U.S. efforts to dominate the world could end in disaster, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's last leader who launched an era of cooperation with the United States that ended the Cold War, said on Monday.
A critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Gorbachev called for the rapid withdrawal of what he called occupation forces, warning: "The longer they stay, the worse the situation will get.
"You cannot get anywhere ... by trying to dominate," he told a meeting marking the 20th anniversary of his 1985 Geneva summit with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, a turning point in then frigid East-West relations.
"That doesn't work with small countries nowadays, and even less with big ones like Russia, Iran and -- heaven forbid -- China. That way lies disaster," said Gorbachev, who lost his post as president when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
"Trying to be a world gendarme today is an illusion. That is not the way ahead, but a blind alley."
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