Gorbachev's New World Order: How the Last Soviet President Sought to Make War in Europe Unimaginable – Thirty Years Before Putin Renounced Gorbachev’s Doctrine and Launched War on Ukraine

This article reinterprets Mikhail Gorbachev’s momentous speech at the UN General Assembly in 1988, arguing that he envisioned not just a but the new world order. In contemporary historiography, the notion of the New World Order is usually ascribed to President George Bush Sr., while Gorbachev’s UN speech is merely associated with abandoning the Brezhnev Doctrine. But Gorbachev was promoting more than just a vaguely defined reformation of the bipolar international system. This article argues that the Russian original of Gorbachev’s speech may well be translated as a concrete, not vague, plea for an international order built on superpower cooperation, arms reduction, and the rule of law. In commemorating Gorbachev’s contribution to the (relatively) peaceful end of the Cold War, this article also explores how the post-Cold War era became America’s order, not Gorbachev’s. Bush’s “vision thing” was built on less idealistic propositions than Gorbachev’s UN speech and ultimately replaced the “Gorbachev doctrine” – a concept of international relations based on great power cooperation, hopes for democratisation, and with the use of force as an exception rather than the rule. However, Gorbachev’s ideals remained relevant principles of peace and security throughout the post-Cold War era and may even inspire the new order that will follow in its wake.