An American Life

by Ronald Reagan

  I don’t believe the crisis over Daniloff’s seizure ever brought either of us close to canceling the summit in Reykjavik. I think both Gorbachev and I felt the stakes were too high and acted cautiously to avoid torpedoing in advance whatever prospects we had of success in Iceland.

  81

  AT REYKJAVÍK, my hopes for a nuclear-free world soared briefly, then fell during one of the longest, most disappointing—and ultimately angriest—days of my presidency. Our meeting spot in Iceland was a waterfront home overlooking the Atlantic. Gorbachev and I first met alone briefly with our interpreters, then he said he wanted to bring in George Shultz and Shevardnadze and that’s the way it went for the rest of the two days—through ten hours of negotiations among the four of us.

  Gorbachev tried to limit our discussion to arms control. But I led off by raising again the Soviet Union’s refusal to let its citizens emigrate because of their religion or to allow the reunification of divided families. I brought up Afghanistan and the continuing Soviet subversion of Third World countries, to which he listened but did not respond. I had brought along a list of twelve hundred Jews who wanted out of Russia and handed it to him and said once again that Soviet human rights policies were impeding the improvement of our relationship. I also asked him why the Soviets had reneged on a commitment to buy six million tons of U.S. grain; he said they couldn’t afford it because of falling oil prices, which meant fewer Soviet dollars for wheat.

  Then, for a day and a half, Gorbachev and I made progress on arms reduction that even now seems breathtaking.

  On the first day he accepted in principle our zero-zero proposal for the elimination of nuclear missiles in Europe and my proposal, made the previous July, for the elimination of all ballistic missiles over ten years.

  As the day wore on, I began to wonder whether the Chernobyl accident and a fire that had occurred aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine just a few days before our meeting was behind Gorbachev’s new eagerness to discuss abolishing nuclear weapons. The radiation emitted at Chernobyl had made it impossible for thousands of people to live in their homes, yet it had been less than the amount of radiation released by a single nuclear warhead; as we talked, I wondered: Has Chernobyl made Gorbachev think about the effects of a missile with ten nuclear warheads?

  He and I had at it all afternoon. I proposed that in the first phase of our plan to eliminate our nuclear weapons each of us would scrap fifty percent of our missiles while continuing research on a missile defense system. If and when the SDI reached the point at which it could be tested, the United States would permit Soviet observers at the tests, and if the tests demonstrated that the system was effective, and once we had scrapped fifty percent of our missiles, each of us would destroy the balance of our missiles and both countries would share all SDI technology. At the ten-year point, when all ballistic missiles were eliminated, each of us would deploy the SDI system simultaneously.

  When Gorbachev registered objections to the SDI, I said we would abide by the ABM treaty and agree not to deploy the system unilaterally for ten years.

  At the end of a long day, George Shultz suggested that we give the notes we had made during the meeting to our teams so they could put in writing what had been agreed to and what sticking points remained. They went to work and kept at it through the night, until six-thirty the next morning. George and I were very excited.

  The following day, a Sunday, we had scheduled a half day of meetings, ending at noon. We agreed we were in accord on the account of Saturday’s agreements drafted by our teams of specialists, then began a second round of negotiations.

  In addition to nuclear missiles, we said we would try to reduce and eventually eliminate other nuclear weapons as well, including bombers, and Gorbachev pledged his commitment to strong and mutually acceptable verification procedures.

  When I said we couldn’t eliminate tactical battlefield nuclear weapons in Europe because they constituted NATO’s principal deterrent against an invasion by the much larger Warsaw Pact conventional forces, Gorbachev volunteered drastic reductions in their conventional forces; this was something which we’d always considered a prerequisite to a nuclear arms reduction agreement, but never expected to get in Iceland.

  George and I couldn’t believe what was happening. We were getting amazing agreements. As the day went on I felt something momentous was occurring.

  Our noon deadline came and went. We ignored the clock and kept on working, the four of us and our interpreters in that room above the sea.

  As evening approached, I thought to myself: Look what we have accomplished—we have negotiated the most massive weapons reductions in history. I thought we were in complete agreement and were going to achieve something remarkable.

