An American Life

by Ronald Reagan

  During those ten hours of discussions among four men in a room overlooking the sea, we agreed on the basic terms for what fourteen months later would become the INF agreement—a treaty that for the first time in history provided for the elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons; we created a framework for the START agreement to reduce long-range strategic missiles on each side as well as for agreements on reduction of chemical weapons and conventional forces, while preserving our right to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative.

  In the same way that I think the Soviets returned to the negotiating table at Geneva only because we refused to halt deployment of NATO’s intermediate-range missiles during the fall of 1983, I think Gorbachev was ready to talk the next time we met in Washington because we had walked out on him at Reykjavik and gone ahead with the SDI program.

  But during those fourteen months, progress didn’t come easily. Gorbachev continued his resistance to the SDI throughout 1987. And not all of the obstacles to continuing the momentum started at Geneva originated in Moscow.

  The months following the Reykjavík summit were very busy: There was the Iran-Contra affair and various changes in the White House staff that followed it; there were more problems between Israel and its Arab neighbors; there were continuing battles with Congress over support for the Contras; there were attempts by Iran and Iraq to close the Persian Gulf to shipping, while we were determined to keep the sea lanes open; and there was the tragic attack by Iraqi planes on the USS Stark.

  In Congress, there were new efforts by the Democrats to cut the military programs that were essential to continuing our policy of peace through strength that had brought the Soviets to the arms control table. And at the Pentagon, there were a few misgivings about my dream of a nuclear-free world. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, while behind our efforts to negotiate new arms control agreements, said that we would require nuclear missiles for the foreseeable future because of the need to offset the Soviet bloc’s huge imbalance of conventional forces in Europe and an unwillingness by Congress to approve bigger budgets. (Among other realities of the nuclear age, the cost of maintaining nuclear deterrent forces is far less than the salary and upkeep for conventional armies.) Eventually, based on their advice, we proposed, instead of aiming for a fifty-percent cut in ICBMs over five years, that it should be seven years, and the Russians concurred.

  Meanwhile, some of my more radical conservative supporters protested that in negotiating with the Russians I was plotting to trade away our country’s future security. I assured them we wouldn’t sign any agreements that placed us at a disadvantage, but still got lots of flak from them—many of whom, I was convinced, thought we had to prepare for nuclear war because it was “inevitable.” (I sometimes wondered how they would have reacted to a visit to Chernobyl.) Cap Weinberger was strongly against the vision Gorbachev and I shared at Reykjavik calling for the elimination of all nuclear missiles. I told Cap I was going to push for it despite his opposition. But on one thing Cap and I did agree: Throughout that spring and summer, he and George Shultz still disagreed about how we should interpret the ABM treaty and about the pace at which we should develop and deploy—if it proved practical—the hardware produced in the Strategic Defensive Initiative. George continued favoring a narrow interpretation of the treaty, which would have disallowed the testing of certain components; he and Frank Carlucci, my new national security advisor, suggested Cap was overly optimistic in his projections about how soon scientists and engineers would be able to solve the technical problems involved in developing the SDI. I sided with Cap, deciding that our best policy was to stay tough, to proceed with research and testing of the SDI system, to determine if it would work, and, if it did, to begin deploying it in phases starting in 1993. I also thought we should stick to the broad (and entirely legal) interpretation of the treaty advocated by Cap, while still pushing for an agreement to ban nuclear weapons.

  In Geneva, reaching agreement on the specific terms for the INF treaty had proved very difficult even though Gorbachev and I had agreed on the zero-zero concept. One obstacle, for example, involved West Germany: Helmut Kohl was worried that if NATO eliminated all INF weapons without a parallel increase in NATO conventional forces, West Germany might become too vulnerable to an invasion by the Warsaw Pact; the only remaining nuclear deterrent would be missiles with ranges of less than three hundred miles that, if used, because of their short range, would inevitably harm German citizens. He wanted to eliminate these short-range missiles, too. At the Venice economic summit, he and Margaret Thatcher argued for hours at one of our dinners over this issue; Margaret believed that if the INF missiles (whose range was from three hundred to thirty-three hundred miles) were removed from Europe, missiles with ranges of less than three hundred miles had to remain in place because they would be all that remained to deter aggression against Western Europe by the Warsaw Pact countries. I sided with Helmut on this issue and agreed with him that the shorter-range missiles should go.

  Then, Gorbachev placed another obstacle involving West Germany in the path of the INF treaty. His negotiators at Geneva said agreement on the treaty was contingent upon Kohl eliminating seventy-two older-model Pershing 1A missile launchers. I said we couldn’t negotiate for a third country, but suggested privately to Helmut that he volunteer to eliminate these missiles in the interest of disarmament.

  As the pages of the calendar were turning in 1987, so were the pages of history. We were seeing more and more evidence that Gorbachev was serious about introducing major economic and political reforms in the Soviet Union. There would be the first free elections in the Soviet Union; there was official encouragement to entrepreneurs to establish businesses in the Soviet Union; and, on the seventieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Gorbachev made a blistering attack on Stalin, opening the way for a new freedom to examine the Soviet past and its mistakes.

