I remember reading about Gorbachev in the current events weeklies they use to give us in elementary school. Even as simplified, and heavily censored as those accounts were, I remember being very impressed by the man. Later when I went back and read a little about the politics of that time, and particular Gorbachev’s policies on nuclear disarmament, I was amazed.

Unprecedentedly for a world leader Gorbachev stepped back from the precipice of nuclear war, and he did it alone. For 2 years the Soviet Union froze research, and development, withdrew forces and arms from Eastern Europe, and called for world wide disarmament, while the US ignore these called. Finally in 1987 Gorbachev wrung some agreement on disarmament from the US by agreeing to eliminate far more nukes then the US, because “parity” had no meaning in an age of mass overkill.

I grew up with the belief that nuclear war had been averted. It was a scary scary world, with problems environmental and social that hadn’t even been imagined when my parents were growing up, but at least I was out from under the threat of the mushroom cloud. On the few occasions I thought about it, I felt a hope, and a cheery optimism that was a rare commodity.

I don’t even have that hope anymore. The writing has been on the wall for the last 2 years, but in the last month it has become a palpable dread; nuclear war once again looms on the horizon. Nuclear proliferation is everywhere, the Bush administration has clearly signaled that statehood is defined by the possession of nuclear weapons and the world is listening, no one wants to end up like Iraq. Star Wars is back, and the administration is working overtime to normalize a nuclear strike with their “tactical nukes” and “first use” dogma.

I’m scared.

Dru apparently is also worried, see his analysis of current events.