  Then, after everything had been decided, or so I thought, Gorbachev threw us a curve. With a smile on his face, he said:

  “This all depends, of course, on you giving up SDI.”

  I couldn’t believe it and blew my top.

  “I’ve said again and again the SDI wasn’t a bargaining chip. I’ve told you, if we find out that the SDI is practical and feasible, we’ll make that information known to you and everyone else so that nuclear weapons can be made obsolete. Now, with all we have accomplished here, you do this and throw in this roadblock and everything is out the window.

  “There is no way we are going to give up research to find a defense weapon against nuclear missiles,” I said. It had been the Strategic Defense Initiative that had brought the Soviet Union to Geneva and Reykjavik. I wasn’t going to renege on my promises to the American people not to surrender the SDI.

  We knew from intelligence information that the Soviets were secretly researching a missile defense system similar to the SDI; their technology was inferior to ours, but if we stopped work on the SDI and they continued work on their system, it meant we might wake up one morning to learn they alone had a defense against missiles. We couldn’t afford that. The SDI was an insurance policy to guarantee that the Soviets kept the commitments Gorbachev and I were making at Reykjavik. We had had enough experience with Soviet treaty violations to know that kind of insurance was necessary.

  “If you are willing to abolish nuclear weapons,” I asked Gorbachev, “why are you so anxious to get rid of a defense against nuclear weapons? A nonnuclear defensive system like the SDI threatens no one.”

  From the American vantage point, I said, it looked as if the Soviets didn’t want us to proceed with the SDI because the United States was ahead in this technology and they were trying to catch up.

  To prove we had no intention of using the SDI offensively or as a shield during a first strike, I repeated my offer once again to open our laboratories and make the system available to all the world; I said it was to be a defense for the entire world that would make nuclear weapons obsolete and speed the day when nations had enough confidence in their security to give up such weapons.

  “We all know how to make nuclear weapons,” I said. “Even if we all agree that we are never going to use them, down the way there could be another Hitler who could end up with nuclear weapons.”

  Research on the SDI would probably take years, and the time could be used to complete and implement agreements phasing out nuclear weapons. Then I told him my story about gas masks and how after World War I the nations of the world promised never to use poison gas again in a war. “We went through World War II and nobody used poison gas—but we all kept our gas masks.

  “Who knows what kind of madman might come along after we’re gone? We live in a world where governments change; in your own country, there already have been four leaders during my term. I believe you mean it when you say you want peace, but there could be a change. It’s the same thing on the other side: I think you know I want peace, but you also know I will not be in a position to personally keep the promises I’ve made to you. That’s why we need insurance that our agreements eliminating nuclear weapons will be kept in the future.

  “If you think I’m soft in the head i
n wanting to give the SDI technology, think of this: Suppose we were at the point of deploying the SDI system and we alone had it; our research is done but it is going to take months, maybe years, to deploy. We are also sitting with a great arsenal of nuclear weapons and the world knows it; we’d realize it might seem very tempting for them to push the button on their weapons before our defense is installed because of a fear we’d soon be able to blackmail the world.

  “When the time comes to deploy SDI, the United States would have no rational choice but to avoid this situation by making the system available to all countries, so they know we wouldn’t have the power to blackmail them. We’re not being altruistic. There’s a reason why we are willing to share this defense once we have it.”

  Gorbachev heard the translation of my remarks, but he wasn’t listening.

  He wouldn’t budge from his position. He just sat there smiling and then he said he still didn’t believe me when I said the United States would make the SDI available to other countries.

  I was getting angrier and angrier.

  I realized he had brought me to Iceland with one purpose: to kill the Strategic Defense Initiative. He must have known from the beginning he was going to bring it up at the last minute.

  “The meeting is over,” I said. “Let’s go, George, we’re leaving.”

