After the reception Nancy and I hosted a dinner for the Gorbachevs at the villa we were using as our temporary home in Geneva. After dinner, we adjourned to the living room for coffee and conversation. Shortly after we were seated, senior officials from both sides, who had been in a different building working on the statement, came in and said they were at loggerheads over the language for the final document. The Soviets wanted to change something that had already been agreed upon. George Shultz was quite angry at this last-minute change. He pointed at the Soviet official responsible for the problem and said directly to General Secretary Gorbachev: “Mr. General Secretary, this man is not keeping the agreement you and President Reagan reached earlier today, and if we don’t reach an agreement it will be his fault.” Without batting an eye, Gorbachev turned to his man and said, “Do it the way we discussed,” providing more evidence that he was a man who was sure of himself and his power.
When Nancy and I returned to our bedroom after dinner, I took one look at a glass aquarium in the room and said, “Oh, lordy.”
The children who normally lived in the house had asked me to feed their goldfish. I’d done it, but one of the fish was dead. Maybe I hadn’t fed the fish enough food, or maybe I had fed it too much. Whatever the reason, it had died on my watch and I felt responsible for it. I asked our staff to put the dead fish into a box and take it to a pet store in Geneva to see whether they could find one exactly like it. Luckily, they found two that matched, and I put them in the tank and wrote a letter to the children to let them know what had happened.
The next day, Gorbachev and I released our statement, and Nancy and I returned to Washington via Brussels, where I briefed NATO ministers on the summit.
As we flew home I felt good: Gorbachev was tough and convinced Communism was superior to capitalism, but after almost five years I’d finally met a Soviet leader I could talk to.
It didn’t occur to me then, but later on I was to remember something else about Gorbachev at Geneva: Not once during our private sessions or at the plenary meetings did he express support for the old Marxist-Leninist goal of a one-world Communist state or the Brezhnev Doctrine of Soviet expansionism. He was the first Soviet leader I knew of who hadn’t done that.
As soon as we got home, after going without sleep for almost twenty-four hours, I addressed a joint session of Congress. I reported that we had made a good start at improving relations with the Soviets and that my experience at Geneva gave me hope for the future. “I can’t claim that we had a meeting of the minds on such fundamentals as ideology or national purpose,” I said, “but we understand each other better and that’s a key to peace . . . we have a long way to go, but we’re heading in the right direction. . . .”
I think the enthusiastic cheering and stomping in the chamber of the House of Representatives that night as I delivered my report from Geneva spoke for all peoples of the world who shared a hope for lasting peace in the nuclear age.
Afterward, I wrote in my diary: “I haven’t gotten such a reception since I was shot.”
We had made a start but, as we were to learn, some of the euphoria was premature.
79
THREE DAYS AFTER we returned from Geneva, George Shultz said again that he wanted to resign; he was just burned out from the intensity of the job, and I suppose he may have been growing tired of his differences with Cap Weinberger. As I had previously, I said I wanted him to remain as long as I was in the White House but I wouldn’t try to talk him out of leaving. Once again, George proved himself a patriot: Rather than leave just as we were getting ready to press forward to continue the momentum begun at Geneva, he said he would remain on the job, and during the next three years he proved again and again that he was one of the finest and most distinguished secretaries of state in the history of our country.
A week after we returned from Geneva, I sent a handwritten letter to Gorbachev in which I tried to continue the process begun at the fireside summit and to overcome his resistance to the Strategic Defense Initiative:
Dear General Secretary Gorbachev:
Now that we are both home and facing the task of leading our countries into a more constructive relationship with each other, I wanted to waste no time in giving you some of my initial thoughts on our meetings. Though I will be sending shortly, in a more formal and official manner, a more detailed commentary on our discussions, there are some things I would like to convey very personally and very privately.
First, I want you to know that I found our meetings of great value. We had agreed to speak frankly, and we did. As a result, I came away from the meeting with a better understanding of your attitudes. I hope you also understand mine a little better. Obviously there are many things on which we disagree and we disagree very fundamentally. But, if I understand you correctly, you, too, are determined to take steps to see that our nations manage their relationship in a peaceful fashion. If this is the case, then this is one point on which we are in total agreement—and it is after all the most fundamental one of all.
As for our substantial differences, let me offer a thought or two of my own.
Regarding strategic defense and its relation to the reduction of offensive nuclear weapons, I was struck by your conviction that the American program is somehow designed to secure a strategic advantage or even to permit a first strike capability. I also noted your concern that research and testing in the area could be a cover for developing and placing offensive weapons in space.
As I told you, neither of these concerns is warranted. But I can understand, as you explained so eloquently, that there are matters that cannot be taken on faith. Both of us must cope with what the other side is doing and judge these implications for the security of our own country. I do not ask you to take my assurances on faith.