  There were tentative indications that “quiet diplomacy” was working with Gorbachev: Although neither he nor I discussed it publicly, some of the people whose names were on the lists Pd given him of people who we knew wanted to leave the Soviet Union began receiving exit permits. In August, George Shultz woke me early one morning to tell me Vladimir Feltsman, the concert pianist whom Ron had met in Moscow, was in Vienna with his wife and child. A few weeks later Feltsman arrived in the United States and Nancy decided we should give him a send-off with a concert at the White House. I’ll always remember the passion with which he played his first selection: It was “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and, as you can imagine, there were plenty of tears in the East Room at that moment. A few days after that, I had another visitor: former Soviet high school physics teacher and poet Irina Ratushinskaya, author of the scribbled poem that had been smuggled to me in 1984 from the Soviet gulag where she was imprisoned for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” She had been permitted to leave Russia. I discovered she was living in Chicago and invited her to the White House.

  Although Soviet troops were still fighting in Afghanistan and the Soviets were still supporting guerrillas in Central America and elsewhere, we were at last seeing real deeds from Moscow.

  Still, almost two years after Gorbachev had accepted my invitation to Washington, he was refusing to set a date for our next summit, largely because of the dispute over the SDI, which continued through the summer and into the fall of 1987. He kept insisting that we must surrender our right to conduct research on space-based missile defenses, and I kept insisting we wouldn’t do that.

  As the projected date for a summit kept sliding, some of the pundits began predicting there wouldn’t be another U.S.-Soviet summit until I was out of office. But I felt that Gorbachev was serious about wanting a summit and that he was simply trying to hold out for all the concessions he could get. I suspect he thought the resistance of some Democrats in Congress to the Strategic Defense Initiative, as well as my problems during the Iran-Contra affair, might persuade me to buckle under to his demands on the SDI. But I knew we could afford to wait. Pe
rhaps Gorbachev didn’t realize that one of the surest ways to strengthen support for something in the United States was for a Soviet leader to attack it.

  In mid-September, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze came to Washington for another discussion of the still-substantial hurdles that remained regarding the language and verification procedures for the INF treaty. He brought with him another letter to me from Gorbachev. Here are excerpts from it:

  Dear Mr. President:

  I think you and I were right when last October we arrived at what was virtually a concurring view that our meeting in Reykjavik had been an important landmark along the path toward specific and urgently needed measures to genuinely reduce nuclear arms. Over the past several months, the Soviet Union and the United States have made substantial headway in that direction. Today, our two countries stand on the threshold of an important agreement which would bring about—for the first time in history—an actual reduction in nuclear arsenals. Nuclear disarmament being the exceptionally complex matter that it is, the important thing is to take a first step, to clear the psychological barrier which stands between the deeply rooted idea that security hinges on nuclear weapons and an objective perception of the realities of the nuclear world. Then the conclusion is inevitable that genuine security can only be achieved through genuine disarmament.

  We have come very close to that point, and the question is now whether we will take that first step which the peoples of the world are so eagerly awaiting. This is precisely what I would like to discuss at greater length in this letter, being fully aware that not too much time remains for the preparations for the agreement between us. The Reykjavik understandings gave us a chance to reach agreement. We are facing the dilemma of either rapidly completing an agreement on intermediate and shorter range missiles or missing the chance to reach an accord, which, as a result of joint efforts, has almost entirely taken shape. It would probably be superfluous to say that the Soviet Union prefers the first option. In addition to our basic commitment to the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons, which is the point of departure for our policy, we also proceed from the belief that at this juncture of time there appears to be a convergence of the lines of interest of the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe and the rest of the world. If we fail to take advantage of such a favorable confluence of circumstances, those lines will diverge, and who knows when they might converge again. Then we would risk losing time and momentum, with the inevitable consequences of the further militarization of the earth and the extension of the arms race into space. In this context, I agree with the thought you expressed that “the opportunity before us is too great to let pass by.” To use an American phrase, the Soviet Union has gone its mile towards a fair agreement, and even more than a mile. Of course, I am far from asserting that the U.S. side has done nothing to advance the work on intermediate and shorter range missiles. We could not have come to the point when the treaty is within reach had the United States not made steps in our direction. And yet, there is still no answer to the question why Washington has hardened its stance in upholding a number of positions which are clearly one-sided and, I would say, contrived. I would ask you once again to weigh carefully all the factors involved and convey to me your final decision on whether the agreement is to be concluded now or postponed, or even set aside. It is time you and I took a firm stand on this matter.

  I further request that you give further thought to the recent important evolution in our positions on intermediate and shorter range missiles, which in effect assures accord. We are ready to conclude an agreement under which neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would have any missiles in those categories.