  When we reached our cars before leaving Reykjavik, Gorbachev said, “I don’t know what else I could have done.” I said, “I do. You could have said yes.” In my diary that night, I wrote,

  He wanted language that would have killed SDI. The price was high but I wouldn’t sell and that’s how the day ended. All our people thought I’d done exactly right. I’d pledged I wouldn’t give away SDI and I didn’t, but that meant no deal on any of the arms reductions. He tried to act jovial but I was mad and showed it. Well, the ball is now in his court and I’m convinced he’ll come around when he sees how the world is reacting.

  I was very disappointed—and very angry.

  When I flew home to Washington, the reception I got showed the American people were behind me. They didn’t want to surrender the SDI.

  82

  IN EARLY JUNE 1987, after the economic summit in Venice, Nancy and I flew to West Berlin where we were reminded again of the vast gulf between our system and that of the Communists. I was reminded of the Marshall Plan and how America spent billions after World War II helping rebuild the shattered economies of Europe, including those of two of our former enemies, and I wondered what other nation on earth would have done that. I saw an exhibit honoring the courageous pilots—three of whom I met—who had kept the city alive during the Berlin Airlift. And then I saw the Berlin Wall, as stark a symbol as anyone could ever expect to see of the contrast between two different political systems: on one side, people held captive by a failed and corrupt totalitarian government, on the other, freedom, enterprise, prosperity.

  I had accepted an invitation to speak to an outdoor gathering at the Brandenburg Gate at the dividing line between West Berlin and East Berlin. Before it was my turn to speak, I met with my West German hosts in a government building not far from the wall. From the window, I could see the graffiti and prodemocracy slogans scrawled on liberty’s side of the wall and, across the wall, a government building in East Berlin where I was told there was long-distance monitoring apparatus that could eavesdrop on our conversations.

  “Watch what you say,” one German official said. Well, when I heard that, I went out to a landing that was even closer to the building and began sounding off about what I thought of a government that penned in its people like farm animals.

  I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I may have used a little profanity in expressing my opinion of Communism, hoping I would be heard. (Because I wear a hearing aid, I’d been told in Washington I was even more vulnerable than other people to electronic eavesdropping. Hearing aids can be “bugged” by radio waves directed at them from afar and then repeat conversations taking place in the room; because of this, my hearing aid had gone through a special “debugging” process.)

  From this building, we went to the Brandenburg Gate, where tens of thousands of Berliners were gathered. Because it contains thoughts I feel strongly about, I’m going to quote portions of the speech I gave that day, June 12, 1987:

  Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe.

  From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same—still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar. . . .

  As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph.

  In this season of spring in 1945, the people of Berlin emerged from their air-raid shelters to find devastation. Thousands of miles away, the people of the United States reached out to help. And in 1947 Secretary of State—as you’ve been told—George Marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the Marshall Plan. Speaking precisely forty years ago this month, he said: “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”

  . . . In the West, [the American dream of prosperity for all] became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium—virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth. . . . In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle. . . . [Your] leaders understood the practical importance of liberty—that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

  Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany—busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city’s culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there’s abundance—food, clothing, automobiles—the wonderful goods of the Ku’damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth. . . .

  In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: “We will bury you.” But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind—too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor. And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate w
ith greater freedom from state control.

  Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

  Then I said:

  General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

  Standing so near the Berlin Wall, seeing it in substance as well as for what it symbolized, I felt an anger well up in me, and I am sure this anger was reflected in my voice when I said those words.

  I never dreamed that in less than three years the wall would come down and a six-thousand-pound section of it would be sent to me for my presidential library.

  I tell the story of this speech here as a reminder that, with all the changes that have occurred in their nation and Eastern Europe since then, in the spring of 1987 we were still facing a lot of uncertainty regarding the Soviets: Gorbachev had announced his new programs of perestroika and glasnost and it was evident something was up in the Soviet Union, but we still didn’t know what it was.

  It would be more than a year after I walked out on Gorbachev at Reykjavik before the warming of U.S.-Soviet relations that began at Geneva would resume. But that is not to say important changes were not occurring in relations between our countries.

  Despite a perception by some that the Reykjavik summit was a failure, I think history will show it was a major turning point in the quest for a safe and secure world.