Washington Post article: What lesson should today's leaders learn from Gorbachev?

The most valuable lesson we can glean from the life of the last president of the Soviet Union, the late Mikhail Gorbachev, is that even the most powerful and influential leaders will not be able to change history on their own, says Brett Beyer, political correspondent for Fox News.

In

for the Washington Post, he added that in the case of Gorbachev, none of the positive writings about him today would have been possible without his former US counterpart Ronald Reagan.

It was their unique partnership, and their willingness to dialogue even with their staunchest enemies, that enabled them to redirect the fate of the world.

Reagan took office in 1980, a declared enemy of the Soviet Union, and called it the "evil empire" and predicted its collapse, and his speech stirred up strife and tension among the people.

But that changed in 1985 with the arrival of Gorbachev.

Evil Empire

Prior to Gorbachev, there was no indication that the Soviet Union would ever be anything but an "evil empire" in Reagan's speeches.

When Gorbachev became a leader there, there was no claim that the Soviet Union was what Russia's original revolutionaries had envisioned.

He had the courage to change, and he took the lead at a time when his counterpart in America was ready to speak, and they did.

Gorbachev and Reagan began their collaboration with a common sense of urgency about the threat of nuclear war.

They enjoyed rare chemistry.

The first time they met, at a conference near Geneva, Reagan told Gorbachev a joke, "An American and a Russian met. The American says: My country is the best because I can go into the White House and tell the president that he's doing a bad job. I can go to the Kremlin and tell Gorbachev something." Himself, Reagan is doing a poor job."

Gorbachev smiled slightly, not knowing how to respond.

But he soon became accustomed to Reagan, who was determined that his meetings with Gorbachev would also become humanitarian, not merely political.

Each defended his vision

Reagan may be tough, too, and during years of conferences the two presidents wrangled over their countries' differing world views.

Gorbachev stubbornly took the party's position on major issues, and at times negotiations stalled.

At the 1986 summit in Reykjavik (Iceland), Reagan was so frustrated with Gorbachev's stubbornness that he withdrew from the negotiations.

However, this was not the end.

The two sides regrouped and kept the summits going.

And slowly, they moved toward agreements to reduce the nuclear threat.

In December 1987, Gorbachev and his wife Raisa came to Washington, where he and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

To Americans, Gorbachev, a rock star, was a charismatic Western Soviet leader.

Despite Gorbachev's fame in the United States, he did not receive the same awards back home.

(He and Reagan used to joke that they were both more popular in the other's country.)

By May 1988, Gorbachev was on the verge of collapse, and his internal reforms met with stiff resistance.

In that storm, Reagan and his wife, Nancy, made an unprecedented visit to Moscow.

Behind the scenes

The consistent picture of the visit, of Reagan walking with Gorbachev on Red Square, would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

Behind the scenes, Reagan was pushing Gorbachev hard on human rights and other unmentionable things.

Gorbachev felt that in his own country there were limits to his acceptance of Western principles and his power.

Still, Reagan was allowed to give a public speech in a crowded hall of Moscow State University, where the president puzzled students with what images of freedom they could have.

Led by Gorbachev, people in the Soviet Union slowly began to walk out of what the last Soviet leader later recognized as a "political dead end".

Reagan always knew that half measures would not save the Soviet Union from corruption at its core.

When he left the White House and Bush Sr. took office, the Soviet empire was already disintegrating.

At times like today, when dialogue seems impossible, and when conditions seem to have deteriorated too far for debate, Gorbachev's best appreciation may be for leaders to take this lesson seriously.