ABSTRACT
The new political thinking in international affairs is inseparable from glasnost and the democratization of the foreign policy process. Many political negotiations founder precisely because they are built on mutual accusations and not on confessions. Messianic ideologies have often led different peoples and political forces to efforts to dictate to the rest of the world how to live and what kind of political or social system to choose. The new departure in Soviet thinking can be seen in the fact that the political leadership of the country, in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev, made an official announcement that nuclear war is not considered a rational extension of politics. An increase in the aforementioned tendency to reduce and restructure the armed forces internationally would represent a triumph for the new political thinking. Aleksandr Prokhanov, however, holds a very different view of the role of the military in society.
