CHAPTER 13

The Triumph of Reason

In Washington, DC, Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin joked that he should apply for unemployment benefits, given the fact that there was little or no work to be done in the way of U.S.-Soviet diplomacy. The collapse of the INF and START talks was symptomatic of an overall freeze in U.S.-Soviet relations. But there was no worse time than the end of 1983 for these two superpowers not to be talking to one another. The decision by President Reagan to deploy INF to Europe in the fall of 1983, in particular the Pershing II missile, left the Soviet leadership concerned that the United States was pushing to acquire, and perhaps employ, a viable nuclear first-strike capability against the Soviet Union. In response, the Soviets began an intelligence collection effort designed to detect advanced warning of any U.S./NATO first-strike attack, and they put together an operational plan designed to pre-empt any such attack.

The Soviet intelligence effort was geared toward collecting indicators of any impending attack. Thus, in early November 1983, when the United States held a full-scale rehearsal for nuclear war in Europe, code-named Able Archer 83, it appeared to the Soviets that the United States was moving forward with a first-strike attack against the Soviet Union. Soviet nuclear forces were put on the highest alert and needed only a simple order from the ailing Yuri Andropov to launch a pre-emptive strike that would have triggered a nuclear holocaust. Exercise Able Archer 83 ended by mid-November 1983, and the crisis soon passed. Nevertheless, the deep underlying suspicion on both sides about one another’s intent still existed.1

Much of the work for creating a strong anti-Soviet bias in the policies of the Reagan administration up until late 1983 was done by National Security Advisor William Clark, who had ready access to the president on a daily basis. Operating away from the spotlight, Clark carefully controlled the information the president had access to, helping color his judgments and, ultimately, his decisions. The incoherence of the Reagan arms control philosophy was, by the fall of 1983, being harshly criticized in the press. When the media, in August 1983, began suggesting that it was Clark, and not Reagan, who was calling the shots in the White House, it was simply a matter of time before Clark was asked to step down. The assault on Clark, orchestrated by White House Chief of Staff James Baker and supported by Nancy Reagan, resulted in his resignation on October 13, 1983. He was rewarded for his loyalty to the president by being appointed secretary of the Interior. Clark’s replacement as national security advisor was Robert McFarlane, a former Marine Corps officer who had served in the White House on and off since the early 1970s.2

McFarlane did not share Clark’s “Evil Empire” approach toward the Soviet Union. While McFarlane had been one of the principal authors of Reagan’s 1983 “Star Wars” speech, his actions were motivated by a perceived need to break free of the previous patterns of behavior that propelled the United States and the Soviet Union on a collision course. With McFarlane installed as national security advisor, an opportunity was created for a shift in of U.S.-Soviet relations in a more pragmatic direction. McFarlane was quick to act when U.S. intelligence reported, in January 1984, on the Soviet reaction to the Able Archer exercise. When Reagan found out how serious the situation had been in terms of a Soviet overreaction to the exercise, he was disturbed and soon thereafter made a speech, influenced by McFarlane, in which he declared that the top priority between the United States and the Soviet Union must be to reduce the potential for nuclear war and likewise reduce their respective nuclear arsenals.³

On February 9, 1984, after only fifteen months in office, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov died. While Andropov had indicated that his successor should be Mikhail Gorbachev, the minister of agriculture, the Soviet Central Committee instead chose Konstantin Chernenko as general secretary. Chernenko was a protégé of Brezhnev, and his selection as general secretary represented a return to the hardline policies of that era. While assuring that the Soviet Union had “no need for military superiority,” Chernenko promised that he would seek a sufficient level of defense to “cool the hot heads of bellicose adventurists.” Soon after assuming the mantle of leadership, Chernenko sent a letter to President Reagan in which he embraced the “opportunity to put our relations on a more positive track.”⁴

The National Security Council and State Department both began a move to renew serious dialogue with the Soviets. The continued deployment of INF missiles into Europe was a source of tension with the Soviets, who refused to engage in any renewed dialogue with the United States under these conditions. By the summer of 1984 Chernenko had rejected all American overtures on any resumption of arms control talks as election year tactics (1984 was a U.S. presidential election year) and demanded that the United States back up its words with concrete action.5 None was forthcoming. Instead, the Soviets were treated to a continuation of campaign-induced hardline rhetoric and gaffes, including one by President Reagan in August 1984, when an open microphone caught him joking about signing legislation that would “outlaw Russia forever” and concluding with “We begin bombing in five minutes.”⁶

In the fall of 1984, the Soviet Union announced its first major defense budget increase in several years. Proclaiming that this move was a reaction to the massive defense spending undertaken by the Reagan administration, Soviet leaders, including Chernenko, Gromyko, and Ustinov, stressed the defensive character of their military buildup, although a major part of the funding increase went to testing and fielding a new generation of mobile ICBMs, including the SS-24, armed with ten MIRVs and capable of being launched from a standard silo or on special railcars, which gave it strategic mobility, and the SS-25 road-mobile ICBM, armed with a single nuclear warhead.⁷ While some in the Soviet military pushed for even greater defense spending, Chernenko refused, unwilling to stress an already fragile civilian economic sector. In order to reinforce his decision to cap defense spending, Chernenko began a move toward improved diplomatic relations with the United States, starting in late September 1984 with a meeting between Andrei Gromyko and President Reagan. In October 1984 Secretary of State George Shultz met with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, and later Gromyko met with the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Arthur Hartman. By November 1984 both sides were discussing the possibility of a Shultz-Gromyko meeting in early 1985 for the purpose of jump-starting nuclear and space arms talks.⁸

But any breakthrough in U.S.-Soviet relations was hampered by uncertainties about Soviet leadership. While the elections of November 1984 cemented Reagan’s position as the leader of the United States for the next four years, the failing health of Konstantin Chernenko led to a behind-the-scenes power struggle that boiled down to two men: Mikhail Gorbachev and Grigory Romanov. Romanov was linked to the Soviet defense industry and represented old-style Soviet leadership reminiscent of the Brezhnev era. Gorbachev had already made his mark as a reformist with new ideas about the direction the Soviet Union needed to take. In a speech delivered in November 1984, Gorbachev had already raised two concepts—perestroika (rebuilding) and glasnost (openness)—that would later change the Soviet Union and the world. But Chernenko’s succession, as of the end of 1984, was very much in doubt, and this lack of certainty impeded any rapid improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations. Chernenko’s declining health worsened by the end of 1984, and the Soviet leader was confined to bed in a Moscow sanatorium for the final months of his life, finally passing away on March 10, 1985.9

The issue of Soviet succession wasn’t the only arms problem facing the American president. When Reagan assumed office in 1981, his administration articulated strong support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the overall issue of nuclear nonproliferation. Reagan called upon U.S. allies to join the United States in requiring comprehensive safeguards from all nonnuclear weapons states before they would be permitted to import significant quantities of nuclear material. However, the Reagan administration was facing a situation in which the theory addressing the proliferation of nuclear weapons was being replaced by the reality of nuclear weapons programs in the hands of nations operating outside the framework of the NPT.

India’s “peaceful” nuclear test of 1974 had sent shockwaves through the nonproliferation community. Even while the nuclear supplier nations struggled to develop export-import control mechanisms, the proliferation of nuclear weapons capability continued unabated. In September 1979 a U.S. surveillance satellite detected evidence of a possible nuclear detonation over the Indian Ocean, in the vicinity of South Africa’s Prince Edward Island. Data collected indicated a low altitude explosion of some three kilotons. The possibility of a nuclear weapons test that implicated either Israel or South Africa created enormous political problems for the United States. The Carter administration convened a panel of experts to review the data related to the September event; the panel concluded that the activity in question was “probably not from a nuclear explosion,” although it could not be ruled out. While the September 1979 “nuclear” event over the Indian Ocean continues to be in dispute, what was clear was that both South Africa and Israel were working on nuclear weapons programs, and that the two nations were aiding one another in this regard.10

By the time Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency, the list of non-NPT nations engaged in nuclear weapons–related activities had grown by one more: Pakistan. In 1981 the State Department was reporting that Pakistan was actively seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. This report was updated in 1983, citing “unambiguous evidence” of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons ambition. Pakistan’s leadership acknowledged in 1984 that it had acquired a “very modest” nuclear enrichment capability, but that it was for “peaceful purposes” only. Nonetheless, President Reagan warned Pakistan’s government that there would be “grave consequences” if Pakistan enriched uranium above 5 percent, the level needed to fuel a nuclear reactor.¹¹

In confronting the nuclear proliferation taking place in Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan, the Reagan administration was running head-on into its own Cold War–driven policies of containment of the Soviet Union. Israel was a major U.S. ally in the Middle East, where the United States sought to block the spread of Soviet influence among the Arab nations. South Africa, despite its policy of apartheid, was allied with the United States in confronting Soviet-supported activities in Angola and Mozambique. And Pakistan served as America’s principal interlocutor with the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The Reagan administration had to tread carefully in an effort to strike a balance between not insulting critical allies and trying to craft meaningful nonproliferation policy.

