by Bret Baier
As I flew back this evening, I had many thoughts. In just a few days families across America will gather to celebrate Thanksgiving. And again, as our forefathers who voyaged to America, we traveled to Geneva with peace as our goal and freedom as our guide. For there can be no greater good than the quest for peace and no finer purpose than the preservation of freedom. It is 350 years since the first Thanksgiving, when Pilgrims and Indians huddled together on the edge of an unknown continent. And now here we are gathered together on the edge of an unknown future, but, like our forefathers, really not so much afraid, but full of hope and trusting in God, as ever.
In retrospect, Gorbachev’s ascension in 1985 allowed Reagan to exploit the strategic weaponry of relationship building—an iron-fisted, velvet-gloved approach. The American people knew Reagan was as tough on the Soviets as he needed to be. At the same time, the close relationship that developed between Reagan and Gorbachev was utterly authentic. By 1987, they would be calling each other “Ron” and “Mikhail.” It was a study in relationship building across ideologies, both seeking a way out of the Cold War. But Reagan’s patience would be sorely tested in 1986, when negotiations nearly collapsed.
Chapter 7
Iceland Freeze
Letters flew back and forth between Reagan and Gorbachev. It was their favorite way of communicating. Long, thoughtful, and sometimes deeply personal, the texts are a study of two men with the world on their shoulders grappling with the big issues. After Geneva, the communications felt more like a dialogue than an argument, written in, as Gorbachev put it, the “spirit of frankness” that had been established between them. After receiving a letter that Reagan had written by hand, using his black felt-tip pen, Gorbachev replied, “I consider your letter important and also value the form you used in writing to me.”
Often the letters were lengthy, going into the details of their many areas of disagreement. But there were always reminders of their higher goals and their unique place in history. “Both of us have advisors & assistants,” Reagan wrote, “but, you know, in the final analysis, the responsibility to preserve peace & increase cooperation is ours. Our people look to us for leadership, and nobody can provide it if we don’t.”
Gorbachev agreed that in Geneva they had achieved an unexpected milestone, writing “I attach special significance to the fact that we have been able to overcome the serious psychological barrier which for a long time has hindered a dialogue worthy of the leaders of the USSR and the USA. I have the feeling that now you and I can set formalities aside and can get down to the heart of the matter.”
Reagan, accustomed to the biting boilerplate letters of previous leaders, was moved by Gorbachev’s expressed interest in getting to “the heart of the matter.” He had come away from Geneva appreciating that Gorbachev was a real person, not a ventriloquist’s dummy—someone he could speak frankly with. And despite his reluctance, Gorbachev found himself liking Reagan.
The year 1986 began with a remarkable display of unity—an exchange of televised New Year’s messages to their respective populations. When Gorbachev’s face appeared on their television screens, Americans saw with their own eyes a Soviet leader who seemed to be putting aside the old grievances. They liked his demeanor; it was unlike that of the stern and unbending Soviets of recent memory. “I see a good augury in the way we are beginning the New Year, which has been declared the Year of Peace,” Gorbachev said.
We are starting it with an exchange of direct messages, President Reagan’s to the Soviet people and mine to you. This, I believe, is a hopeful sign of change which, though small, is nonetheless a change for the better in our relations. The few minutes that I will be speaking to you strike me as a meaningful symbol of our mutual willingness to go on moving toward each other, which is what your president and I began doing at Geneva. For a discussion along those lines, we had the mandate of our peoples. They want the constructive Soviet-American dialog to continue uninterrupted and to yield tangible results.
Likewise, Reagan reassured the Soviet people, who were treated to his genial disposition for the first time:
Just over a month ago, General Secretary Gorbachev and I met for the first time in Geneva. Our purpose was to begin a fresh chapter in the relations between our two countries and to try to reduce the suspicions and mistrust between us. I think we made a good beginning. Mr. Gorbachev and I spent many hours together, speaking frankly and seriously about the most important issues of our time: reducing the massive nuclear arsenals on both sides, resolving regional conflicts, ensuring respect for human rights as guaranteed under international agreements, and other questions of mutual interest. As the elected representative of the American people, I told Mr. Gorbachev of our deep desire for peace and that the American people do not wish the Soviet people any harm.
It couldn’t have been a better start to the year. But in the two-steps-forward-one-step-back manner of peacemaking, 1986 would actually prove to be one of the most difficult years in the relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev, frequently calling into question the whole premise that their two nations were any closer to peace than they had been before Geneva.
In January, Gorbachev grabbed the momentum by sending out a public message calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2000. Reagan’s national security advisors were worried and suspicious. What was he up to? They suggested that it was a manipulative ploy, not backed by any real intent. They thought that Reagan should reject it outright. But Reagan didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t going to be the one who put the kibosh on an honest proposal to end the threat of nuclear war. So he publicly stated that the proposal was at first glance constructive, although he had reservations. Thatcher was less conciliatory. She called the proposal “pie in the sky.”
