Commentary: Russia's Treasure Island By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/de-Borchgrave/2013/04/01/Commentary-Russias-Treasure-Island/UPI-87621364815973/

Commentary: Russia's Treasure Island

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, April 1 (UPI) -- No sooner did Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher meet Mikhail Gorbachev in London for the first time in 1984 -- a year before he became Russia's No. 1 -- and described him as "a Russian we can do business with," than the alarm bells rang among members of the Soviet Union's nomenklatura, the Soviet ruling class.

A year later, when Gorbachev became top Communist in the Kremlin and anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan began shooting down Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan with U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles, the alarm bells grew louder.

Gorbachev decided the Soviet guerrilla war he had inherited in Afghanistan wasn't worth it and the nomenklatura realized that sooner or later international communism would take a blow from which it probably wouldn't recover.