The United States was able to proclaim a nonproliferation victory of sorts when, in April 1984, a U.S.-Sino trade pact was signed following China’s agreement to join the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to accept IAEA inspection of all nuclear equipment and material being exported by China.¹² But the issue of dual standards continued to haunt the Reagan administration. Secretary of State Shultz tried to address this matter on November 1, 1984, when he spoke before the United Nations Association of the United States. Although he cited America’s strong commitment to nonproliferation, Shultz noted that the United States makes “rational distinctions between close friends and allies who pose no great proliferation risk, and those areas of the world where we have real concerns about the spread of nuclear weapons.”¹³ In short, the United States wanted to be able to make its own judgment call, free of the constraints of safeguards imposed by the NPT, on whom it would share nuclear technology with.

The Third NPT Review Conference, held in Geneva from August 27 through September 21, 1985, again illustrated the differences of opinion on the implementation of the NPT between, on the one hand, the United States and the developed nuclear powers and, on the other hand, those lesser developed nations who sought to acquire nuclear power. A major point of discussion was the unsafeguarded nuclear facilities in Israel and South Africa, which many Middle Eastern and African nations pointed to as an example of how Western double standards actually promoted the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons. As had been the case in the first two Review Conferences, the nuclear weapons states (NWS) came under harsh criticism for failing to make any significant progress in the field of nuclear disarmament, especially on the issue of a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. The issue of guarantees of protection for safeguarded nuclear facilities also arose considering Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor, and Iraq’s repeated attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities under construction. These two issues hampered the issuing of a final declaration. In the end, the conference’s final document reiterated the widespread support of the NPT, while citing shortfalls in the area of nuclear disarmament. In a hopeful move, however, the NPT added a new member in December 1985, when North Korea joined, agreeing to open a nuclear research reactor to IAEA inspections and safeguards.14

The Third NPT Review Conference underscored the need for a renewed dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union on the issue of nuclear disarmament. When Gorbachev emerged as the new Soviet leader in March 1985, he repeated the trend of the previous two Soviet leaders in writing a letter to President Reagan reaffirming his “personal commitment…to serious negotiations.”¹⁵ The difference this time was that Gorbachev, unlike his predecessors, would follow up on his commitment. He was assisted by the reality that by 1985 the Soviets no longer needed the SS-20. Soviet strategic forces, equipped with new, mobile SS-24 and SS-25 missiles in addition to the existing ICBM and SLBM launchers, were so large and diverse that SS-20 had become a redundant system.

Gorbachev was further assisted by the diplomacy that had been conducted in the last months of Andropov’s rule. In the fall of 1984 both the United States and the Soviet Union had expressed an interest in entering into “umbrella” negotiations encompassing defense and space systems, START and INF. These talks began on March 12, 1985 in Geneva. With the advent of these talks, the Reagan administration installed a new team of negotiators. Gone was Ed Rowney, the hardliner whose antics had so alienated his Soviet counterparts. His replacement was Max Kampelman, a member of the CPD who had previously served as the U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) from 1980 to 1983. Also gone was Paul Nitze, largely because of the animosity created within the ranks of the Reagan administration hardliners over his “walk in the woods” initiative. Nitze was replaced by his deputy, Maynard Glitman. Both Nitze and Rowney were offered opportunities to stay on as advisors to the president on arms control.16

Little progress was made in these new talks, mainly as a result of the demand by the Soviet Union that the ABM treaty be strictly adhered to and the efforts by the United States to seek as broad an interpretation of the ABM treaty as possible so as to permit ongoing work on SDI. Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger and his assistant deputy, Richard Perle, sought to undermine the ABM treaty while opposing any new talks designed to impede SDI. Their work ran counter to the efforts of Secretary of State Shultz and National Security Advisor McFarlane, both of whom were keen on getting serious arms control talks with the Soviets back on track.¹⁷

In an effort to help reduce tensions with Europe and the United States, Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of INF into Europe, which was scheduled to last until December 1985, by which time there was hope that a U.S.-Soviet summit could occur that would produce a more thorough blueprint for disarmament action. Gorbachev’s moratorium reduced the number of SS-20s in the western Soviet Union to levels that existed when the INF talks broke off in 1983. Talk of an early summit in 1985 cooled in April 1985, when an American officer, Major Arthur Nicholson, was shot and killed by a Soviet soldier while carrying out his duties as part of the Military Liaison Mission in Potsdam, East Germany.¹⁸

The stalemated talks in Geneva began to frustrate both Moscow and Washington. Hardliners such as Weinberger and Perle continued to oppose any effort at negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Since 1984 President Reagan had been presented with intelligence analysis pushed by Perle that asserted that the Soviet Union had violated its political commitment to adhere to the provisions of the SALT II treaty. Reagan had, since 1982, committed the United States to a path of adherence with the SALT II treaty, even though he was personally opposed to the treaty. In June 1985, confronted with evidence that Perle and others contended proved the Soviets to be noncompliant in their agreements, President Reagan announced that the United States would continue to abide by the SALT II treaty so long as the Soviet Union demonstrated comparable restraint and provided that the Soviets pursue in good faith the ongoing arms reduction talks in Geneva.19

Reagan’s position incensed Gorbachev, who accused the president of acting in bad faith by framing a scenario that was inconsistent with the facts. “One cannot dispute the fact that the American side created an ambiguous situation whereby the SALT II Treaty, one of the pillars of our relationship in the security sphere, was turned into a semi-functioning document that the U.S., moreover, is now threatening to nullify step by step,” Gorbachev wrote in a letter to President Reagan on June 10, 1985. “Your approach is determined by the fact that the strategic programs being carried out by the United States are about to collide with the limitations established by the SALT II Treaty, and the choice is being made not in favor of the Treaty, but in favor of these programs.”²⁰

It became clear to both Reagan and Gorbachev that the atmosphere in Geneva was not conducive to sound negotiations, and on the joint recommendation of Secretary of State Shultz and the new Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, it was agreed in October 1985 that a back channel of communications would be established to bypass the usual diplomatic processes. Once again, the Soviets turned to their ambassador in Washington, Anatoli Dobrynin, to carry out this function. Through this back channel, and in subsequent dialogue between Shultz and Shevardnadze, Reagan and Gorbachev began to discuss a mutual understanding concerning the “inadmissibility of nuclear war.” Both sides started working toward organizing a summit between the two leaders before the end of 1985.²¹

The need by both sides to break free of the impasse that existed in Geneva over the issue of arms reductions was critical to the success of any summit. During a meeting in New York City on September 27, 1985, Shevardnadze presented President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz with a new Soviet proposal on strategic arms reductions which proposed a 50 percent reduction in strategic arms by both sides, as well as a “cap” of 6,000 nuclear warheads per side. Furthermore, no basing mode (ICBM, SLBM, bombers) could contain more than 60 percent of the warhead total.22 On November 1 the United States responded with a counterproposal that continued to reflect the U.S. focus on missile throw weight as a unit of measuring strategic capability. The U.S. proposed a 50 percent reduction in the highest overall ballistic missile throw weight, in addition to limiting re-entry vehicles to 4,500 for each side, with a sub-limit of 3,000 re-entry vehicles on ICBMs and a further sub-limit of 1,500 re-entry vehicles on heavy ICBMs. The desire for an early summit provided an opportunity for both sides to bridge their differences and bring their positions closer together.²³

