ON THE MORNING OF DECEMBER 7, 1988, at the United Nations in New York City, Mikhail Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would make unilateral military cuts of 500,000 troops and 10,000 tanks. The announcement was a departure, in both tone and substance, from the traditional Soviet way of doing business. Previously, Soviet leaders would not have considered giving up any of their military might without a reciprocal cut by the United States. But now, faced with serious internal economic pressure at home as he sought to reform the Soviet Union, Gorbachev was willing to make this grand gesture to reinforce his image as a statesman and peacemaker.
Gorbachev’s staff people had pushed hard for a meeting with President Reagan after the speech, and Colin Powell, finishing out his last few months as Reagan’s national security adviser, personally handled the request. Powell told the Soviets the United States had thought it was finished meeting with Gorbachev for the year. There were to be no tricks or surprises, Powell warned. The Soviets promised they were not playing games nor looking for trouble. After coordinating with the White House East Wing (meaning Nancy Reagan), and with Bush’s people, Powell told the Soviets that the meeting had been approved. But he reminded them that it was a meeting with President Reagan and Vice President Bush. The Vice President would stay in the background. The two sides decided on an informal lunch at Governor’s Island in New York Harbor.
As Reagan was greeting Gorbachev, Bush walked out of the 27-room Georgian mansion where the leaders were going to eat and strolled uneasily over to them. When Gorbachev spotted the President-elect, he brightened visibly and took Bush’s right hand in both of his.
Bush’s advisers had warned him to act skeptical, tough, even remote with the Soviet leader. Gorbachev, they said, might try to pick his pocket. High-level negotiations with the Soviets required preparation, and caution.
Before the lunch meeting began, Reagan and Gorbachev went into a small room to pose for press photos. Powell was standing with some of his Soviet counterparts when Alexander “Sasha” Bessmertnykh, the Soviet first deputy foreign minister and an expert on the United States, came up to him.
“Colin, how are you?” he asked. “Congratulations on your promotion.”
Powell’s elevation to four stars had come through that day.
“Sasha, that’s very kind of you. I’m surprised you learned about it so quickly. Yuri [Yuri Dubinin, the Soviet ambassador to the U.S.] must be reporting more quickly than he usually does, or maybe you’re using the new fax machine you guys put in.”
“No,” Bessmertnykh said, laughing, “I saw it on CNN.”
“Come on,” Powell replied, “you only had CNN during the [Moscow] summit in May. . . . You had it in all the hotels.”
“No, we have it there permanently. I have it in my office and I watch it all day long.”
Powell said he did too, joking that the two countries could save a lot on communications and intelligence just by relying on CNN.
Every Friday, Bessmertnykh continued, a week’s worth of The Washington Post and The New York Times was delivered to his office. “I take them all home and I read them all weekend, because reports that we get from our intelligence services simply don’t give me enough insight into America and into what Americans are about and what moves your country. So I have to use things like CNN and reading your newspapers.”
As Powell and Bessmertnykh chatted, Anatoly Dobrynin, the recently replaced, longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States, walked up and listened closely. He joked that he wanted to know how to get CNN in Moscow.
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At the lunch meeting, the United States was represented by six men—Reagan, Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Powell, Ken Duberstein and Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. From his side of the table, where six Soviets sat, Gorbachev opened with a ten-minute monologue about the problems he was having with his radical programs of economic restructuring and political openness—the famous perestroika and glasnost. The Soviet bureaucracy was fighting him at every turn, he said.
Reagan responded that bureaucracies were the same throughout the world. He was sympathetic to Gorbachev’s complaint.
Gorbachev remarked that there were those in the United States who were fearful of his reform movement.
Reagan replied that a recent White House poll had showed that 85 percent in the United States supported the new, positive U.S.-Soviet relationship.
“I’m pleased to hear that,” said Gorbachev. The relationship could not sustain itself in an atmosphere of suspicion. “The name of the game is continuity,” he said, reaching out for some assurance from Bush. The Vice President appeared unmoved.
Gorbachev brought up horses, a subject that always engaged Reagan, and they had a lively conversation.
Bush finally chimed in. “What assurance can you give me that I can pass to American businessmen who want to invest in the Soviet Union that perestroika and glasnost will succeed?”
Gorbachev’s eyes grew steely as he listened to the translation. “Not even Jesus Christ knows the answer to that question!” he replied.
Duberstein was astonished at the brush-off. Gorbachev had seemed to dismiss not only the President-elect’s question but Bush himself.
Powell thought Bush’s question was curious, and in a way naive. It was as if Bush was asking for Gorbachev’s assurance that the Soviet Union was safe for American capitalism, or the businesses of large Republican campaign contributors.
Bush was mostly silent for the rest of the long lunch, assuming a remote, you’re-not-going-to-pick-my-pocket stance. Everyone was aware that the Gorbachev-Bush relationship was the most important one in the room, and it seemed to be going nowhere.
Finally, Gorbachev turned to Bush. “Let me take this opportunity to tell you something,” the Soviet leader said. “Your staff may have told you that what I’m doing is all a trick. It’s not. I’m playing real politics. I have a revolution going that I announced in 1986. Now, in 1988, the Soviet people don’t like it. Don’t misread me, Mr. Vice President, I have to play real politics.”
Powell took note. He often told his staff not to hyperventilate at every Soviet statement or speech coming out of Moscow. But this one had the ring of truth. Gorbachev and the Soviet system had no choice—the reality of their revolution was that there were no alternatives. The statement was so unguarded. Powell had heard similar expressions from the Soviet leader before, but never one given with such conviction, such finality. It struck him as sincere and enormously accurate. After so many years, the Cold War was foundering on real politics.
After two and a half hours, Reagan lifted a glass of Chardonnay and said to Gorbachev, “I’d like to raise a toast to what we have accomplished, what we together have accomplished and what you and the Vice President after January twentieth will accomplish together.”
Gorbachev stood, raised his glass, lowered it, turned to Bush and said, “This is our first agreement.”