Free Republic

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev today called on U.S. presidential candidates to develop alternatives to the use of military power, decrying what he called "increasingly visible signs of the militarization of politics and thinking in the modern world ... even though the military route again and again leads to a dead-end." Writing in the the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Gorbachev said the Bush administration has shown a tendency to "seek to address these problems primarily through threats and pressure. Will the candidates develop an alternative approach to these most crucial problems? This is now the main question." RIA Novosti,...

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who played a key role in ending the Cold War, said the United States had squandered an opportunity to improve global politics after the Cold War, a paper said on Friday. In comments that were among the harshest he has made about the United States, Gorbachev compared U.S. foreign policy to one of the deadliest diseases on the planet — AIDS. "Today our American friends are suffering from an illness worse than AIDS. And I would say this is the victor's complex," Gorbachev was quoted as saying in an interview with the Netzzeitung. Unable to...