Secretary of State Shultz traveled to Moscow in early November 1985 to meet with Shevardnadze and Gorbachev in order to help pave the way for the summit scheduled for later that month. Back in Washington, Richard Burt, the head of the Political-Military Affairs Bureau, supported Shultz. Burt was pushing for a successful summit defined by a meaningful agreement in the field of arms control. Opposing Burt was Richard Perle, who, together with Secretary of Defense Weinberger, was concerned that in their rush to have a good summit, Shultz and Burt were positioning the president to make too many compromises to the Soviets. Perle drafted a memorandum that warned the president not to give in on issues of principle, especially SDI, even if the Soviets appeared to be making concessions elsewhere. The Soviets, Perle claimed, had a history of violating every arms control agreement they had entered. According to Perle, Gorbachev, despite his new style of open leadership, was no different from any other previous Soviet leader in that regard. In the end, Perle warned, no matter what the United States commits to, Gorbachev and the Soviets will cheat.²⁴

On November 19, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev finally met face to face in Geneva, the first such meeting between U.S. and Soviet leaders in six years. Gorbachev pushed early for “a substantive agreement…which would increase peoples’ hope and would not destroy their view of the future with respect to the question of war and peace.”²⁵ In the discussions that followed, Gorbachev lectured the U.S. delegation that twenty years ago America had four times as many nuclear weapons as the Soviet Union. What would the United States have done if the situation had been reversed? Gorbachev asked. His answer: The same thing the Soviets did—seek parity. Today, Gorbachev noted, parity exists. The Soviets do not seek any advantage but rather would like to see strategic nuclear parity at a lower level than today. The main problem was SDI, which Gorbachev contended could only lead to a renewed arms race inclusive of space weapons. SDI made no sense to the Soviets, who considered that its only utility lay in its potential to defend against a retaliatory strike, and as such facilitate a first strike option. This, Gorbachev stated, was unacceptable. If the United States went forward with SDI, then there could be no reduction in strategic nuclear weapons, and the Soviets would be compelled to pursue a similar program of its own.26

President Reagan responded by declaring that SDI was not a threat, since it was not linked to any offensive military capability and therefore should not be viewed by the Soviets as a threat or trigger an arms race. Offensive weapons can and should be reduced, even with SDI. Gorbachev then asked Reagan what he thought they should tell their negotiators in Geneva, to which Reagan responded that guidelines seeking a 50 percent reduction in strategic arms would be acceptable, with some flexibility provided based upon the differing structure of U.S. and Soviet forces. But the sticking point continued to be SDI. Gorbachev pounded away on the issue, and it became clear that while the United States believed the principal destabilizing factor in U.S.-Soviet relations to be offensive nuclear weapons, the Soviets believed the same about SDI.²⁷

Shultz, in a side conversation with Shevardnadze, argued that the closer the two sides could get to zero nuclear weapons, the more viable SDI became in terms of eliminating the threat from offensive nuclear missiles. Shevardnadze responded by noting that if both sides were serious about eliminating nuclear weapons, and could get other nations to participate in their overall reduction, there would be no need for a defensive shield. These conversations were repeated, in one form or another, over the course of two days. In the end, the Geneva summit collapsed under the weight of Reagan’s SDI program and the refusal by Gorbachev and the Soviets to accept it as legitimate. The good news was that, after a six-year hiatus, the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States had finally met and had come away from that meeting with a mutual recognition of the need for continued dialogue between the world’s two largest nuclear powers on the issue of the world’s most dangerous weapons.²⁸

While Gorbachev was dismayed with President Reagan’s close-minded embrace of SDI, his overall assessment of the American leader, and his policies, clashed with previous analysis from the Soviet Union, which held that the United States was seeking unilateral nuclear supremacy with the goal of being able to launch a pre-emptive nuclear first strike. Gorbachev believed Reagan had no intention of launching such an attack. His challenge was to convey this understanding to a Politburo that was disappointed with the lack of discernable results from the summit. The major problem with SDI, from Gorbachev’s perspective, was political. Soviet scientists had studied the American concepts and concluded that SDI was fanciful, expensive, and unrealistic as an effective defense shield. The Soviets would be able to overcome any SDI shield with little or no problem, but at great expense, especially if Soviet defense interests insisted on building a similar shield in the name of “parity.” Gorbachev had a good understanding of the poor economic state of the Soviet Union and realized that the reforms he wanted to embark on could not survive in the climate of a new arms race. At the Geneva summit Gorbachev had linked any movement in arms reductions with the United States dropping SDI. But now, post-Geneva, Gorbachev began to articulate disarmament policy options that accepted SDI as an unpleasant reality.29

In January 1986 Gorbachev tried to jump-start arms control by proposing a three-phased deal that would scrap SDI, reduce each side’s strategic nuclear arsenal by 50 percent, and, in a move that took everyone by surprise, accepted the Zero Option when it came to INF. When the INF proposal bogged down in Geneva over the issue of linkage with SDI, Gorbachev made it clear, in a February 1986 meeting with Senator Edward Kennedy, that an INF agreement could be considered separate from strategic arms reductions and SDI. In order to sell this position to his own side, Gorbachev moved to downplay the importance of SDI, telling the Politburo in March 1986, “Maybe we should just stop being afraid of the SDI.”³⁰ Gorbachev stressed that the Soviets could not ignore SDI but needed to recognize that hardliners in the U.S. administration—namely Weinberger and Perle—were using SDI as a vehicle to push the Soviets into an arms race that would economically exhaust them. The secretary of defense and his hawkish assistant deputy were likewise now thrust into a position of opposing the very Zero Option on INF they had proposed back in 1981, because Gorbachev had done what neither of them thought any Soviet leader would ever do: accept the Zero Option disarmament proposal.

Gorbachev’s analysis was accurate. Back in Washington, both Weinberger and Perle, historically staunch opponents of arms control, were tentatively jumping on the arms control bandwagon. Their goal was not to create a viable arms control agreement, but rather just the opposite: to ensure that whatever arms control initiative went forward would be couched in a manner that was unacceptable to the Soviet Union. Accordingly, Weinberger and Perle, assisted by Perle’s boss, Fred Ikle, and the new ACDA chief, Kenneth Adelman, launched a frontal assault on the two major pillars of U.S.-Soviet arms control, the ABM treaty and the SALT II treaty. For the ABM treaty, the Department of Defense hired a lawyer with no arms control experience to craft a legal reinterpretation of the ABM treaty that would allow for ongoing work in SDI. So expansive was this interpretation that even the State Department rejected it. The goal wasn’t to create a legal justification for SDI, but rather to push the Soviets into scrapping the ABM treaty altogether, something Gorbachev was loath to do.31

The next target was the SALT II treaty. Perle was able to oversee the production of a series of reports and studies that purported to document ongoing Soviet noncompliance with the SALT II treaty. Based on these reports, and under pressure from hardliners in Congress (led by Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who had filled the ideological gap created with the death of Scoop Jackson in September 1983), Reagan, on May 26, 1986, declared that the United States would no longer be constrained by the limits imposed by the SALT II treaty but rather would “base decisions regarding its strategic force structure on the nature and magnitude of the threat posed by Soviet strategic forces.” The United States, Reagan declared, would “continue to exercise the utmost restraint, while protecting strategic deterrence, in order to help foster the necessary atmosphere for significant reductions in the strategic arsenals of both sides,” and he called upon the Soviet Union to work with the United States to establish a framework of “truly mutual restraint.”³²

INF was another issue for which Weinberger and Perle sought to craft an adequate American response. Having pushed for the Zero Option, Perle now had to try to explain why it might not be the ideal solution after all. A major problem was that, in selling the deployment of Pershing II and GLCM missiles to its NATO allies, the United States had emphasized the importance of linking INF in Europe to American strategic nuclear forces in order to make nuclear deterrence viable. Now, if the United States was to go forward with any INF Zero Option, it would be reversing course on the concept of a European “trip wire” linking the U.S. nuclear arsenal to the defense of Europe. Also, while the United States would be withdrawing INF missiles from Europe, the availability of the SS-25 road-mobile ICBM as an alternative to the SS-20 missile meant that Europe would still be covered by a Soviet nuclear threat without any European-based U.S. counter. Another problem was that the Soviet proposal only covered INF in Europe; there were still nearly a hundred SS-20 missiles deployed in Asia.33

Weinberger and Perle were able to operate with a level of bureaucratic impunity because of a major shake-up within the Reagan national security team, which saw the pragmatic Robert McFarlane replaced by the indifferent (at least when it came to issues pertaining to arms control) John Poindexter. McFarlane’s resignation came as a result of a growing scandal concerning U.S. covert assistance to anti-communist forces in Nicaragua (the so-called Contras) in violation of Congressional prohibitions, as well as a controversial arms-for-hostages deal involving Iran. These issues merged as part of a larger Iran-Contra affair that was beginning to distract the Reagan administration from other matters, including arms control. With McFarlane out of the way, Weinberger and Perle were free to push their hardline positions void of any significant interference from the National Security Council.

