{"id":51959,"date":"2022-08-31T11:35:20","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T18:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=51959"},"modified":"2022-08-31T11:35:20","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T18:35:20","slug":"statement-on-the-passing-of-president-mikhail-gorbachev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=51959","title":{"rendered":"Statement on the Passing of President Mikhail Gorbachev"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>08\/31\/2022 12:21 PM EDT<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State<\/p>\n<p>We join people around the world in mourning the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev.\u00a0Perhaps no word is more closely associated with Mr. Gorbachev than\u00a0<i>glasnost<\/i>, or openness. That\u2019s fitting for a man whose openness changed the course of human history.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Gorbachev was open to acknowledging his country\u2019s history \u2013 not just its triumphs, but its tragedies \u2013 what he called the \u201cblank spots\u201d of the Soviet Union\u2019s past.\u00a0He created space for dissenting views, and freed dissidents who had spent years in exile or prison.\u00a0He was also open to working with other nations, including adversaries like the United States, driven by the conviction that dialogue was in the interest of his people\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and all people.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s tempting to see the massive achievements of that engagement \u2013 including the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first-ever agreement to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and the USSR \u2013 as inevitable.\u00a0But those achievements would have been unimaginable without the courage and determination Mr. Gorbachev brought to his pursuit of openness, and the trust he built with Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.<\/p>\n<p>He never lost faith in the transformative power of such engagement, even as some of his greatest accomplishments were weakened.\u00a0In 2018, he wrote, \u201cIs it too late to return to dialogue and negotiations? I don\u2019t want to lose hope\u2026We must not resign, we must not surrender.\u201d\u00a0He was right, and his life is a powerful reminder of all that can be achieved when we make those ideals a reality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>08\/31\/2022 12:21 PM EDT &nbsp; Antony&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51960,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51959\/revisions\/51960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}