Mikhail Gorbachev: 'It All Looks as if the World is Preparing for War'

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, said it "looks as if the world is preparing for war" in a piece published by Time magazine.

“More troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers are being brought to Europe,” the former Soviet leader wrote. “NATO and Russian forces and weapons that used to be deployed at a distance are now placed closer to each other, as if to shoot point-blank. … Politicians and military leaders sound increasingly belligerent and defense doctrines more dangerous. Commentators and TV personalities are joining the bellicose chorus. It all looks as if the world is preparing for war.”

Gorbachev’s comments come weeks after the U.S. sent thousands of troops to Eastern Europe, which NBC News reported to be the “largest deployment” since the Cold War.

The U.S. issued the deployment due to “a NATO buildup,” according to the New York Daily News.

“No problem is more urgent today than the militarization of politics and the new arms race,” Gorbachev wrote. “Stopping and reversing this ruinous race must be our top priority.”

Gorbachev, who has advocated against nuclear weapons in the past, believes that having access to so much weaponry could end in disaster for America.

President Donald Trump said he plans to expand the country’s nuclear arsenal.

“Let it be an arms race,” he said in December, according to NBC News.

Its comments like that which prompted a group of scientists to move the Doomsday Clock to two minutes and 30 seconds before midnight on Thursday.

Moving the time, in that manner, pokes at the notion of a potential “catastrophic nuclear event,” NBC News noted.

In his opinionated column, Gorbachev also addressed military spending in the case of nuclear weapons.

“While state budgets are struggling to fund people’s essential social needs, military spending is growing,” he wrote. “Money is easily found for sophisticated weapons whose destructive power is comparable to that of the weapons of mass destruction; for submarines whose single salvo is capable of devastating half a continent; for missile defense systems that undermine strategic stability.”

Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, after serving as the eighth and final leader of the socialist state, which ended in 1991.

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