Gorbachev, too, was wrestling with serious matters on the domestic front at that time. In April 1986, a horrific accident at a Soviet nuclear power reactor in Chernobyl killed scores of people and caused widespread contamination not only in the area surrounding Chernobyl and the Soviet Union but throughout Europe as well. The Soviet reaction to the Chernobyl disaster led Gorbachev to conclude that there was an acute need for more openness within the Soviet Union and that the scourge of nuclear weapons needed to be addressed once and for all.³⁴ Chernobyl was to Gorbachev what the made-for-television film The Day After was for Ronald Reagan. In that movie, which Reagan watched when it was aired in November 1983, American citizens struggle to survive in a post–nuclear war environment. Reagan was so moved by the movie that he would become personally committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons, even if that goal seemed to run counter to the overall policy direction of his administration.³⁵ Now, in Chernobyl, Gorbachev faced a real-life example of the horror of nuclear contamination. Chernobyl became a seminal point in the Soviet leader’s evolution as a nuclear abolitionist.

In a move that had surprised the hardliners in Washington, Gorbachev had broken from his previous insistence, articulated during the Geneva summit in November 1985, that any arms reduction effort must be linked to an American renouncement of SDI. Now, on May 29, 1986, Gorbachev submitted a new proposal that called for a two-phased approach toward disarmament. The first phase called for a cap of 8,000 nuclear devices for each side and a ceiling of 1,600 nuclear delivery vehicles each. Most telling, the Gorbachev proposal excluded the so-called Forward Based Systems comprising U.S. aircraft stationed in Europe and on aircraft carriers. The second phase would provide for “interim” reductions in strategic nuclear forces contingent upon both sides agreeing not to withdraw from the ABM treaty for a period of fifteen to twenty years.36

These were serious proposals, but they were largely ignored in Washington, DC. Instead, the U.S. response was to return to a formula that differed little from what had been proposed in the past, including the insistence that the Soviet Union cut its throw-weight capability by 50 percent. Perle and Ikle also proposed a treaty to limit all ballistic missiles, noting that if there were no ballistic missiles, then there could be no U.S. nuclear first strike, meaning that the Soviets had nothing to fear from SDI. Countering the Soviet retort that if there were no ballistic missiles, there would be no need for SDI, the Reagan administration fell back on the “mad man” argument, noting that the United States, and the world, needed a defense against the potential actions of a rogue state and/or leader.³⁷ Recognizing that the negotiations on strategic arms and SDI were, for the time being, stalled, in September 1986 the Soviets proposed an INF-only deal, de-linked from any other agreement, in which both sides would be held to one hundred missiles each in Europe (none of these could be Pershing II missiles) and a freeze would be placed on Soviet SS-20 deployments in Asia. The United States responded with a counterproposal that accepted the hundred-missile cap but insisted that some of these missiles be Pershing II’s. The United States also insisted that Soviet SS-20 missiles in Asia count toward this total.³⁸

The atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated when, on September 2, 1986, the Soviet KGB arrested a U.S. journalist, Nicholas Daniloff, on charges of espionage. Daniloff’s arrest was in apparent retaliation for the U.S. arrest in late August of Gennadi Zakharov, an employee of the Soviet mission to the United Nations in New York. While a deal was struck that allowed for the release of both Daniloff and Zakharov, the arrests received widespread attention in the media and led to a toughening of rhetoric in Washington about the Soviet Union.³⁹ Fearful that matters might spiral out of control, Gorbachev dispatched Shevardnadze to Washington, where he delivered a personal letter to President Reagan in which Gorbachev proposed a “quick one-on-one meeting, let us say in Iceland,” the goal of which would be to produce instructions to their respective negotiating teams in Geneva on “two or three very specific questions” that could then be signed as formal agreements when Gorbachev visited the United States.40

Many in the Reagan administration, including Weinberger and Perle, were against the idea of a Reagan-Gorbachev get-together, feeling that meetings held at this level assumed a stature that mandated formal agreements, and that there might develop pressures to seek agreement for agreement’s sake. Shultz and others in the State Department rejected this, noting that in their opinion the Soviets were seeking to pave the way for a future summit in which arms control reductions might be discussed. Shultz was wrong, however.⁴¹ In Moscow, Gorbachev sat down with the Politburo and emphasized the importance of the Soviet Union taking the lead in making dramatic proposals in the area of arms control. Final U.S. briefings provided to Reagan on the eve of his meeting with Gorbachev in Iceland predicted that the Soviet leader would be “coy” about the prospects of a future U.S. summit and that Reagan would have to press Gorbachev for action. The best the United States could hope for, the briefers told Reagan, was an agreement to limit the number of strategic nuclear warheads to something between the U.S. proposed cap of 5,500 and the Soviet position of 6,400.⁴²

The two leaders met in Reykjavik, Iceland on October 11, 1986, in a home formerly used by the French as a consulate. After an initial exchange of greetings and general remarks, during which Reagan chided Gorbachev for the Soviet Union not responding to the U.S. proposal calling for a 50 percent reduction in strategic nuclear arms (“perhaps the Soviets would agree to initial reductions to a level of 5,500 warheads,” Reagan prodded), the two leaders were joined by Shultz and Shevardnadze, and Gorbachev dropped his bombshell proposal: The Soviets were seeking nothing less than a 50 percent reduction in strategic nuclear arms, not tied to INF or any other negotiation, which would call for substantial reductions in Soviet heavy missiles. This proposal, Gorbachev noted, considered U.S. concerns. In exchange, Gorbachev asked for the United States to show some flexibility regarding American SLBM forces, which consisted of some 6,500 warheads.⁴³

On INF, the Soviets proposed a complete elimination of U.S. and Soviet INF missiles in Europe, separate from the issue of French and British nuclear forces. The Soviets proposed that the matter of Soviet SS-20 missiles in Asia be put aside until all INF systems had been removed from Europe. The Soviets also proposed a freeze on the deployment of short-range nuclear missiles in Europe (possessing a range of less than 1,000 kilometers) and indicated a willingness to discuss the reduction of these missiles in future arms control discussions. Gorbachev also brought up the issue of the ABM treaty, in which he proposed that both sides agree to a ten-year period during which they could not withdraw from the treaty and a period of negotiations (three to five years) in which they would discuss how to proceed from that point. Gorbachev also proposed a ban on anti-satellite weapons and a comprehensive nuclear test ban.44

Reagan had little of substance to offer in response to the dramatic proposals outlined by Gorbachev. During a break in the meeting, evidence of a split in the U.S. delegation emerged, as Paul Nitze embraced the Soviet proposals as the most sweeping he had seen in over twenty years, while Richard Perle downplayed them as flawed and nothing new. Shultz was inclined to accept the Soviet proposal concerning the ABM treaty, citing the fact that since SDI was in its infancy, there could be no realistic discussion of fielding a system prior to that. As such, the United States lost nothing by agreeing. Reagan, however, refused to budge on the issue of SDI. This was to prove critical to the prospects of success in Reykjavik.⁴⁵

As the talks progressed, Shultz placed Nitze in charge of the expert-level discussions. Nitze’s counterpart was Marshall Akhromeyev, the senior Soviet military commander—his presence underscored the seriousness that the Soviets attached to these talks. Akhromeyev proposed a 50 percent reduction in strategic nuclear forces across the board, and in an effort to accede to U.S. sensitivities, he agreed that these cuts would be done in a manner that would not allow either side any discernable advantage. He also agreed that bombers would be counted as a single delivery system, whether or not they carried cruise missiles. The Soviets agreed to eliminate their SS-20 missiles in Europe in exchange for the Americans agreeing to eliminate the Pershing II. The Soviets would keep their SS-20 missiles in Asia, and the United States would be able to position a similar number of missiles in Alaska aimed at the Soviet Union.⁴⁶