However, the truth is that the United States has no intention of using its strategic defense program to gain any advantage and there is no development under way to create space-based weapons.
Our goal is to eliminate any possibility of a first strike from either side. This being the case, we should be able to find a way, in practical terms, to relieve the concerns you have expressed.
For example, could our negotiators, when they resume work in January, discuss frankly and specifically what sort of future development each of us would find threatening? Neither of us, it seems, wants to see offensive weapons, particularly weapons of mass destruction, deployed in space. Should we not attempt to define what sort of systems have that potential and then try to find verifiable ways to prevent their development?
And can’t our negotiators deal more frankly and openly with the question of how to eliminate a first strike potential on both sides? Your military now has an advantage in this area—a three to one advantage in warheads that can destroy hardened targets with little warning. That is obviously alarming to us and explains many of the efforts we are making in our modernization program. You may feel perhaps that the U.S. has some advantage in other categories. If so, let’s insist that our negotiators face up to these issues and find a way to improve the security of both countries by agreeing on appropriately balanced reductions. If you are as sincere as I am in not seeking to secure or preserve one-sided advantages, we will find a solution to these problems.
Regarding another key issue we discussed, that of regional conflicts, I can assure you that the United States does not believe that the Soviet Union is the cause of all the world’s ills. We do believe, however, that your country has exploited and worsened local tensions and conflicts by militarizing them and, indeed, intervening directly and indirectly in struggles arising out of local causes. While we both will doubtless continue to support our friends, we must find a way to do so without use of armed force. This is the crux of the point I tried to make.
One of the most significant steps in lowering tensions in the world—and tensions in U.S.-Soviet relations—would be a decision on your part to withdraw your forces from Afghanistan. I gave careful attention to your comments on this issue at
Geneva and am encouraged by your statement that you feel political reconciliation is possible.
I want you to know that I am prepared to cooperate in any reasonable way to facilitate such a withdrawal and that I understand that it must be done in a manner which does not damage Soviet security. During our meetings, I mentioned one idea which I thought might be helpful and I will welcome any further suggestions you may have.
These are only two of the key issues on our current agenda. I will soon send some thoughts on others. I believe that we should act promptly to build the momentum our meeting initiated.
In Geneva I found our private sessions particularly useful. Both of us have advisers and assistants, but, you know, in the final analysis, the responsibility to preserve peace and increase cooperation is ours. Our people look to us for leadership and nobody can provide it if we don’t. But we won’t be very effective leaders unless we can rise above the specific but secondary concerns that preoccupy our respective bureaucracies and give our governments a strong push in the right direction.
So what I want to say finally is that we should make the most of the time before we meet again to find some specific and significant steps that would give meaning to our commitment to peace and arms reductions. Why not set a goal—privately, just between the two of us—to find a practical way to solve critical issues—the two I have mentioned—by the time we meet in Washington?
Please convey regards from Nancy and me to Mrs. Gorbachev. We genuinely enjoyed meeting you in Geneva and are already looking forward to showing you something of our country next year.
Sincerely yours,
Ronald Reagan
November 28, 1985
A week or so later, I sent a second letter to Moscow that was delivered to Gorbachev by Commerce Secretary Mac Baldrige, who was on another trade mission. This time, I raised other issues I felt had to be dealt with before we could achieve normal relations. They included, I said,
the broad question of emigration, whether of members of such groups as Jews, Armenians and others, or of some internationally known individuals. In both categories, we are talking about quite poignant cases. The young pianist I mentioned to you falls into the category of someone whose requests to emigrate have been refused. The political importance of resolving such well known cases as the Sakharovs, Scharansky and Yuri Orlov cannot be overestimated. We are not interested in exploiting these cases. Their resolution will permit greater prominence for other issues in our relationship . . . the issues I have laid out in this letter are serious ones. Progress here would provide an enormous impetus to the resolution of other outstanding problems. Lack of progress will only hold us back.
I also raised the issue of Afghanistan and the Soviet support of Qaddafi.
It is hard to reconcile Soviet interest in restraint in this region with the provision of advanced weapons to a leader whose reckless behavior is a major danger to regional stability. Because we view this development with utmost seriousness, I was disappointed to see that the Soviet response to our presentation failed to address the transfer of [recently shipped advance] weapons to Libya. Our ministers and experts should address this vital matter, since it raises the prospect of dangerous incidents that I hope you want to avoid as much as we do. If you agree, both Angola and Libya are additional subjects which Secretary Shultz and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze might take up in their next meeting.
In a Christmas Eve reply to my letter dated November 28, Gorbachev said that he appreciated its personal and handwritten nature and that he was pleased that at Geneva we had managed to
overcome a serious psychological barrier which for a long time has hindered a dialogue worthy of the leaders of the USSR and the USA.