One clear subtext of Gorbachev’s proposal was his desire to see SDI ended. If there were no more nuclear weapons, why would the United States need a massive nuclear defense system? More than any other sticking point, SDI was the one that gave Gorbachev the most agita. Despite Reagan’s many assurances that it was a defensive system, not an offensive one, in spite of Reagan’s offer to share US technology with the Soviets, Gorbachev remained unpersuaded. Perhaps he was concerned that any furtherance of American scientific prowess would not be good for the Soviets. But Reagan felt that SDI was essential as a hedge against cheating—or, for that matter, against other nations that might develop missile programs.
A deeper motivation was to keep the Soviets engaged in an expensive quest. “I think President Reagan saw SDI as being yet another pressure on the Soviets, as something that they could not withstand, and I think he was right,” James Baker reflected in 1998. “Whether it would work or not, it was a heck of a challenge to the Soviet Empire, which was having a very difficult time competing economically and otherwise.”
If there seemed to be little progress on Soviet-American relations early in the year, it could be understood in the context of Gorbachev’s larger position. Less than a year in office, he might have been a new thinker, personally committed to a transformation of Soviet society and an end to the arms race. But he also had one foot in the old order. He could not get away with wholesale change. And he could not ever allow the United States to seem to have the upper hand in the propaganda war.
The Soviets continued to be spooked by the United States’ potential space prowess, even as the United States was grieving a catastrophic space disaster. The mission of the space shuttle Challenger had captured the public imagination, thanks in large part to the presence on board of a civilian, New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe, who had joined six astronauts as part of NASA’s Teacher in Space program. McAuliffe made the event of the launch special to schoolchildren all over the country; millions of them gathered in classrooms and auditoriums on January 28 to watch the takeoff. The inspiring, hopeful moment turned into a nightmare as they watched the Challenger explode.
When Pat Buchanan, then the director of communications, burst into the Oval Office to cry, “The
Challenger has exploded,” Reagan was stunned. He rushed to his study, where he watched the replay, over and over again, on his TV. He was brokenhearted by the loss of life. “There is no way to describe our shock & horror,” he wrote in his diary.
He’d been scheduled to deliver the State of the Union address that night, and he scrapped it in favor of an address to the nation at 5:00 P.M. about the disaster. He summoned speechwriter Peggy Noonan to work on his brief remarks, and she instinctively grasped the necessary tone: heartache salved by a glorious optimism that was totally authentic to Reagan’s nature. Many would say that giving that address was among Reagan’s finest moments as president.
Haunted by the image of millions of schoolchildren who had witnessed the explosion, he spoke directly to them:
And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.
But the most memorable lines, both poignant and poetic, came at the end of the speech:
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”
That lasting image was from a poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., an American airman and poet who had died in a midair collision during World War II. Americans could find comfort in the words, in the reminder of Earth’s temporal nature, and the higher aims that transcend one life or a single endeavor. The space program, Reagan promised, would go on.
But grief was a momentary emotion in light of the urgent pressures on the world stage. Rogue regimes, with terrorist impulses, were becoming bolder. It had long been Reagan’s belief that the Soviet Union was supporting terrorist activities in the Middle East, and that was particularly true in Libya under the violent dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi—whom Reagan referred to as “that crackpot in Tripoli.” The bombing of a West Berlin discotheque in March, killing an American soldier and a Turkish woman and wounding hundreds of others, was tied to Gaddafi, and Reagan was warned by intelligence experts that more acts of terrorism could be expected. In a press conference after the attack, Reagan was asked why Gaddafi would target the West. “Well, we know that this mad dog of the Middle East has a goal of a world revolution, Muslim fundamentalist revolution, which is targeted on many of his own Arab compatriots,” he replied. “And where we figure in that, I don’t know. Maybe we’re just the enemy because—it’s a little like climbing Mount Everest—because we’re here.”
Even as Gaddafi rained terror on the region and backed terrorist acts in Europe, Gorbachev continued to support Libya’s defense industry. That baffled and disturbed Reagan, who wrote to Gorbachev, “What are we to make of your sharply increased military support of a local dictator who has declared a war of terrorism against much of the rest of the world and against the United States in particular? How can one take Soviet declarations of opposition to terrorism seriously when confronted with such action?”
Reagan decided to send Gaddafi a message in a manner the terrorist dictator would understand. On April 14, US bombers attacked Gaddafi’s headquarters, terrorist facilities, and military assets. Reagan felt justified, but the Soviets were angered that the Americans had struck one of their closest Arab allies. From the Kremlin came an official statement that the attack had been an “aggressive criminal action.” An important meeting between Shultz and Shevardnadze to begin organizing a Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington, DC, was abruptly canceled.
Images of the warm hand-holding across borders only months earlier receded into memory. Reagan could not resist poking at his adversary. At the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 17, he joked, “This is also the night of the Kremlin Correspondents Dinner in Moscow. That’s when the members of the Soviet media gather to laugh at Gorbachev’s jokes—or else.”