The U.S. counterproposal, written with the heavy influence of Richard Perle, proposed a 50 percent cut in strategic nuclear weapons and a five-year agreement to limit SDI to research while abiding by the ABM treaty, which the United States continued to interpret in widely divergent ways. However, Perle was not able to hold back the tide for more sweeping arms control, which had gripped both delegations in Reykjavik. By the afternoon of October 12, President Reagan presented the Soviets with an offer to reduce each side’s strategic ballistic missile force by 50 percent in a five-year period, followed by complete elimination in a second five-year period. Both sides would agree to adhere to the ABM treaty during this time and not seek to withdraw. The Soviets soon agreed to this formula, with one major exception: SDI research would, during this ten-year term, be limited to the laboratory, and there could be no testing of operational components outside of the laboratory or in outer space. Reagan would not accept this limitation, and Gorbachev refused to drop it. As a result, an opportunity for the Soviet Union and the United States to get rid of all strategic nuclear weapons was missed, defeated by a program, SDI, that was more theory than reality and that no one outside Ronald Reagan and a handful of advisors thought would ever be deployed. Reykjavik ended with both sides conceding that there had been no agreement reached on disarmament.47

After Reykjavik, both the Soviet Union and the United States conducted post mortems designed to extract “lessons learned” from what appeared to be a failed summit. Back home in Washington, Reagan ran into a wall of criticism, as Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff confronted the reality that the nation’s chief executive almost negotiated away all strategic offensive nuclear weapons without first consulting them. Reagan found that he was soon compelled by domestic pressure to back away from some of the commitments made in Reykjavik. The irony was that, at the same time Reagan began retreating from full nuclear disarmament, Gorbachev began to make concessions on the issue of SDI. Gorbachev seemed motivated by the words of Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet nuclear physicist who designed the first Soviet hydrogen bomb. Under house arrest in the city of Gorky since his dissent of the 1960s, Sakharov was released on the personal orders of Gorbachev. In his first public appearance, Sakharov chided Gorbachev for failing to embrace an opportunity to get rid of all nuclear weapons by seeking to restrict a concept, SDI, that would never work. Gorbachev listened to Sakharov and soon was crafting compromise language that would allow the United States to test SDI outside of the laboratory, but not in outer space.⁴⁸

But it was too late. On November 3, 1986, Reagan signed NSDD-250, “Post-Reykjavik Follow-up.” In it the president directed that all options be considered, including one that saw the elimination of all ballistic missiles. He instructed military planners to examine NSDD-13, for the employment of nuclear weapons, as well as MC 14/3, the NATO war plan. Reagan was confident that both NSDD-13 and MC 14/3 could be implemented effectively in a ballistic missile-free world. Nevertheless, the Joint Chiefs of Staff responded with a briefing to the president in December 1986 in which they argued that any effort to eliminate ballistic missiles would require the U.S. Army to increase its number of divisions, the Air Force to expand air defense capabilities in the United States, and the Navy to acquire more ships and more sea-launched cruise missiles. The Pentagon, working with the JCS, began to formulate a counter to the concept of eliminating strategic nuclear weapons, stating that it would cost the United States more to build up its conventional military capability in order to fill the defense vacuum created than it would to retain its nuclear arsenal. This was a specious argument, pulled together on the spur of the moment, but it resonated in Congress. Largely because of pressure brought to bear by hardliners in the Pentagon and in Congress, there would be no return to the moment that had occurred in Reykjavik, where an American president and a Soviet general secretary could come close to an agreement to rid the world of nuclear weapons.49

While SDI stymied strategic arms talks and threatened the ABM treaty, the one area both the Soviets and the Americans recognized as being open for agreement was that of INF. The two sides had agreed to the concept of the Zero Option in Europe. The stumbling block centered on the Soviet INF deployed in Asia. The Soviets, like the United States, reshuffled their delegation in Geneva, and the new chief negotiator, Yuli Vorontsov, arrived with instructions from Gorbachev to achieve a breakthrough in INF. In February 1987 Vorontsov informed his counterpart, Max Kampelman, that the Soviets were formally de-linking INF from START and SDI, and were willing to proceed along the lines of the original U.S. Zero Option. Under pressure from Perle and others in the Pentagon, Kampelman pressed Vorontsov on the importance of eliminating not just INF in Europe but also all short-range ballistic missiles and INF throughout the entire Soviet Union.⁵⁰

Another sticking point was verification. Any agreement would require the strictest form of verification, including on-site inspection, something the Soviets had never before agreed to. The United States produced a draft INF treaty in early March 1987 that proposed the elimination of all INF in Europe and established a ceiling of a hundred INF systems for each side worldwide. However, the United States made it clear that a global Zero Option was the preferred position. This was followed up with an additional proposal in mid-March that addressed the issue of verification, with the United States laying out its position on on-site inspections, including both regular and “challenge” inspections. Perle viewed these provisions as showstoppers, particularly the requirement for on-site inspection.51

There was still enough ideological fervor within the Reagan administration to usher forth some made-for-television grandstanding by the “Great Communicator” himself. On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan traveled to West Berlin where, in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, which symbolized much of the Cold War antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union, he delivered a fervent address not only to the citizens of West Berlin but also to those residing in East Berlin and, by design, to the Kremlin itself. Pointing out that there could be no freedom so long as walls and barriers divided Europe, Reagan dramatically proclaimed, “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!”⁵²

In the past, such an outburst during a critical juncture in sensitive negotiations might have derailed the talks. But Gorbachev had attuned himself to the ideology of Reagan’s core constituency and was able to see past the rhetoric to the larger objective of arms reductions, a goal he believed was shared by President Reagan. Little by little, the Soviets began to accede to U.S. demands regarding the structure of an INF agreement. In April 1987, during a visit to Moscow by Secretary of State Shultz, Gorbachev agreed that any INF agreement would include all short-range missiles as well. The Soviets at this time also produced a draft INF treaty text that reflected the basis of the U.S. March text. In June 1987 the United States followed up on Gorbachev’s comments in March to Shultz and modified its proposal to include not only all shortrange nuclear missiles but also a “double global zero,” meaning that any treaty would cover all INF and short-range missiles operated by both the Soviet Union and the United States worldwide. In July, much to the surprise of many in the Pentagon, including Richard Perle, the Soviets accepted the “double global zero” proposal.⁵³

The final facilitation of an INF agreement came when German Chancellor Kohl announced in August 1987 that he would eliminate all of West Germany’s seventeen Pershing 1a missiles once the INF treaty was implemented, and that the nuclear warheads loaded on those missiles would be returned to U.S. custody and removed from Europe.54 And in September the Americans submitted, and the Soviets accepted, a proposed inspection protocol that incorporated on-site inspection to an unprecedented level, inclusive of “challenge” inspections. The United States and Soviet Union also agreed to establish “nuclear risk reduction centers,” equipped with special hotline phones and staffed twenty-four hours a day, in order to guard against any accidental conflict. These new centers would also serve as the means of exchanging information pertaining to arms control and inspections.⁵⁵ All that remained was to sign a treaty document. On December 8, 1987, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev flew to Washington, DC, where he and President Ronald Reagan signed the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, or the INF treaty. The agreement called for the elimination of all INF and short-range nuclear missiles (that is, missiles possessing a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers) within a period of eighteen months, covering some 2,692 weapons in all.