I also have the feeling now that we can set aside our differences and get down to the heart of the matter—we can set a specific agenda for discussing in the upcoming years how to straighten out Soviet-American relations. . . . I agree with you, Mr. President: In the final analysis, no one besides us can do this.
Then, he launched into an explanation of his country’s opposition to “space-strike weapons”—the Strategic Defense Initiative—that I thought was seriously flawed.
He said the Soviet opposition was based on a conviction that such weapons could be used both for defensive and offensive purposes.
“You have said, Mr. President, that the U.S. has no intention of using the SDI program for achieving military superiority,” Gorbachev wrote.
I am sure that you personally could not have any such intention. But, we agree that it is the duty of the leaders of both sides to evaluate the actions of the other in the area of the creation of new types of weapons not in terms of intentions, but rather in terms of the potential capability which might be achieved due to the creation of a new weapon. Viewing the SDI program from such a position the Soviet leadership inevitably arrives at one conclusion: in the current actual conditions, the “space shield” is needed only by the side which is preparing for a first (preemptive) strike. For the side which does not proceed from this notion, the need for such a weapon does not arise. Indeed, space-strike weapons are all global weapons. The space-strike weapons being developed in the U.S. are kinetic energy and long range directed energy systems with a range of several thousand miles and are capable of great destructive power. As both our experts and scientists confirm, these weapons are capable of destroying in space as well as from space within a very short time in great quantities and selectively objects which are thousands of miles away and I stress, thousands of miles away, and [with] a capability to destroy the other side’s monitoring, navigation, communication and other space systems by striking from guided space weapons.
Gorbachev’s letter continued:
In essence, the use of this weapon can only be considered as a means to “blind” and take the other side by surprise and to interfere with its capability to respond to a nuclear attack. Moreover, once this weapon is created the process of improving it will begin, giving it ever increasing combat characteristics. Such is the law of the development of any weapons. How, Mr. President, should the Soviet Union respond in this situation? I would like to repeat what I said in Geneva. The USSR simply cannot and will not accept the situation of the U.S. realization of the SDI program and then to reduce nuclear weapons. To provide for its security, come what may, we will be forced to develop and perfect strategic nuclear forces to increase their ability to neutralize the American “space shield.” At the same time, we would be forced to develop our own space weapons, including those for national ballistic missile defense. Apparently the U.S., for its part, would adopt other kinds of measures. As a result, we would not be able to break out of this vicious circle, and in the final analysis, from the whirlpool of the ever spiraling arms race. The end results of such action inimical to our people and all of mankind would be unspeakable.
I am convinced that the only rational way is not to do this. From all points of view, the right path for our countries is to prevent an arms race in space and halt it on earth. Moreover, it is necessary to negotiate under equal and mutually acceptable conditions.
In addition to objecting to the SDI program, Gorbachev disputed my view that the Soviets’ huge stockpile of long-range land-based missiles gave them superiority in the nuclear race; American Trident submarine-launched missiles, he said, allowed us to launch a surprise attack on the Soviets with much less warning time than their land-based missiles, and therefore they provided a threat to the Soviet Union exceeding that posed by Soviet missiles against the United States. And, he asked:
How can the Soviet Union view the Pershing II missiles deployed in Europe with their high accuracy and short flight time to USSR targets as anything else but first strike weapons? Please forgive me for being concerned with technical details in a personal letter of this kind, but, really, this is a vitally important situation and it simply cannot be avoided. Believe me, Mr. President, we have a real and extremely serious concern over U.S. nuclear weapons. You speak of mutual concerns. The
solution of this problem is only possible through consideration and calculations of the sum total of the corresponding weapons on both sides.
Then Gorbachev gave his reaction to what I’d said about “regional conflicts,” a euphemism to describe Soviet adventurism in Third World countries.
Let’s, he said,
see the world as it is. Both of us offer such assistance. Why apply a double standard here that Soviet aid is a source of tension and American assistance is good will? Better to be guided by objective criteria. The Soviet Union will help lawful governments which ask us for aid because they have been and are being subjected to external armed interference. But the U.S., and such are the facts, inspires action against governments and arms anti-social, and in essence, terrorist groups. Looking at the matter objectively, it is specifically such external interference which creates regional tension and conflict situations. Were there no such activities, I am sure tensions would be reduced and the prospects for political settlements will become much better and more realistic.
Unfortunately, developments are proceeding in another direction. Take for example, the unprecedented pressure and terror to which the government of Nicaragua, which has been lawfully elected, has been subjected. I will be frank—the things the U.S. has done lately make us wary. It seems that just now a shift [in U.S. policies] is exacerbating regional problems. Such an approach does not facilitate finding a common language and complicates the search for political solutions.
An American Life Page 68