The record of the meeting Gorbachev had with his coterie of advisers regarding the UN speech is essential reading for those wanting to understand his motives, not only back then, but now. Gorbachev intended to use the UNO speech to declare before the world that he was a globalist committed to making the UNO pivotal in the creation of what Bush was to later call a “new world order” in explaining the role of the war in Iraq and the opportunities provided for such global governance via the UNO with the demise of the Soviet bloc:
…This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order – a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful – and we will be – we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders…[34]
However, Gorbachev’s UN speech pre-empted Bush’s in expressing the same doctrine. Gorbachev stated of the UNO:
This organization is called the United Nations for a reason. In this context it should have a universally accepted doctrine, which would reflect the rights of the peoples, their right of free choice, human rights. Show the UN role as an instrument of the new world.[35]
Perhaps beginning with US/NED support for Poland’s Solidarity movement since 1980, as stated previously, oppositionist groups had been cultivated within the Soviet bloc by globalist and US interests, and Gorbachev’s speech could only be interpreted positively by anti-Soviet dissidents as a policy of “scuttle,’ no less so than Harold Macmillan’s “winds of change speech” had signaled the end of the British Empire. It was a stab in the back for those who had for decades stayed firm against the USA. The year after Gorbachev’s UN speech the Solidarity movement overthrew the Soviet regime in Poland. Carl Gershman, the Shachtmanist president of NED, remarked that Solidarity set in motion the “velvet revolutions” that would eventually collapse the Soviet bloc.[36] Gershman analyzed the impact in classically Trotskyite ideological mode,[37] showing how comfortably Trotskyism synthesizes with globalism:
The most notable contribution of Solidarity, aside from precipitating the unraveling of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, has been the introduction of a new concept of incremental democratic enlargement, based on the idea of building on the gains in one country to extend support and solidarity to democracy movements in contiguous countries and beyond. In the NED we call this cross-border work, and it had its origins, at least in our own thinking and programs, in a conference that was sponsored by the Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation in Wroclaw in early November of 1989.[38]
Gershman outlines the continuing role of these networks in the present-day undermining of Russia and those “contiguous countries” which have, in CFR parlance, “taken a wrong turn.”
And so cross-border work was born, and it has continued to expand ever since. The Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation went from providing support for desktop publishing in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to providing similar aid in Ukraine and Belarus, and today it works in Russia, Moldova, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Other Polish groups also engage in cross-border work, from the Foundation for Education for Democracy, an outgrowth of the Solidarity Teachers Union which provides training in civic education for teachers and NGO leaders throughout the former Soviet Union, to the East European Democratic Center which supports local media in Ukraine and Central Asia.[39]
Gershman reminisced that the above-mentioned Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation was created in 1989 to spread the work of Solidarity to neighboring states, and had the support of NED. After the NED-backed Festival of Independent Czechoslovak Culture at Wroclaw University, “The Velvet Revolution began two weeks after the festival and Vaclav Havel had declared that the festival was its ‘prologue.'”[40] Gershman stated that this “festival” had been funded with $7,500 by NED, “dollar for dollar, the best grant NED has ever made.”[41] But the NED backing of the anti-Soviet dissident groups goes back to their beginning, Gershman stating in 1999 that:
For example, in its early years NED was able to assist the Polish Solidarity movement through its trade union institute, while at the same time providing help to independent publishing and citizen groups in Poland through its discretionary program. Discretionary grants were also made to support dissident publishing in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, often through European-based NGOs.[42]
There is much more that could be said about NED and many other NGOs and globalist foundations, such as those of George Soros, creating the anti-Soviet dissident movements, but the main point here is that the whole Soviet edifice had been destroyed within a short time of Gorbachev giving the go ahead with his UN speech. Like the present Arab revolts, there was nothing sudden or “spontaneous” about the “velvet revolutions.” They had been well-planned and funded, and Gorbachev gave the signal.
It is significant that among the “wrong directions” taken by Russia the most notable according to Gershman are the actions taken against the oligarchs. It a recent statement, Gershman considered that, “As 2010 drew to a close, the backsliding accelerated with a flurry of new setbacks – notably the rigged re-sentencing of dissident entrepreneur Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia.”[43] Gershman stated just a few weeks prior to Gorbachev’s warning about Putin’s standing for presidential re-election, that:
…Putin may be in control in Russia, but he has lost the support of the political elite which fears that his return to the presidency will usher in a period of Brezhnev-like stagnation and continued economic and societal decline…
International groups should be prepared to provide whatever assistance is needed and desired by local actors. Areas of support would include party development and election administration and monitoring, strengthening civil society and independent media, and making available the expertise of specialists in such fields as constitutionalism and electoral law as well as the experience of participants in earlier transitions.[44]
Gershman is outlining a program that has been played repeatedly throughout the ex-Soviet bloc and central Asia and currently in the Near and Middle East: wholesale organization by NED and a myriad of other bodies such as Freedom House, the Soros networks, The Solidarity Center, International Republican Institute, ad nauseam, right down to creating political parties and formulating their programs.[45]