In January 1988 the Department of Defense, tasked with the implementation of the INF treaty, created the On-Site Inspection Agency, or OSIA. The mission of OSIA was to conduct inspections inside the Soviet Union (and select Warsaw Pact nations) as well as to facilitate Soviet inspections in the United States and select NATO nations for the purposes of verifying compliance with the terms of the treaty. OSIA represented the new face of the Pentagon. Gone from the mix was Richard Perle, the extraordinarily influential assistant secretary of defense who had made a career opposing arms control. Perle was indifferent to the issue of an INF agreement but remained adamantly opposed to any sweeping arms control agenda, which, at the time of his resignation in March 1987, appeared to be the path the Reagan administration was headed down. Another casualty was Kenneth Adelman, the anti–arms control head of ACDA, who submitted his resignation at the end of July 1987. Like Perle, Adelman resigned over the direction the Reagan administration was taking on the matter of arms control. Unable to stop the progress toward arms control, Adelman chose not to be a part of it. But perhaps the biggest casualty of the INF treaty was the secretary of defense himself, Casper Weinberger, who resigned on November 21, 1987. Under fire from the growing Iran-Contra scandal, Weinberger had decided that he could no longer function effectively as secretary of defense. The pending INF treaty was simply the last straw for a hardliner who had consistently opposed arms control agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union.56

With the hardliners in the Pentagon removed, the only obstacle remaining for the INF treaty was ratification by the Senate. The Senate began hearings on the INF treaty in January 1988, with President Reagan urging a quick ratification process. The treaty was attacked by the right wing of the Republican Party, led by Jesse Helms, which condemned it on the grounds that it seriously undermined national security, in particular America’s commitment to its NATO allies—this despite the evident willingness of Germany to rid itself of the Pershing missiles. Helms questioned the viability of the verification regime, continuously pointing out the extensive track record (according to Helms) of Soviet noncompliance with arms control agreements. Helms accused Reagan of “appeasement” and likened the American president to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who caved in to Hitler on the issue of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Despite Helms’ efforts, the outcome was never in question; the Senate voted to approve the INF treaty, 93–5, on May 27, 1988.⁵⁷

At the end of May President Reagan took the ratified INF treaty with him to Moscow, where he and Mikhail Gorbachev met for their fourth summit. In addition to overseeing the depositing of the articles of ratification for the INF treaty, both leaders hoped that this summit could witness the signing of a new START treaty as well. They had agreed at the December 1987 summit in Washington that they should have a goal of finalizing a START treaty before Reagan left office. However, two new members of Reagan’s national security team, Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci and National Security Advisor Colin Powell, were not inclined to support a rush toward a START treaty. Although not as openly hostile to arms control as Weinberger and Poindexter, both Carlucci and Powell promoted a “go slower” approach that dismayed Secretary of State Shultz and led Reagan, in February 1988, to conclude that a START treaty would not happen during his time as president. Shevardnadze would continue to press Shultz on the issue of START, but a sticking point had developed over the issue of sea-launched cruise missiles, with the U.S. Navy opposing any effort to limit these systems’ nuclear role.⁵⁸

Stymied on START, Gorbachev began focusing on the issue of conventional weapons in Europe, pressuring his military to come up with a formula that would permit significant cuts in its size. This was a particularly sensitive time for Gorbachev, who had decided to terminate the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan from the beginning of his term as general secretary. He was coming under increasing pressure from within the power structures of the Soviet Union. In February 1988, during the Party Plenum, he was put on the defensive regarding his policies of glasnost and perestroika. The decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, announced in July 1987, was seen as an extension of these policies. When the initial Soviet contingents began crossing back into the Soviet Union in May 1988, Gorbachev felt particularly vulnerable to accusations of being weak. President Reagan, flush with what he perceived to be a U.S. victory in light of the significant support his administration had provided the Afghan mujahadeen, did not help Gorbachev’s situation by delivering a series of speeches in which he gloated over the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. Gorbachev complained vigorously to Secretary of State Shultz and National Security Advisor Powell. Both downplayed the president’s speeches, stating that Reagan’s words during the Washington summit in December 1987 should serve as a guide to where he stood on U.S.-Soviet relations. But even without the issue of Afghanistan, Reagan continued to pressure Gorbachev and the Soviets on the issue of human rights. This would serve as a sensitive issue up through the Moscow summit.59

In the end, the Moscow summit was more ceremony than substance. Unable to come to an agreement on START, the two leaders engaged in a series of cultural activities, including attending the Bolshoi Theater. On May 31, 1988, Ronald Reagan spoke before the students and teachers of Moscow State University, where he addressed the issue of arms control between the United States and the Soviet Union, and in particular the stalled START talks. “We had hoped that maybe, like the INF Treaty, we would have been able to sign it [a START treaty] here at this summit meeting,” Reagan said. “We are both hopeful that it can be finished before I leave office which is in the coming January. But I assure you, that if it isn’t, I assure that I will impress upon my successor that we must carry on until it is signed. My dream has always been that once we’ve started down this road, we can look forward to a day, you can look forward to a day, when there will be no more nuclear weapons in the world at all.” Reagan’s time in Moscow exposed him to the Russian people for the first time, and he was impressed by the experience. When someone asked him if he still believed that the Soviets were part of an “Evil Empire,” Reagan responded, “No, I was talking about another time, another era.”⁶⁰

In many ways the Moscow summit marked the end of the Reagan era. His second term was up in January 1989, and soon domestic American politics would require him to pass the torch of leadership to his successor in the Republican Party, Vice President George H. W. Bush. Bush, concerned about the conservative backlash that was growing in response to Reagan’s change of pace on all things Soviet, did his best to distance himself from Reagan’s rosy characterizations of the Moscow summit. The vice president did not attend the summit and, shortly after the summit ended, made headlines by declaring that “the Cold War is not over.”61 Gorbachev recognized that if there were to be any major move in U.S.-Soviet relations, it would have to come from Moscow. Gorbachev facilitated this by shoring up his political base at the nineteenth All-Union Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, during which the general secretary of the Communist Party maneuvered himself to become the president of the Soviet Union.⁶² President Gorbachev then turned to the Soviet military and requested that they look into the matter of unilateral military cuts of up to a million men. Gorbachev was able to consider such cuts in light of a new defensive doctrine implemented in 1987 that broke free of the former strategy of rapidly overrunning Western Europe with conventional forces in case of a war with NATO. Gorbachev had declared that such a conflict was unthinkable and was now prepared to back up his words with action.⁶³

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on December 7, 1988, the first by a Soviet leader since Nikita Khrushchev had pounded his shoe on the podium in 1960, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would begin the unilateral reduction of conventional forces by cutting 500,000 men from the ranks of the Soviet military. These were real cuts, resulting in the elimination of six tank divisions stationed in Central Europe, totaling 50,000 men and 5,000 tanks. All in all, Gorbachev would reduce the Soviet forces in Europe by 10,000 tanks, 8,500 artillery pieces, and over 800 aircraft in phased withdrawals scheduled to take place over the course of the next two years. To Gorbachev, this speech signaled an end to the Cold War and the beginning of a new era, when the Soviet Union would seek to interact with its neighbors and the world based on a foundation of ideas, not imposed by armed might.⁶⁴

Gorbachev viewed his speech as groundbreaking, and it was. He was widely acclaimed as a visionary by the Western media and many Western politicians. But the speech was designed to influence one audience, the new president-elect, George H. W. Bush. Here, Gorbachev would be disappointed. Prior to delivering his speech, Gorbachev had requested an opportunity to meet with President Reagan and Presidentelect Bush in what amounted to a fifth summit meeting. The three leaders met on Governor’s Island, in the harbor of New York City, following Gorbachev’s speech. While Reagan found the ideas put forward by Gorbachev appealing, Bush was less enthusiastic, telling a disappointed Gorbachev that while he “would like to build on what President Reagan had done,” he would “need a little time to review the issues” before he would be able to commit to any given course of action. Gorbachev was pushing hard for an early summit meeting between himself and Bush in order to finalize a START agreement. But Bush and his new team of advisors, including Brent Scowcroft as his national security advisor, were not so keen on an early meeting. The new president, sworn in on January 20, 1989, wanted to create a gap between the “euphoria” of the Reagan administration and the “reality” of his own.65

President Bush had assembled his national security team, led by Secretary of State James Baker, an experienced Washington insider who had recently served under President Reagan. It included National Security Advisor Scowcroft, another Washington insider with Reagan administration credentials; and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, a conservative Republican who had served as White House chief of staff under Gerald Ford before becoming a congressman representing the State of Wyoming (Cheney’s appointment actually came in April 1989, following the refusal by the Senate to confirm Bush’s first choice, Texas congressman John Tower, because of allegations of misconduct). Right from the start this team refused to buy into any notion of a “new era” of U.S.-Soviet relations and instead defined policy objectives in classic Cold War terms. One of the most pressing issues facing the new Bush team, at least from its own internal point of view, was how to deal with the fallout of the INF treaty. American nuclear weapons in Europe had traditionally represented the physical manifestation of the linkage between European security and the American strategic nuclear umbrella. With INF now removed from Europe, there was a concern among many European nations that the United States was considering the complete withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Europe, thereby challenging the nuclear deterrence status quo and disrupting the basis of European security.

