Gorbachev and the Dangers Within

Today, Mikhail S. Gorbachev will deliver what he clearly believes to be the most important speech of his post-Cold War career. The speech, which National Public Radio will broadcast at 1 p.m. PST, will be delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where, in 1946, Winston Churchill gave his memorable warning: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

The Iron Curtain has lifted, but what our eyes behold now is another kind of danger. Speaking Monday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Gorbachev called that danger “nationalist extremism.” Another name for it, cheapened by overuse, is fascism. Fascism gave us World War II, and there are signs of its return.

In what was the Soviet Union, Armenians are at war with Azeris, Georgians with Ossetians, while Russians struggle with Chechen-Ingush, Moldovans and even Ukrainians. Meanwhile, in what was Yugoslavia, Serbian nationalist extremism has created 1 million refugees, the largest forced migration in Europe since the end of World War II.

Responding to ethnic violence may well be, over the next 40 years, what responding to the threat of communism was over the past 40. But we note that the former President awarded the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award to Gorbachev at a ceremony in Simi Valley, the community that, like it or not, has become as much a symbol of white America as Watts is a symbol of black America. As America threatens to split into two or more armed and hostile nations, Gorbachev’s bell tolls for us too.