February 25 1991 Monday For the whole day on Saturday February 23rd Gorbachev and we with him was telephoning Bush Major Andreotti Mubarak Assad Mitterrand Kohl Kaifu Rafsanjani… Trying to convince them that Hussein will leave Kuwait that he has no other options And nobody including the people he is on close terms with told him directly “Don’t fuss Mikhail Everything was decided two weeks ago Nobody wants Hussein to withdraw or more precisely Bush doesn’t want him to withdraw and we can’t stand in the way He has to stay so we can arrange a modern-day ‘Stalingrad’ for him ” They played games with him Sometimes he felt it but kept hoping that the New Thinking criteria would kick in that trust means something But no such luck The logic of traditional politics was at work where there is power wealth and interests there is “right ” And it was easy to find a moral cover for this especially against Hussein Records of his telephone conversations are the swan song of new policy aimed at “a new world order ” As could be expected he turned out to be a dreamer-idealist He believed that humanity will become the core of world politics And we the people around him also believed it even if we doubted it at times In a word Gorbachev passed the “test by Hussein ” The West did not pass it Allah and the Christian God will note it for us But that’s about it We are doomed to be friends with America no matter what it does Otherwise we’d again face isolation and everything will go haywire The remains of perestroika would also be lost Though today when I advised Gorbachev not to respond to Hussein’s latest message he said “You are right What is it now It’s a new era Even in our country it is already post-perestroika All revolutions end in failure even if they change the country and some change the whole world ”