“He’s a man I can do business with,” Margaret Thatcher said of Mikhail Gorbachev. On the other hand, it was not love at first sight between him and Ronald Reagan when they first met at the Geneva summit in 1985.
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The US president called him a “diehard communist”, while Gorbachev shot back that Reagan, at 74, was “not a hawk, but a dinosaur”. Yet Reagan quickly realized that Gorbachev was not like former Soviet leaders. Both understood that a nuclear war could not be won.
Today, despite the shadows of war in Ukraine, tributes to Mikhail Gorbachev have poured in from the free world. But unlike Ronald Reagan, he did not have an official funeral in his country. How is this possible for this historical figure? Gorbachev is the modernizer behind glasnost and perestroika.
He did more for freedom and peace than any leader of his time. His reforms enabled the greatest nonviolent revolution in history, freeing 260 million people and making the world a safer place.
When asked how he was perceived in his homeland, he said that the judgment of history can sometimes be capricious, but eventually Russia will measure up to the man.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev saw an increased role for multilateralism, the United Nations and international organizations. Whether for disarmament or the environment, international cooperation is needed, he said. For him, the environment was directly linked to security and development. He saw the race for natural resources as a major issue and a source of conflict.
In 1992, the delegates of the Rio summit and its organizer, the Canadian Maurice Strong, called for the creation of a Red Cross for the environment under the leadership of Gorbachev. This is how the International Green Cross was born with its headquarters in Geneva. Between 2008 and 2017, I had the chance to join this giant of history as the executive director of this organization and its network all over the world. This is where I worked on issues such as climate change, access to water or to enable the destruction of 70,000 tonnes of chemical weapons. Gorbachev wanted a global perestroika for the environment. A goal that will not be achieved in his lifetime.
Gorbachev said the future is not predetermined. It depends on both events and our actions. Change takes leadership. It is now up to us to build on his legacy.