Okay, good, you’re asking me questions, so this is dialogue.
To 194, Gorby already decided in 1985 that Russia had to reform. And he knew how it had to reform. That’s the good news. That means that it was possible to talk to the West, to forge economic, cultural, and scientific agreements. The bad news is that you didn’t quite know which new enemies he made by making that decision, nor did you really know how much longer he would live. Russia, to this day, is not kind in political wars. The other bad news is that Russia became completely unstable–so the country itself was in a kind of pathology. They’ve wanted to join the western economy since Gorbachev, and it still hasn’t happened. That is, in the West the Ruble is no different than toilet paper.
Let me check one thing–okay, I was thinking that the Soviets allowing emigration was something, but the Reagan meeting was about nuclear arms, and didn’t go anywhere. Since Gorby, the political civil war has been intense, and Putin is busy restoring the old politburo.
To sum up, I suppose nothing was accomplished with diplomacy unless you’re aware of something. The emigration evidently was part of a general plan to restore population control with a severely weakened central government. That dynamic is a natural force of history.
Regarding 195–No doubt that you can talk to the successors, but you’ll accomplish very little. China wants Obama to be more economically conservative. What are the chances? Do you think Obama will get China to relinquish Tibet? Will it even come up? Hillary went to China and literally said that the US is going to overlook human rights issues because economic issues were so important. So once again, diplomacy fails in the area of human rights.
Diplomats have the personalities of movie stars, but are just so darned unattractive that they tend to crave power for power’s sake. Sad really.
