The values and mechanism underlying the evolution of contemporary European civilisation are on the verge of self-exhaustion. Consumerism and the ceaseless accumulation of capital contradict basic human interests and threaten equilibrium between humanity and the rest of nature. Humankind is unable to halt growing drug addiction, terrorism, and crime. Recent occurrences show us unexpectedly caught up in a new outburst of ethnic wars.

Overcoming the rift between politics and morality

Postscript of the book: “Moral lessons of the twentieth century”

by Mikhail Gorbachev

For these reasons, this book’s modest attempt to rethink the moral meaning of human experiences in the 20th century – particularly in Russia and Japan – may be useful, at least in stimulating serious reflection on the moral state of contemporary humankind. Mr Ikeda and I are from two different cultures and two different educational back-grounds. Mine is Marxist communist ideology. His is the profundities of Buddhism. Our having discovered a common moral platform is highly significant. Universal human values are a fact and can be a basis for rapprochement and mutual understanding among diverse civilisations. But this can happen only when dialogue participants speak the language of morality, not the language of force and prejudice. The end of the Cold War brought unique possibilities for global rapprochement. They were undervalued and unused first of all because, underestimating the moral meaning of the changes of the time, the West was unable to adopt a moral viewpoint in dialogues with the post-communist world, then awakening to freedom. On the threshold of a new round of geopolitical games, the West was bound hand and foot by egoistical calculations. I do not want our readers to consider us mere preachers who, ignoring what is under their noses, fail to see the obstacles in the way to what we call the new humanistic civilisation. There have already been too many blind egoisms, too many blind ideological biases. 

A peaceful coexistence of different cultures

As the majority of our readers will probably agree, it is now time to heal the age-old split between politics and morality. We must realise that the future world must be a world of diversity – many worlds within one world – and that only inner light brings full freedom. At the same time, each of our readers is likely to ask how to achieve peaceful coexistence and cooperation among diverse civilisations. Is there a force that can guarantee the independent development of different cultures? In taking practical steps to resolve conflicts in the post-Cold War world, how are we to avoid monopolism? Who has the right to arbitrate among civilisations? And, most important of all, in principle, can world development be guided? The ending of the Cold War made our world no safer. Today many people are beginning to look on total Westernisation as they once did on the threat of total, forcible communalisation. Apparently, the West is incapable of dealing in a reasonable way with the results of the new thinking that freed the world from bloc politics and total confrontation. The fruits of the new way of thinking – achieved with such difficulty – are withering away before our eyes. Some years ago, Russia rushed towards the West with open arms and the best possible will. But no one in the West followed Russia’s example. The West was incapable of working out either a new doctrine of collective security or a new ideology of peaceful development. Today the fate of the world is in the hands of institutes formed during the Cold War. When the Warsaw Pact was deactivated, there was pressing need to create a new system of collective European security. But the European process was sacrificed to old approaches, resulting in the eastward expansion of NATO. Overall, Western defence policy concentrates on how many post-communist countries to include in NATO and when. The possible untoward consequences of this mechanistic approach to the problem of European and global security are overlooked. This is only one of many examples of how the West, morally and intellectually unprepared for the changes evoked by our new politics, continues along the same old track. Claims of leadership in a unipolar world, even with the best motivations, provoke people to reject the blessings of democracy. We must consider this before instinctive processes of rejection proceed farther. Instinctive rejection of new democratic unification – it is tempting to say Westernisation – in a new unipolar world may have resulted in more wars than occurred in the old bipolar world, where claims on world dominion were held in restraint. The West assumes that changes in the old Soviet order took place in response to external pressure. Holders of this view would be surprised to learn that the changes were actually manifestations of moral progress on the part of all humanity and, most of all, of peoples no longer able to live the lie of totalitarian ideology.
  We must remember that a moral, purely human impulse toward freedom, universal morality, normal amicable international relations, and elimination of the politics of fear and threats were not signs of Russian political weakness. Respect for personal rights and freedoms played its role. But from this fact people drew the incorrect conclusion that all countries in the post-communist world wanted nothing more than to rush as fast as possible into the “bright American future”. Similarly, America’s mission was believed by some to consist only in teaching other people’s democracy with all possible haste. 

