Politics & Power Quote by Mikhail Gorbachev

Gorbachev frames diplomacy as a moral test, not just a strategic calculation. By invoking "God on high", he borrows the authority of something bigger than the Cold War chessboard, then pointedly shifts the burden back onto human choice: wisdom has already been granted; failure would be self-inflicted. The line is engineered to make stalemate look like a kind of blasphemy - not against a church doctrine, but against the basic premise that leaders are capable of restraint.

The phrasing "Surely" is doing quiet coercive work. It pre-emptively labels skepticism as irrational, nudging both domestic hardliners and Western audiences toward a single, flattering conclusion: reasonable people must be able to de-escalate. "Improvement in relations" is classic statesmanly understatement, a soft wrapper for radical change. In the late Cold War context, even modest "improvement" implied arms-control breakthroughs, reduced proxy conflict, and a relaxation of ideological absolutism.

Subtextually, the sentence is also a political survival tool. Gorbachev is selling reform at home while negotiating abroad; moral language helps him recast compromise as dignity rather than capitulation. "The two great nations on earth" flatters the United States while preserving Soviet parity, insisting on a bilateral, almost fated responsibility. The genius here is its double address: it reassures Americans that the USSR can be a partner, and it reassures Soviets that partnership need not mean inferiority. Diplomacy becomes not weakness, but the only sane proof of greatness.