Nick Hayes'
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                  thoughts on the world we are in

GORBACHEV?

On March 19, I finally met Gorbachev.   I attended an invitation only mini-conference on issues of law and democracy in Russia hosted by the Washington based Kennan Institute.   Gorbachev was the main speaker and prize of the meeting.  Escorted by Lee Hamilton, a Gorbachev, visibly so much older than the Gorby of his heyday, walked to the podium – his face aged, jowls draining energy from his once magnetic smile and the gleam gone from his eyes.  For the most part, Gorbachev told again, as he always does, the story of his reforms – his perestroika – forever defending his policies and re-living his days at the center stage of world history.  Turning to today’s world, he did have two poignant remarks.   Commenting on the landscape of today’s Russian politics in the Putin/Medvedev era, he said:  “It appears Russia has decided to be a one party state again.  I don’t know who decided this but it is so.”

Asked about the condition of American politics, he referenced our economic woes and the legacy of the Bush presidency and then draw applause – “I think maybe it’s time for America to have its own perestroika.”

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PARTITION OR PARTICIPATION?

Blood has flowed with the Irish spring this year.  The recent news from Ireland reads like old news.

IRA gunmen shot down two British soldiers in Antrim.

A policeman murdered in Armagh.

Old news except we haven’t heard or read such news from Ireland in the last decade.  The success of the “Good Friday” agreements had brought an era of calm and complacency.  The new killings suggest that Ireland’s past is not yet past.  There remain in Ireland a diehard faction of the IRA that is determined not to accept power sharing within Northern Ireland but to promote terror driving the Protestants into retreat and/or emigration and united the North with the Republic of Ireland.  To point out that such terrorist are a small minority and lack popular support in the North and the south misses the essential point of terrorist movements.  They recognize that terrorism is symptomatic of their weakness within conventional politics.  Their goal is not to generate a majority at the voters’ box but to create a majority of fear.

Writing for GlobalPost.com, HDS Greenway puts the Irish killings in a broader historical pattern.  In his article “Splitting Differences,”  Greenway argues that the Irish situation is replicated in Pakistan, South Africa, Lebanon, Kosovo, and Israel.  I would suggest the same issue underlies recent national tensions within the nations of the former Soviet Union – as evidenced in the recent war in the Caucasus, strive within Ukraine, and lingering conflicts within the Baltic nations.

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