Mikhail Gorbachev - January 1, 2009

The year 2008 has been indelibly marked by the global financial crisis. No one predicted its outbreak or its scale; I don’t think anyone knows when and how it might end.

It is already clear that initial reassuring statements about it were irresponsible. In the coming months, the world, and world politics, will be severely tested.

Searching for ways out of the crisis will be a difficult, agonizing process. Not all early efforts were effective. This first failure in the functioning of our fully globalized world caught us by surprise, largely unprepared.

As I read the reports from the July Group of 8 summit meeting in Japan, it is amazing that just a couple months before the crisis erupted, world leaders seemed unaware of warning tremors. The summit was a routine gathering. Its very format - the way it was prepared and conducted - seems outdated. We need a new vision of global political leadership, a new willingness to work together in this globalized world. Politicians are lagging behind the events.

Full story

Tags: Gorbachev

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 7:58 pm and is filed under New World Order. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.