Then a new crisis occurred—this time in the Soviet Union. When the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic exploded on April 26, Reagan immediately reached out, offering support. “The offer was rejected,” wrote Jack Matlock, Reagan’s invaluable national security advisor on Soviet affairs. “Moscow said everything was under control and they were quite capable of dealing with whatever emergency might exist. The tone was actually accusatory, as if, in offering to help, we had insulted them.” Reagan had told his people to resist criticizing the Soviets, but Gorbachev thought the Americans were engaged in a propaganda campaign to make the Soviet Union look bad. “They launched an unrestrained anti-Soviet campaign,” Gorbachev complained of the Americans. “It is difficult to imagine what was said and written these days—‘thousands of casualties,’ ‘mass graves of the dead,’ ‘desolate Kiev,’ that ‘the entire land of the Ukraine has been poisoned,’ and so on and so forth.” A war of words, as the temperature began to creep back up.
At the same time, according to Grachev, Chernobyl had a deep effect on Gorbachev’s view of the nuclear race, becoming for him what Grachev dubbed “his personal Cuban missile crisis.” Grachev wrote, “Before 26 April his intention to propose a curb on the arms race along with a radical reduction of nuclear weapons was mostly based on economic and security concerns, while after Chernobyl his attitude towards nuclear weapons transformed into a psychological aversion, a moral rejection (bringing him in this respect closer to Reagan).”
“Look at the Chernobyl catastrophe,” Gorbachev said in a speech before the Politburo. “Just a puff and we can all feel what nuclear war would be like.”
Yet as spring faded into summer with no date set for a summit or any agreement on the issues that divided them, it began to seem to the demoralized US national security team that the opportunity for a new beginning had slipped through their fingers. History provided discouraging precedents. Had not Eisenhower and Khrushchev walked a path to understanding before the two countries’ relationship collapsed after a US U-2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet airspace? Had not Nixon and Brezhnev held Moscow and Washington summits that had produced the SALT I treaty, only to have progress stalled? Had not even Ford and Carter fully engaged in détente, which, despite its flaws, had at least brought the vying nations to the same table? And where had it led? To decade after decade of disappointment. When the light had broken through during the Geneva summit, it had finally seemed that we were on the right track. Now Reagan was left to wonder, as his predecessors had, if the bedrock of the two countries’ disagreements was too solid to be broken with the tools of diplomacy.
With relations already frayed, the fate of two men further complicated the chance for peace. On August 23, the United States arrested Gennady Zakharov, an official at the UN Secretariat, as a spy. Zakharov had been caught in the act of paying an employee of a defense contractor to spy for the Soviets, not knowing that the “spy” was working undercover for the FBI. A week later, the KGB arrested Nicholas Daniloff, an American journalist, in Moscow, accusing him of espionage.
Gorbachev ignored Reagan’s assurances that Daniloff was not a spy, which made Reagan “mad as h—l.” Was his word not good enough? Or did it not matter? He doubted that the Soviets really believed Daniloff was engaged in espionage. As far as Reagan was concerned, it was pretty obvious what was going on: the Americans arrested a spy, and the Soviets randomly grabbed an American and accused him of spying. The setup was on for a prisoner exchange. The Soviets wanted their man back, and Daniloff was a hostage.
In the midst of those crises and impasses, the progress assumed at Geneva was stagnating. And Gorbachev continued to stubbornly resist setting a date for the promised summ
it in Washington, DC.
Then, on September 15, Shevardnadze, on a visit to Washington, delivered a surprising letter to Reagan from Gorbachev. The Soviet leader wrote that he was disturbed that their relationship seemed to be faltering, that proposals remained unexplored, and that “in almost a year since Geneva there has been no movement on these issues.” Something would have to happen to shake things loose. He wrote, “That is why an idea has come to my mind to suggest to you, Mr. President, that in the very near future and setting aside all other matters, we have a quick one-on-one meeting, let us say in Iceland or London, maybe just for one day, to engage in a strictly confidential private and frank conversation possibly with only our foreign ministers present.”
Gorbachev seemed sincere in his desire to break the ice once again. “I could see we were just going around in circles,” he told Grachev many years later, when they discussed his state of mind at the time. “That might suit them [the United States] but not us. At the same time, I understood that we were the only ones who could change gear and speed up the process.”
Reagan was willing, with a caveat. “I opted for Iceland,” he wrote in his diary. “This would be preparatory to a Summit. I’m agreeable to that but made it plain we wanted Daniloff returned to us before anything took place. I let the F.M. [foreign minister] know I was angry and that I resented their charges that Daniloff was a spy after I had personally given my word that he wasn’t. I gave him a little run down on the difference between our two systems and told him they couldn’t understand the importance we place on the individual because they don’t have any such feeling. I enjoyed being angry.”