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Jill Stein on Hillary & Trump
Short: 03:00 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1NDL-URlBYFull: 60:00 minutes
The Reykjavik Summit October 11th 1986 – the talk that ended the Cold War
On October 11, 1986, halfway between Moscow and Washington, D.C., the leaders of the world’s two superpowers met at the stark and picturesque Hofdi House in Reykjavik, Iceland. Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev had proposed the meeting to President Ronald Reagan less than thirty days before. The expectations for the summit at Reykjavik were low.
Reagan and Gorbachev had established a personal relationship just one year before at their Geneva Summit. In Geneva they attempted to reach agreement on bilateral nuclear arms reductions. Since then, their negotiators had reached an impasse. Both leaders hoped a face to face meeting at Reykjavik might revive the negotiations.
The talks between Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik proceeded at a breakneck pace. Gorbachev agreed that human rights issues were a legitimate topic of discussion, something no previous Soviet leader had ever agreed to. A proposal to eliminate all new strategic missiles grew into a discussion, for the first time in history, of the real possibility of eliminating nuclear weapons forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-wXxHklDTc
Aides to both leaders were shocked by the pace of the discussions. A summit that began with low expectations had blossomed into one of the most dramatic and potentially productive summits of all time. At one point Reagan even described to Gorbachev how both men might return to Reykjavik in ten years, aged and retired leaders, to personally witness the dismantling of the world’s last remaining nuclear warhead.
But one point of contention remained. Reagan was committed to see his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to completion. Gorbachev, fearing an imbalance of power, was equally determined to make sure SDI would never be implemented. Reagan offered assurances to Gorbachev that the missile defense shield, which he had championed and funded despite widespread criticism at home, was being developed not to gain an advantage, but to offer safety against accidents or outlaw nations. Reagan offered many times to share this technology with the Soviets, which Gorbachev refused to believe.
Toward the end of the long and stressful final negotiations Gorbachev would accept continued development of SDI as long as testing was confined to the laboratory for the next ten years. Reagan would not agree. He could not and would not allow the division of his two-part strategy of the simultaneous elimination of nuclear weapons with the creation of a missile defense shield.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBxzrDgU0zE
After the negotiations broke down without a final agreement, Reagan wrote that he left the meeting knowing how close they had come to achieving his long goal of eliminating the threat of nuclear destruction, and that this was the angriest moment of his career.
Despite failing to achieve either man’s ultimate goal, Reykjavik will be recorded as one of the most important summits in history. A year after Reykjavik the U.S. and Soviet Union signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), for the first time eliminating an entire class of nuclear weapons. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed a few years later during President H.W Bush’s term.
None of this progress would have been possible without the courage of two leaders to look beyond past hostilities and forge a new and lasting relationship, that would soon provide greater security for people around the world.
the source: http://www.thereaganvision.org/the-reykjavik-summit-the-story/
Gorbachev calls for peace: Is there a path forward?
October 12, 2016
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, called for peace and a de-escalation in tensions between the US and Russia. What is the future for dialogue between the two countries under current circumstances?
By Ellen Powell, Staff October 12, 2016
It’s been 30 years since Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met in Reykjavik to agree on a nuclear drawdown, an event that helped bring about the end of the Cold War. Given the current conflict between Russia and the United States, the lessons of the past seem as relevant as ever, Mr. Gorbachev suggested in a recent speech.
Addressing participants in the international conference marking the 1986 US-Soviet Summit, the former Soviet premier expressed his concern about the current state of US-Russian relations, which he blamed on a “collapse of mutual trust.” He cautioned against the use of force, in particular nuclear force, saying that military methods had not helped to resolve conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria or the former Yugoslavia. Instead, he called for a resumption of dialogue between Russia and the United States, which he says has been lacking over the past two years.
Both sides have incentives to find a mutually acceptable solution to the Syrian conflict. Gorbachev’s comments imply that a cooperation that goes deeper than crisis response could help make these solutions a reality, by starting to address the often-cited “trust deficit” between the two countries. Citizen groups from the US and Russia have proposed a similar approach.
Recommended: Sochi, Soviets, and czars: How much do you know about Russia?“We need to renew dialogue. Stopping it was the biggest mistake. Now we must return to the main priorities, such as nuclear disarmament, fighting terrorism and prevention of global environmental disasters,” Gorbachev said, calling for a discussion of the range of challenges that Russia and the US face. By working together on these issues, the countries’ leaders may be able to create the expectation of cooperation – and solutions – when they face crises, he implied.
Test your knowledge Sochi, Soviets, and czars: How much do you know about Russia?