In order to offset European concerns, the Bush administration embarked on a program of modernizing the eighty-eight Lance short-range nuclear missiles stationed in West Germany. This effort was strongly criticized by Gorbachev, who was pushing for an agreement to eliminate even these short-range nuclear missiles. Rather than engage the Soviets in a discussion on short-range missiles, the Bush team decided to announce a new sweeping arms control initiative of its own, calling for the total withdrawal of all U.S. and Soviet ground forces from Europe. The Soviets countered by proposing that both sides set an equal cap on military hardware in Europe and seek to reduce their respective ground forces by 25 percent. The Soviets pointed out that cuts in conventional forces of this level required a basis of trust that would be undermined if the United States went forward with the Lance missile upgrade. In contrast to the momentum created during the final years of the Reagan administration, the Bush administration had brought U.S.-Soviet relations to a standstill when it came to meaningful arms control.66

A critical ingredient to getting U.S.-Soviet relations back on track was the need for a policy review process that would define in precise terms what the Bush administration’s policy objectives were vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. A first cut at such a review, circulated in late March 1989, was rejected by Scowcroft and Baker as “unimaginative.” The lack of a viable “policy review” was seen by Gorbachev as a deliberate “braking mechanism” designed to slow the pace of progress between the United States and Soviet Union. At the same time, George Kennan, the father of the containment policy targeting the Soviet Union and perhaps the most respected Sovietologist alive, testified that the Bush administration was being unresponsive to the recent spate of “encouraging” overtures from the Soviet Union, noting that the time for viewing the Soviet Union as a military threat “has clearly passed.” Even former president Reagan fretted to the media about the lack of decisiveness within the Bush administration when it came to the Soviet Union.⁶⁷

Brent Scowcroft did not see the need for any bold moves regarding U.S.-Soviet relations. In an appearance on ABC’s Meet the Press, the national security advisor declared that the recent developments involving the Soviet Union underscored the fact that “the West had won” the Cold War. As such, there was no need for any “dramatic change” in U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. Shortly after Scowcroft made that statement, the Soviet Union began its gradual slide toward oblivion. On April 9, 1989, Soviet troops violently suppressed a demonstration by over 10,000 Georgians in the streets of Tbilisi. Over 200 people were injured, and 19 were killed. While Gorbachev wrestled with this development, the Warsaw Pact began to display cracks in its foundation, as the Polish government recognized the labor movement Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, and began collaborating with the Polish dissident to reform the Polish economy and political system. In this sea of turbulence all the United States could offer was a policy of “wait and see.”

Gorbachev wasn’t in a “wait and see” mode. In early May Secretary of State Baker flew to Moscow, where he met with Foreign Minister Shevardnadze and, later, President Gorbachev. With Gorbachev was the former Soviet chief of staff, Marshall Sergei Akhromeyev, who now served as Gorbachev’s principal military adviser. Gorbachev proceeded to unveil a dramatic new unilateral action, a decision to remove five hundred short-range nuclear missiles from Europe. This move placed the United States in a difficult political position vis-à-vis NATO, and particularly with West Germany. NATO was moving toward the deployment of upgraded Lance missiles, something the Germans opposed, since if these missiles were ever used in time of war, they would be detonated on German soil. Void of any formal policy guidance, Baker was unable to adequately articulate a response to Gorbachev’s announcement, again reinforcing the perception of an obstructive America in the face of Soviet efforts at genuine disarmament.68

The Bush administration’s policy review was finally completed on May 12, 1989, in the form of a seven-page document known as National Security Directive 23, or NSD-23. While the document itself wasn’t signed by Bush until September, its main theme was the notion that “containment” of the Soviet Union was never viewed as an end in itself and that the United States now had to look “beyond containment” in an effort to help integrate the Soviet Union into the international system. “Beyond containment” compelled the Bush team to formulate a dramatic proposal of its own to counter the unilateral moves put forward by Gorbachev on conventional force and short-range missile reductions. NATO was deadlocked on the issue of Lance modernization. Bush refused to be pushed into accepting a so-called Third Zero, meaning an agreement to eliminate short-range nuclear missiles, because of the damage it would do to NATO at a time when, with the fracturing of Eastern Europe, the United States needed a strong, unified alliance in Europe. At a NATO summit meeting in late May, President Bush announced his own proposal, which called for 20 percent cuts in the ground forces of both the Soviet Union and the United States in Europe and an agreement to delay the modernization of the Lance force as well as to discuss short-range missile force reductions, but not elimination. Bush also called for a conventional forces treaty to be negotiated within six months and implemented no later than 1993. Bush’s proposal was met with acclaim by the NATO members, a good start to the era of “post containment” relations with the Soviet Union.69

The post containment era was more than simple rhetoric. The reality was that the state of affairs that had governed Cold War relations between East and West was rapidly changing, creating conditions for events that were unpredictable and heavy with consequence. In March 1989 student demonstrations broke out throughout China, culminating in tens of thousands of students seizing control of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. By May the Chinese authorities had declared martial law and ordered the Red Army to regain control of the square. On June 3, the Red Army did just that, sending armored units against the students in a violent crackdown resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Chinese demonstrators. The crackdown on dissent in China was widely condemned by the United States. It was also viewed by many in Eastern Europe as a warning as to how far they would be able to push the old communist system before it, too, turned on them.

In June 1989, President Bush announced a new set of proposals designed to help create the conditions under which a START agreement might be finalized between the United States and the Soviet Union. Known as the Verification and Stability Initiative, the proposal called for on-site inspection at missile production facilities involved in the manufacture of strategic missiles (similar to the kind of inspections already underway as part of the INF treaty), an exchange of data on the strategic missile forces of each side, the banning of all encryption of telemetry relating to missile tests, and other confidence-building measures that could be incorporated into a later treaty document.⁷⁰

However, the atmosphere in which arms control negotiations normally were conducted, amid Cold War–inspired superpower stability, no longer existed. Events in Poland and Hungary, two Warsaw Pact nations, were progressing to the point that President Bush was able to visit both nations in July 1989 and was greeted by hundreds of thousands of people anxious for change. In August 1989, the Lithuanian parliament declared the 1940 Soviet annexation of the Baltic States illegal, setting the stage for the declaration of independence of the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) from the Soviet Union. That same month, after a personal intervention from Gorbachev, the Polish government announced the formation of a coalition government that included Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement.

In an effort to maintain the momentum needed for a successful arms control negotiation, Secretary of State Baker invited Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze to his vacation home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for a summit. There Shevardnadze dropped the previous Soviet linkage between SDI and START, although he warned that the Soviets might withdraw from a START agreement if the United States did not abide by the ABM treaty (this was a warning about any attempt on the part of the United States to interpret the ABM treaty in any manner that permitted the deployment of SDI). The United States also dropped its insistence that all mobile missiles be banned under START, contingent on the Soviets agreeing to specific verification measures specifically for mobile missiles. Two of the major hurdles concerning a START agreement were thus overcome. And in respect to President Bush’s Verification and Stability Initiative, Baker and Shevardnadze signed an agreement on the principles of implementation of the proposal. But the main thrust of the Jackson Hole meeting was the issue of change in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The two men verbally sparred over the situation in the Baltics, in Germany, and inside the Soviet Union itself, where thousands of coal miners had paralyzed Soviet industry by holding a massive strike unprecedented in modern Soviet history. Baker told Shevardnadze that change was coming, perhaps faster than any of them could possibly know, and that it was important to manage this change without violence.71

Mikhail Gorbachev shared Baker’s concerns about violence. Having already intervened in Poland to facilitate the peaceful transition of power from a communist government to a coalition government containing non-communists, Gorbachev next turned his attentions to Germany and the vexing issue of unification. In early October 1989 Gorbachev visited East Berlin, where he announced that policy with regard to East Germany was made in Berlin, not Moscow. On November 9, following weeks of demonstrations and protests, the East German government announced that its citizens were free to visit West Germany and West Berlin. Soon East German citizens were scaling the Berlin Wall, greeted on the other side by crowds of enthusiastic West Berliners. Over the next weeks, the Berlin Wall was dismantled, and the process of German unification began. On November 28, taking matters into his hands, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl unveiled a plan for German reunification. The issue of Germany’s future, and indeed the future of all of Europe, took center stage when, on December 2, 1989, Gorbachev and Bush met for their first summit meeting in Malta. While the two leaders discussed the importance of moving forward on both a START (with Gorbachev again raising the issue of sea-launched cruise missiles as being of particular interest to the Soviets) and a conventional forces reduction in Europe (CFE) treaty, arms control was pushed aside as the leaders of the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals instead discussed the end of the Cold War and the peaceful dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union.

