Negotiating the End to the Cold War & Instigating a New Cold War
Jack Matlock, US Ambassador to the USSR
I had a conversation with US Ambassador Jack Matlock about how he and President Reagan negotiated an end to the Cold War. Matlock speaks about the great opposition that had to be countered within the US as it was believed that Moscow could not be trusted, and military pressure was the only approach. Working against war hawks on both sides, disarmament became the skeleton structure to develop mutual trust and end the Cold War. The Cold War eventually ended through negotiations in 1989 that produced a common peace. However, the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, and the neocons hijacked the narrative by claiming the Cold War was won. Peace was believed to have been created through military dominance, which lent support to the policy of NATO expansionism that destroyed the post-Cold War peace. Ambassador Matlock explains how we have, yet again, ended up in a situation where dangerous war narratives are elevated above reality, and military pressure is yet again believed to be the only path to peace.
This is the most sad, tragic and evil story in modern history. How the western military industrial complex destroyed peace in Ukraine, Russia and Europe and of course many other places before Ukraine.
Really what was so cold about it, how many Russians were killed in Afghanistan by the US-backed Mujahideen in the decade prior to end of the " cold war "? Was it perhaps one of the earliest proxy wars. We have so badly squandered the gift that Reagan and Gorbachev gave us,