Photos of the Day Photos of the day 10/13Relations have been difficult lately for all kinds of reasons. Most recently, the US accused Russia of interfering in the US elections, and called for Russia to be investigated for war crimes over the assault on Aleppo.
But the two powers are essentially locked into cooperation in Syria because of their military involvement, Frederic Hof, director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East in Washington, told The Christian Science Monitor in September. The two have “lethal and very high speed aircraft operating in constricted air space,” so they have to work together, he explained.
Another incentive for cooperation: the humanitarian crisis. “There’s such a huge moral and strategic imperative to address the humanitarian challenge,” Melissa Dalton, who served as the Pentagon’s country director for Syria in 2012 and is now chief of staff for the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told the Monitor last month. Russia is also increasingly concerned about the spread of extremism in the Caucasus and Europe, which may spur joint effort to address the challenges, she added.
Gorbachev’s remarks indicate that dialogue – and not just incentives – is critical to achieving workable solutions. That’s a point brought out by participants in the Dartmouth Conference, a roundtable discussion that brings together Russian and American “citizen diplomats” in search of foreign policy solutions. The Christian Science Monitor’s Linda Feldmann summarized one major conclusion:
US-Russian relations would benefit from a revival of routine topic-specific dialogue under the Bilateral Presidential Commission, without which “loudspeaker diplomacy prevails.”
Bilateral interest in diplomacy may not exist, however, says Matthew Evangelista, a professor of history and political science at Cornell University, and director of the university’s Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. That sets the current situation apart from the last years of the Cold War, when Soviet leadership actively sought to improve relations with Europe and the US, he writes in an email to the Monitor.
“Vladimir Putin is pursuing a different course, and seems to favor maintaining a certain level of tension,” he explains. As such, while the United States should certainly work with Russia, Professor Evangelista is uncertain of “Putin’s willingness to pursue mutually beneficial solutions.”
Ivan Kurilla, a professor at the European University at St. Petersburg, in Russia, who focuses on the history of Russian-American relations, tells the Monitor he is most concerned by the rhetoric he hears from politicians from both countries. The context of the US election has led American politicians and journalists to inflate “Putin’s bullying,” as he puts it, to the level of a Cold War threat.
Professor Kurilla points out that a similar dynamic existed between the US and Russia during the 2008 US election campaign, soon after the Russia-Georgia war. Bilateral relations were almost frozen, but when Obama took office, he and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced a “reset.”
“I cannot hope for [a] real ‘reset'” now,” Kurilla concludes, “but I do hope that the dangerous ‘Cold War style’ rhetoric will give place to realistic exchanges.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet Saturday in Lausanne, Switzerland to discuss next steps toward peace in Syria.
Intel chief Clapper worried about instability in the U.S.
Director of the office of national intelligence said institutions like rule of law are “under assault”
Washington (CNN)The nation’s intelligence chief said Thursday that he is concerned about stability in the U.S. and the fragility of American institutions, calling them “under assault” and pointing to today’s heated rhetoric. “I do worry,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Aspen Security Forum, after being asked if he thought the current environment of racial tensions, gun violence, terrorism and declining confidence in the political process was threatening stability. The former general noted that the intelligence community maintains metrics that determine whether a nation is considered stable, with about two-thirds of countries exhibiting some aspects of instability. “I guess if you apply that same measure against us, well, we are starting to exhibit some of them, too,” he assessed. Clapper noted that he was speaking as a private citizen and not in any government capacity. “We pride ourselves on the institutions that have evolved over hundreds of years and I do worry about the, you know, fragility of those institutions,” Clapper said. He continued that he was worried that American “legal institutions, the rule of law, protection of citizens’ liberty, privacy” being “somewhat under assault in this country, and that’s not being helped by a lot of the rhetoric that we’re hearing.” Clapper, who oversees the organizations that comprise the intelligence community, testified before Congress in February that the current geopolitical climate was the most dangerous threat environment he had ever seen during his more than five decades in public service. The intelligence chief was also asked Thursday how international countries were responding to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric pertaining to nuclear proliferation and other issues. Clapper responded that “such rhetoric is very bothersome to our foreign interlocutors, our foreign partners.” He added, “It is a worry to them, it really is, so I’ll just let it go at that rather than rendering any personal opinion. But I can, I think it is legitimate for me to report what I hear from many foreign partners and interlocutors.” http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/29/politics/james-clapper-intel-chief-worried-instability-us/index.html?sr=twCNN072916james-clapper-intel-chief-worried-instability-us1050AMStoryLink&linkId=27069756
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