  I have to say that we are proposing to you a solution which in important aspects is virtually identical with proposals that were, at various points, put forward by the U.S. side. For that reason in particular, there should be no barriers to reaching an agreement, and the artificial obstacles erected by the U.S. delegation should naturally disappear, which, as I understand, will be facilitated by the decision of the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] government not to modernize the West German Pershing 1A missiles and to eliminate them. Of course, we have no intention to interfere in U.S.-alliance relations, including those with the FRG. However, the question of what happens to the U.S. warheads intended for the West German missiles needs to be clarified. We are proposing fair and equitable terms for an agreement. Let me say very candidly and without diplomatic niceties: we have in effect opened up the reserves of our position in order to facilitate an agreement. Our position is clear and honest: we call for the total elimination of the entire class of missiles with ranges between 500 and 5500 kilometers and of all warheads for those missiles. The fate of an agreement on intermediate and shorter range missiles depends entirely on the U.S. leadership and on your personal willingness, Mr. President, to conclude a deal. As far as our approach, it will be constructive, you can count on that.

  If we assume that the U.S. side, proceeding from considerations of equivalent security, will go ahead with the conclusion of the treaty—and this is what we hope is going to happen—then there is no doubt this will impart a strong impetus to bringing our positions closer together in a very real way on other questions in the nuclear and space area, which are even more important for the security of the USSR and the USA and with which you and I have come to grips after Reykjavik.

  What I have in mind specifically are the issues of strategic offensive arms in space. Those are the key elements of security, and our stake in reaching agreement on them is certainly not at all diminished by the fact we have made headway on intermediate and short range missiles. What is more, it is this area that is pivotal to the U.S. Soviet strategic relationship, and hence to the entire course of military-strategic developments in the world. At the negotiations in Geneva on those questions, the delegations, as you know, have started drafting an agreed text of a treaty on strategic offensive arms. The Soviet side is seeking to speed up, to the maximum possible extent, progress in this work and shows its readiness to accommodate the other side and to seek compromise solutions. To reach agreement, however, a reciprocal readiness for compromise is of course required on the part of the United States.

  Things are not as good with regard to working out agreement on the ABM treaty regime, on preventing the extension of the arms race into space. Whereas we have submitted a constructive draft agreement that takes into account the U.S. attitude to the question of research on strategic defense, the U.S. side continues to take a rigid stand. However, without finding a mutually acceptable solution to the space problem it will be impossible to reach final agreement on radically reducing strategic offensive arms, which is what you and I spoke about in both Geneva and Reykjavik.

  If we are to be guided by a desire to find a fair solution to both these organically interrelated problems, issues relating to space can be resolved. The Soviet Union is ready to make additional efforts to that end, but it is clear this cannot be done through our efforts alone, if attempts to secure unilateral advantages are not abandoned.

  I propose, Mr. President, that necessary steps be taken, in Geneva and through other channels, particularly at a high level in order to speed up the pace of negotiations, so that full scale agreements could be reached within the next few months both on the radical reduction of strategic offensive arms and ensuring strict observance of the ABM treaty . . . if all those efforts were crowned with success, we would be able to provide a firm basis for a stable and forward-moving development not just of the Soviet-U.S. relationship but of international relations as a whole for many years ahead.

  We would leave behind what was, frankly, a complicated stretch in world politics, and you and I would crown in a befitting manner the process of interaction on the central issues of security which began in Geneva. . . .

  Does it not seem paradoxical to you, Mr. President, that we have been able to bring our positions substantially closer together in an area where the nerve knots of our security are located, and yet we h
ave been unable so far to find a common language on another important aspect—namely, regional conflicts? Not only do they exacerbate the international situation, they often bring our relations to a pitch of high tension. In the meantime, in the regions concerned—whether in Asia, which is increasingly moving to the forefront of international politics, the Near East or Central America—encouraging changes are now under way, reflecting a search for a peaceful settlement. I have in mind, in particular, the growing desire for national reconciliation. This should be given careful attention and I believe encouragement and support. As you can see, the Soviet leadership once again reaffirms its strong intention to build Soviet-U.S. relations in a constructive and business-like spirit. Time may flow particularly fast for those relations, and we should treat it as something extremely precious. We are in favor of making full use of Eduard A. Shevardnadze’s visit to Washington to find practical solutions to key problems. In the current situation, this visit assumes increased importance. Our Foreign Minister is ready for detailed discussions with U.S. leaders on all questions, including ways of reaching agreement on problems under discussion in Geneva and the prospects and possible options for developing contacts at the summit level. He has all necessary authority with regard to that. I want to emphasize, as before, I am personally in favor of actively pursuing a business-like and constructive dialogue with you.

  Sincerely,

  M. Gorbachev

  September 15, 1987

  Once again I told Shevardnadze to tell Gorbachev we weren’t going to give in on the SDI. While we didn’t solve all of our problems during his visit, I think it was a turning point. We kept alive the process of trying to improve relations and he and George Shultz signed an agreement establishing crisis centers in each country that were designated to reduce the danger of an accidental war between us. Moreover, there was a new atmosphere in our dealings with the Soviets. I commented in my diary after Shevardnadze left: “They were good meetings, free of the hostility we used to see even if we were disagreeing on some things.”