The heart of democracy: profound moral values

A purely bureaucratic, official approach was taken toward the building of a new democratic civilisation. Unfortunately, many Westerners forgot that at the heart of democracy lie those profoundly moral values we have discussed in this book. I mean, first of all, the principle of the moral and political worth of each individual and the principle of tolerance and respect for the opinions of each individual. I take seriously Mr Ikeda’s view that for freedom and democracy to take full force we must renounce violence. Democracy established violently – or, as was the case in Russia in 1993, with the aid of missile attacks – is worth very little. Democracy and double moral standards are incompatible. During the storming of the Moscow White House in October 1993, sacrificing its fundamental principles, the West adopted double moral standards. I frequently ask myself what will become of forcibly imposed democracy when the proponents of force weaken or what will happen to a peace imposed with missiles when the concluders of what they called „agreement” weaken. I do not doubt the values of democracy or its ability to direct social development in these difficult times. I have been and remain an enemy of authoritarianism and the practice and ideology of the “iron hand”. Free democratic elections are the only real means of effecting a transition from totalitarianism to democracy. That is why I insisted on the need to conduct parliamentary and presidential elections on time. But, if we are serious about setting up a new humanistic civilisation and wish to set forth guidelines and approaches to make it a civilisation of diversity – worlds within one world – we are obliged to examine critically and revise liberal ideology and democratic institutions too. Human self-knowledge must move in two directions. In launching Perestroika, we submitted the ideology and practice of communism to pitiless critical analysis. We came to the conclusion that the idea of forcing people to be happy can lead to no good and that the mechanism of moral retribution and the spiritual defeat of violence will sooner or later make themselves known. In our dialogues, Mr Ikeda and I speak in detail about the insolvency of violence and revolutionary extremism. At this point, as a counterbalance to our book’s bias toward criticising communist extremism and communist efforts to remake the world, we must seriously discuss the weaknesses and insufficiencies of Western democratic institutions. 

Lessons from the Balkan wars

Although communist totalitarianism no longer exists, the crisis of contemporary civilisation only deepens. The long-suffering peoples of Bosnia paid dearly for the West’s efforts to make each Yugoslavian republic an independent presidential republic. Important international decisions on Yugoslavia were made without taking into account the specifics of its complicated makeup or the history of the Serbian people as the prevailing ethnic group in the region. The UN was compelled to take measures involving massive bombardment of the Bosnian Serbs. But the West was unprepared to conduct qualitative peace-making missions. After agreements were signed, the Croatian–Muslim confederation showed signs of splitting.
  In the new unipolar world, the fate of peoples once again depends on prevailing moods among the officials of the United States, the leader of world democracy – even on presidential election campaigns. In 1995, after the deaths of thousands of peaceful Bosnians, the Dayton Peace Accord made a decision that good sense and the history of the religiously divided Serbs suggested from the very outset. I am convinced that the Yugoslavian tragedy would never have occurred if, instead of hurrying to recognise the independence of Croatia and Slovenia and later of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the West had held a preliminary inter-national peace conference to convince the conflicting national parties to compromise and discuss the rights of then emerging national minorities. But they were all in a rush to punish the Serbian communists as fast as possible. They were in a hurry to push the Yugoslavian peoples along the road to democracy. Once again ideological passions took pride of place. The ideological approach to world politics was revived because the reasons and motivations behind the new way of thinking and behind our initiatives to end the Cold War were not objectively and honestly evaluated. We did not abandon our own ideological approach in order to become slaves of anew ideology or the students and novices of Milton Friedman and Friedrich August von Hayek. We rejected the ideological approach in the name of the moral approach. 

Ignorance of history

The very principles and institutions of democracy – most of all American democracy – require critical examination. Western attempts to turn Bosnia into America and to hold elections in an ethnically divided land led to tragedy. Elementary considerations were ignored.
  For instance, Bosnian Serbs who fought the Turkish yoke for five centuries cannot live in a land with a Muslim president. Even in Africa, liberated from colonialism, new public history did not start from scratch. The peoples of the Balkans have millennia of public history. Similar factors went unconsidered when the international community supported the collapse of the Soviet Union. But thousands of years of history cannot be so easily overlooked. 

