This note and photo was posted public on Facebook in 2015.
My thoughts which I wrote much of in 2015 but never set to print – updated.
Jack Matlock wrote: “…Few noticed, but Reagan in his memoirs says that he and Gorbachev parted at that meeting “as partners to make a better world.”
“The partners and their followers and their better world – But the cold, or tepid, war wasn’t over, was it?
The deal was – we will look the other way and all claim victory and make a deal – a deal in our favor and a deal that opened the door for the Russians to the grab-all, by any means – land, resources, and strewing human misery and death on a global scale.
The deal that enabled Yeltsin to give carte blanche to the rise of new ruthless oligarchs and the military machine of madmen that was hot war – scalding hot war – world wide and lasting entrenched for decades. And, Goldman-Sachs went in and taught them how to set it up.
Meanwhile the propagandists, with their best selling books on diplomacy, brought home a message of world peace. – But the peace was all smoke and mirrors.
At the time of the New York picture, the Russians had not even finished throwing Afghanistan into full blown civil war. (But we were waiting in the wings – for some of those military profits in the trillions.
The legacy of making the world a better place…
Soviet–Afghan War paper end 1989
The war, by the end of 1989, resulted in the deaths of approximately 3,000,000 Afghans, while millions more fled from the country as refugees; most externally displaced… (before the Americans went in and got their piece next)
(The ambassador stepped down in 1991 and Gorbachev resigned in 1991 – let’s all look the other way)
Georgian Civil War – paper end 1993
only one conflict part in South Ossetia (in later report) produced approximately 20,000 deaths on both sides, and about 260,000 refugees and displaced. Official 
Approximately 1,000 fatalities overall
War in Abkhazia
25,000–30,000 total killed
Transnistrian War
316–637 civilians known killed
Tajikistani Civil War
unknown – 20,000 – 150,000 killed – 1.2 million displaced
First Chechen War
100,000–130,000 civilians killed (Bonner
80,000–100,000 civilians killed (Human rights groups estimate)
30,000–40,000+ civilians killed
At least 161 civilians killed outside Chechnya
500,000+ civilians displaced
Dagestan incursions Unknown number of civilian casualties
Second Chechen War
Estimate total number of casualties:
30,000 civilians dead (25,000 killed and 5,000 missing) according to
~80,000 killed in Chechnya (GfbV estimate)
More in neighboring regions
40,000–50,000 civilians killed (Kramer)[25]
More than 600 killed during attacks in Russia proper.
Total killed military/civilian: ~50,000–80,000
on and on and on the next years – countless because so many uncounted
Russian invasion of Georgia.
Russo-Ukrainian War.
Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war.
Central African Republic Civil War (I list all conflicting numbers)
Civilian casualties: Unknown number killed or wounded for certain
200,000 internally displaced; 20,000 refugees (1 Aug 2013)
700,000 internally displaced; +288,000 refugees (Feb 2014)
Total: Thousands killed
13,594+ killed (Oct 2022)
Mali War
unknown killed
~144,000 refugees abroad
~230,000 idp
Total: ≈374,000
Burkina Faso
Casualties and losses 20,000 dead (estimates) 2.06 million displaced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia
We do not have to mention places like Sudan and the Russians – they have switched to Russians etc. mercenary war marauding through Africa, taking even what was nailed down.
We are not even mentioning (yet( other of our world’s belligerents of the last 30 years, are we? Or how not peaceful the lives of these 100 million displaced peoples are and how the displacement led to more embracing nationalism and now open fascism.
Many of us look at all this from our gated communities.
Reading the “great” published dissertations on diplomacy to achieve peace (to make this a better world for the poor? or a better world for the rich and the oligarchs?)
How would Fyodor Dostoevsky judge that which you have blessed or looked away from Mr. Ambassador?
Dostoevsky is also one of my favorite authors: An AI about the first book of his that I read:
What is the message of The Idiot? One of the novel’s major themes is society’s corruption, particularly how it mistreats those who have little say over their circumstances (the innocent). Nastasya was molested by a much older man and is viewed as ‘fallen’ while the man suffers no consequences. AI Google
And the diplomats made the deals – funny how 1991 seemed to be the year to retire, to get out while the getting was good – those involved did not count their money at the table – they all just kept raking it in off the backs of the poor for decades to come.
And now 2020s and we see no rest on our laurels of peace – the military machines are whirling –
“cold war over?”
Washington, D. C. 44 years of memories in the Loose Thoughts Series
Cherie Lynn's Herstory 