‘Looks as if the world is preparing for war,' says former Soviet president Gorbachev

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Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin must unite to spearhead a new resolution banning nuclear war, Mikhail Gorbachev , former president of the Soviet Union, has urged.

"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 stated in an opinion piece in Time magazine on Thursday. He added that the most pressing challenge we face today is reversing the "militarization of politics."

Gorbachev criticized governments for their disproportionate allocation of funds away from state essentials and towards weapons, saying:

"While state budgets are struggling to fund people's essential social needs, military spending is growing. Money is easily found for sophisticated weapons whose destructive power is comparable to that of the weapons of mass destruction."

He called on members of the UN Security Council to take the lead on re-establishing a resolution stating that nuclear war is "unacceptable and must never be fought," and said that Putin and Trump should be the first leaders to embrace this.

"I think the initiative to adopt such a resolution should come from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin — the presidents of two nations that hold over 90 percent of the world's nuclear arsenals and therefore bear a special responsibility."

A similar agreement was established between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but has since been eroded along with the relations between the two powers, Gorbachev said.