Overall would you consider Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev good or bad leaders? Both of them are responsible for the fall of communism, though neither of them ever stopped identifying as Communist.
The big blemishes on their reigns would be the Tiananmen and Vilnius massacres probably.
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Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I don’t know much about Deng but I’d put Gorbachev in the top 5 peace-makers of the 20th century.
(After writing the above I thought about who my top-5 peacemakers might actually be and it’s tougher than I thought. In no particular order, perhaps: Gorbachev, Mandela, Gandhi, MLK, and George Marshall. I’m probably missing some good candidates out of ignorance.)
I agree that Gorbachev ranks in the top five peacemakers of the last century. Events spiraled out of his, or anyone’s, control, but his efforts to reform the Soviet Union along more humanist terms (my broad interpretation of Glasnost and Perestroika) was a tremendous achievement. That he allowed Poland, Hungary and the other satellite states to pursue their own course even more so considering previous Soviet responses. Part of it was a reflection of realpolitik, but if the Soviets had rolled their tanks down Warsaw or Budapest, the West would have just wagged their fingers, and allowed it to happen (again).
Deng Xiaoping will also go down in history as a good leader also. I have always had a difficult time blaming him for Tiananmen considering his experiences the last time a student movement had swept across China (i.e. the Cultural Revolution). The Chinese government’s first and foremost goal is political stability. They lost it for nearly fifty years and paid a dear price to a re-establish it.
But I see Deng’s legacy in two areas are that still playing out - he encouraged pragmatism over ideology, and institutionalism over ‘cults of personality’. Thus he enabled China to embrace capitalist practices while still being Communist, and he prevented the rise of another Mao or Stalin in China by ensuring the Party held power, not its Dear Leader. Each president gets ten years or so to govern, then he retires. And one of his duties is to ensure a peaceful transition to a competent successor.
How long that system will endure is anyone’s guess, but I expect it will last a few more decades, as long as China addresses its environmental issues, which is next on the list after addressing the corruption within the party, which Xi Jinping is doing fairly well. (Having former generals die from cancerbefore their trial certainly helps the party save face.) China is essentially being governed by 21st century mandarins, except they are ‘Communist’ engineers and technocrats instead of Confucian scholars. There are far worse fates in the world.
They were leaders of nation states. So, niether.
As an aside, why do Americans always need a ''bad guy" and a “good guy”. It’s international relations, not a famed Bond film.
I would take out Mandela and MLK and put in Nixon and Reagan.
Gorbachev was at least partially responsible for the total collapse of the Soviet economy (50% decrease in Russian per capita income in seven years) which was one of the biggest peacetime humanitarian catastrophes in modern history. To his credit, he didn’t intend the eventual end result. But I’m not going to suggest any statues be built to his memory anytime soon.
Good idea. Let’s declare Wilt Chamberlain and Andrew Sullivan patron saints of consecrated virgins while we’re at it.
Mandela for sure deserves to be right up there, probably second behind Ghandi. Forget where I heard the line “not everyone comes out of prison as Nelson Mandela” (Homeland?). Mandela spent almost 30 years in prison as an oppressed minority at hard labour, and yet when the wheel of history turned and they needed him, his motivation was unity and forgiveness, not revenge. That South Africa (and so much of the entire sub-Sahara) is relatively functional rather than a mirror of Zimbabwe or the Congo - is owed mainly to him. I would give a supporting actor role (but not the big 5) to de Klerk, who recognized the time had come and better to do what was needed peacefully rather than fight to the bitter end.
Nixon and Reagan? Nixon was a master of realpolitik, and so engineered a recognition of reality - Communist China was there to stay. But, he would not rank as my major peacemaker type. Reagan, despite incipient Alzheimer’s, basically pursued a strategy to bankrupt Russia into submission; brilliant politics and maneuvering, but hardly “peacemaking”… Especially since the action continued well after glasnost appeared. Both good and especially Nixon, under-rated presidents - but not “peacemakers”.
Would this be the Reagan who invaded Grenada, armed the Taliban, bombed Libya, sold arms to Iran, armed the Contras and (more pertinently since you want to remove Mandela) personally fucking opposed any sanctions against Apartheid, forcing his own party to override his veto? That “peacemaker” Reagan?
But he told Gorby to tear down the Berlin wall in such a commanding fashion!
Well, yeah - otherwise he’d bomb them, no doubt. What an idiot!
I have no great fondness for the man (he had the good fortune to be murdered before he was able to actually advise governments and create massive famines with his harebrained anti-technological ideas about agriculture), but his name is ‘Gandhi’. G and GH are entirely different phonemes in North Indian languages, as are D and DH. (Though confusingly enough, Indira Nehru’s husband was a Parsi named Ghandy who decided to change his surname to the entirely unrelated Gandhi out of what I’d imagine was shameless political pandering).
I wouldn’t call them “good guys” or “bad guys” so much as “pragmatists” (as opposed to “ideologues”).
I think that their impact on my life is that history went a non-violent route instead of a violent route like it might have if someone more like their predecessors were the dictators.
Yes, the nonviolent route in which this happened:
Mikhail Gorbachev is extremely unpopular among present-day Russians, for understandable reasons (less popular than Stalin, if you can believe it), and he may be going on trial for treason pretty soon. If I were him, I’d look to be moving overseas right around now.
Your point(s) being what? Your links meaning what in your view? That the Russians would have done better economically if we had had another hard-liner instead of Gorbachev? That he is guilty of treason? That’s just nuts. His leadership successfully ended the cold war. The whole world is safer for it.
Didn’t he rescind that order?:rolleyes:
I believe falling oil prices had more to do with that than any policy of Gorbachev’s.
Would this be the Nixon who sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 just so the war would still be there as an issue for him to run against in November, and then kept it going until he resigned in his second term? Would this be the Nixon who supported Pinochet’s coup against Allende in Chile?
“The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”
“I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.”
“1 in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! worth spending; not concerned; no involvement of embassy; $10,000,000 available, more if necessary; full-time job — best men we have; game plan; make the economy scream; 48 hours for plan of action.”
“I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry and he has his hand on the nuclear button and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”
Nixon: I still think we ought to take the North Vietnamese dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
Nixon: No, no, no, I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
Nixon: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?. I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.
Nixon: The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about civilians and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.
Kissinger: I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.