Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, on Thursday urged nations to denounce nuclear weapons and warned that it "looks as if the world is preparing for war" in an opinion piece in Time magazine.
The 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who served as the Soviet Union's leader from 1988 until the country's dissolution in 1991, urged the United Nations – and U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladmir Putin, in particular – to denounce nuclear war.
"Politicians and military leaders sound increasingly belligerent and defense doctrines more dangerous," Gorbachev wrote. "Commentators and TV personalities are joining the bellicose chorus. It all looks as if the world is preparing for war."
Thousands of troops and dozens of tanks have been deployed to eastern Europe in recent weeks, the largest such deployment since the Cold War, BBC News reported. Gorbachev said Russian and NATO soldiers are being deployed closer to one another "as if to shoot point-blank."
"Today … the nuclear threat once again seems real," he wrote. "Relations between the great powers have been going from bad to worse for several years now. The advocates for arms build-up and the military-industrial complex are rubbing their hands."
Trump took to Twitter in December to throw his support behind expanding the United States' nuclear arsenal.
Trump later told MSNBC that he was unconcerned by worries about a possible global arms race.
"Let it be an arms race," he said. "We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all."
Gorbachev said Trump and Putin have a special responsibility to condemn nuclear war because the U.S. and Russia control more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear arsenals.
"In (the) modern world, wars must be outlawed, because none of the global problems we are facing can be resolved by war — not poverty, nor the environment, migration, population growth or shortages of resources," Gorbachev wrote.
About the Author
