 300 seats in Russia's 450- seat parliament.

In the television interview, Gorbachev dismissed criticisms of Putin by Cheney and the Bush administration. ``I wanted to say, `Mr. Vice President, please calm down,''' Gorbachev said, adding that he wants to tell Americans: ``Don't interfere.''

`We Need Democracy'

``We know that we need democracy. We know the principles of democracy. But we should also bear in mind the Russian context, the Russian mindset, the Russian history and experience,'' Gorbachev said. ``We cannot jump out of our past.''

Gorbachev also said U.S. criticisms of Putin carry ``hidden agendas.'' While he didn't specify what those might be, he also said some unnamed people in the West ``liked what was happening in Russia'' during the 1990s when it was engulfed in ``chaos and disintegration'' and fell from superpower to international supplicant.

``Now that Russia is arising, that it is trying to become a normal country for itself and for others, some people don't like it, and they start lecturing us,'' Gorbachev said.

Gorbachev said there's no danger of a return to Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia because ``there is no turning back.'' Still, he said, Russia wouldn't hesitate to assert its national interests: ``We did not start our reforms in order to become weaker and in order to become someone's junior partner.''

Putin's Priorities

Putin has made great efforts to concentrate authority in the hands of Russia's central government, restore his country's global importance and reassert Moscow's influence in former Soviet republics.

Those efforts have contributed to Putin's approval rating of 70 percent among Russian citizens weary of the economic and political dislocations of the early post-Soviet years. Putin's policies have also drawn criticism from human-rights advocates and leaders in some ex-Soviet republics -- and created friction with some U.S. officials.

Russia, the world's biggest natural-gas producer and second-biggest oil exporter, temporarily suspended gas deliveries to Ukraine in January over a price dispute. Cheney said in a May 4 speech in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius that ``no legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail.''

Gorbachev blamed people in Bush's ``entourage'' for ``pushing him to steps that create tensions and problems.''