The USA – no model

Many scholars and politicians in the West and even in the United States advance a full barrage of serious arguments questioning American claims to ideological and political leadership. In the first place, the United States is not rich enough to subsidise endless democracy-supporting programs that, as a rule, have effects opposite to those intended. Bursting at the seams, the national budget cannot even provide medical insurance for the poor and aged. Second, the United States is far from a suitable object of emulation in several respects. Ethnic and racial conflicts that the United States tries to resolve in other countries remain unsolved at home. The Black demonstration called the “March of Millions” that took place in Washington in 1995 showed once again that smouldering racial conflicts still hinder basic solutions to overcome the split between Black and White America. Third, as they themselves some-times say, Americans are incapable of coming to grips with realities conflicting with their tremendous overload of myths and misconceptions about their own country. The average American has only the vaguest idea of other cultures and histories. This ignorance provides unique opportunities for the manipulation of public opinion. Fourth, in America, the fourth estate – the mass media – have inordinate power. They make presidents and destroy them as politicians. The overwhelming majority of the American people are busy trying to earn their daily bread and must be satisfied with world views concocted by the electronic information media. Consequently, public opinion trends and the entire course of political events depend on the honesty and probity of the people controlling the mass-media empire. Only a new, global cultural revolution making each individual an aware subject of world politics can counteract the expanding omnipotence of the fourth estate. We must realise that, in spite of great 20th-century successes in mass education, humanity still has not solved the major problems set by the great educators. Even in the most advanced nations, including the United States, the popular humanitarian cultural level is extremely low. Increasing drug addiction and criminality testify to the pathological condition of the human spirit and a lack of spirituality and humaneness. The gap between the uneducated and the educated parts of society widens. Under such conditions, millions of people remain the objects of inconceivable political manipulation. Although the United States has assumed the burden of leading contemporary democratic civilisation, it too is equally affected by all these problems. 

Putting Western civilisation to the test

The problems and contradictions of the political system in the United States, the outpost of Western democracy, is only one example endorsing our thesis that it is time for a re-examination of contemporary liberal civilisation as a whole. But, even as we begin discussing this topic, we must think of ways to avoid new world unification. The problems of global security can be resolved only when all nations today assume collective responsibility for the future of humanity. I use the word “security” in a broad sense, including economic, ecological, and informational as well as military security. Realising that all projects for the creation of global government are myths, we must begin improving already existing international organisations, notably the United Nations. UN power and ability to overcome international conflicts is of primary concern. Its peace-making efforts in Bosnia showed up all its weaknesses. First is its poverty and decisive dependence on the United States. Second is the nature of the Security Council. In dealing with peace-keeping operations, its members are guided first and foremost by their own national preferences and by efforts to support one side or another. This intensifies and aggravates the conflict under consideration. What does all this lead us to conclude? To have a future, the United Nations must become a genuinely independent, financially strong organisation capable of conducting policies motivated by the global security of all human civilisation. Changing economic and military might of member nations and certain basic civilisation principles necessitate expansion of the Security Council. I say this for these reasons. If we intend to create a new, diverse, humanistic civilisation that is, as I say, worlds within one world, the Security Council itself must be a world of worlds. Representatives of all existing civilisations – without exception – must have the right to influence Security Council decisions which in any way concern the general security of humanity. As members of the United Nations, sovereign states have consistently put their own national interests above everything. The civilised approach to defining the UN that I have just outlined would enable the Security Council gradually to become more than an organisation of sovereign states and to make decisions in the interests of humanity as a whole. The problem of cooperation between the UN and regional organisations too might be put in terms of this same kind of civilised relationship.
  There is another problem connected with both improving UN action and the theme of our book. I mean UNESCO. If humanity is being more and more united, why not devise guidelines for a system of humanitarian education based on the moral experience of all humankind and the moral wisdom of all religions? Ultimately, we might write a textbook on world history relating not wars but moral deeds. (Ironically, the “Washington Post” opened its competition for the most outstanding figure in the second millennium with an essay on Genghis Khan.) Today we must consider a wider problem: the cultural reorientation of all human civilisation and a new moral and cultural reformation. •

Source: “From a new philosophy to a new politics” (Postscript of Mikhail Gorbachev),
from: Mikhail Gorbachev/Daisaku Ikeda. Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century,
I.B. Tauris, NY 2005.

https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2025/nr-8-1-april-2025/die-kluft-zwischen-politik-und-moral-ueberwinden

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