Even as Bush and Gorbachev met, events continued to unfold in Europe at a rapid pace. On December 5, Czechoslovakia announced the formation of a non-communist government. The next day the East German leadership resigned. On December 20 the Lithuanian Communist Party declared its independence from Moscow, and on December 25, following a revolution in Romania, the Romanian leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, was executed in what was to be the only violent change of government to occur in Europe.72

As the Soviet Union and United States entered 1990, the issue of arms control continued to languish in the face of the tremendous change sweeping over Europe. Whereas agreements like START and CFE once dominated the relations of these two nations, compelling armies of bureaucrats and diplomats to contend with the complexities associated with missile throw weights and MIRVs, the context of a post containment Soviet Union pushed such discussions to the sidelines. It was not as if either side wanted to ignore START or CFE. Rather, these issues began to pale when compared with the looming crisis of national survival faced by Gorbachev when it came to the future of the Soviet Union. The focus of attention was on the situation in the Baltics, where the three republics were clamoring for independence, and on the issue of German unification, which was threatening to rip apart decades of European balance-of-power issues defined by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. And in August 1990 a new complicating factor was added when Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq, ordered his troops to invade and occupy neighboring Kuwait, threatening global energy supplies. Representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union actively cooperated on all these issues, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that the Soviet Union no longer carried the same clout as before. America was emerging as the dominant world power.

In September 1990, as U.S. forces began flowing into the Middle East to confront Saddam, Baker and Shevardnadze tried their best to finalize a CFE agreement (START was left off the agenda as being “too difficult”). But even as they wrestled with Cold War-era formulations, the world around them changed forever. On October 3, West and East Germany united, bringing Germany together for the first time since the end of the Second World War. The Warsaw Pact was collapsing. When presidents Bush and Gorbachev finally sat down in Paris on November 19 to sign the CFE treaty (together with representatives from NATO and the Warsaw Pact), each knew he was entering into an agreement that had been largely overcome by events. Europe was no longer the center of the world’s attention. That claim was now held by the Middle East, where a coalition of nations, acting under the Charter of the United Nations, faced off against Iraq.

On January 17, 1991, the United States and its allies initiated military action against Iraq. By the end of February, the fighting was over. Iraq had been decisively defeated, and Kuwait had been liberated. The world was now confronted with the reality that the United States stood alone as the sole remaining superpower. Although the Soviet Union was still physically intact, the war with Iraq demonstrated the clear limits of its influence, both military and political. While the issue of nuclear arms reductions between the United States and the Soviet Union was still of paramount importance, new problems, symbolized by Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (chemical and biological weapons, as well as a nascent nuclear weapons program), were capturing the imagination of the world. The United Nations Security Council, in April 1991, passed a resolution calling for the disarmament of Iraq’s WMD and dispatching international inspectors into Iraq to carry out that mission. On May 10, President Bush, spurred into action by the conflict with Iraq, which highlighted the threat posed by chemical weapons, pushed for the conclusion of a Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by the end of 1991 and committed the United States to the unconditional destruction of all of its chemical weapons stocks and production facilities within a ten-year period.

This new focus on chemical weapons did not mean that the Bush administration no longer cared about START or CFE. The main problem with START rested in the minutia of details that bogged the negotiations down. The U.S. side, in particular, was seeking exemptions for a new class of nonnuclear ALCMs, arcane accounting rules for ALCM-equipped heavy bombers, and a cap on SLCMs combined with a mutually binding procedure by which each side would declare what kinds of ships and submarines carried SLCMs. The United States also sought on-site inspection-based verification for what it termed “nondeployed” mobile missiles, focusing on missile stage production facilities, and a cap of 800 to 1,200 on warheads permitted to be carried on mobile missiles, as well as a renewed focus on “heavy” missiles, limiting the Soviets to 1,540 warheads mounted on 154 missiles. Just how entrenched the U.S. negotiating position was in terms of old-school thinking was reflected by the continued interest in the “Backfire” bomber, with the United States seeking new Soviet assurances that this bomber would not be converted for strategic use.73

The inconsistency between the events unfolding in Europe and the Soviet Union and the hardline positions taken by the United States on arms control was rooted in decades of mistrust and paranoia. It wasn’t just arms control policy that was influenced, but also how the United States planned to use nuclear weapons. A review of the nuclear weapons employment plan by the Bush administration brought about little change to the Prevailing strategy set forth in the Reagan-era NSDD-13, other than to reduce the number of targets in the Soviet Union in anticipation of proposed cuts in strategic missiles expected to take place as result of a START agreement. Regardless of the rhetoric of goodwill generated by the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, America was still positioned to wage total nuclear war with the Soviet Union on the same level that existed a decade prior, at the height of the Cold War. A study completed in March 1990 called on the United States to focus on non-Soviet threats emerging in the Third World, particularly in the arena of WMD, and used this emerging threat not only to justify the continued possession of nuclear weapons by the United States but also to develop a new range of nuclear weapons designed to deal with it.⁷⁴

After the Gulf War, in the spring of 1991, Secretary of Defense Cheney issued a new Nuclear Weapons Employment Plan, which began to shift nuclear targeting away from the Soviet Union and onto Third World nations suspected of possessing WMD capabilities. Building on this new direction, the U.S. nuclear weapons design labs began submitting proposals for the development of a new generation of smaller nuclear weapons designed for these threats, as opposed to the old Soviet threat. These recommendations were backed by a high-level study group commissioned by the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command in the summer of 1991, the so-called Reed Panel (named after former secretary of the Air Force Thomas Reed, who headed the study). The Reed Panel called for a new targeting strategy that had the United States shift its nuclear targeting to Third World nations deemed either to possess or capable of possessing WMD. The panel also recommended that the United States consider the adoption of a principle of nuclear pre-emption in situations in which U.S. conventional forces were threatened with defeat. Recognizing that the massive nuclear weapons currently in the U.S. arsenal were not useful in this new strategy, the Reed Panel called for the creation of an entirely new generation of sub-kiloton nuclear weapons that could readily be used anywhere in the world without fear of widespread nuclear contamination.75

Fortunately, President Bush chose a more pragmatic approach to the issue of nuclear weapons. The path was not an easy one, however. By the end of 1990, the START talks were once again bogged down, this time over the issue of warhead “downloading,” which involved reducing the number of warheads carried by a specific missile type. After years of struggling with the issue of MIRVs, the Soviet Union finally agreed to drastically cut back on the number of warheads its missiles carried. As such, an SLBM originally designed to carry seven warheads would now be downloaded to three, or an ICBM designed to carry three warheads would be downloaded to carry one. Skeptics in the Bush administration, led by National Security Advisor Scowcroft, were concerned about a potential “breakout” scenario in which the Soviets would suddenly rearm by “uploading” their missiles with previously downloaded warheads. Scowcroft wanted specific limits on the missile types that could be subjected to downloading; all other missiles would be counted against their existing warhead capability. Scowcroft’s hard-line position compelled the U.S. START negotiator, Richard Burt, to resign in frustration in January 1991 after he tried, and failed, to jump-start the negotiations by seeking a specific limit on the number of warheads that could be downloaded.⁷⁶

In discussions with Bush administration officials in Washington in May 1991, Foreign Minister Primakov acknowledged that a “new” Soviet Union would in fact be a smaller Soviet Union, since the complete secession of six republics—the Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova—was all but certain. And the election of a major Gorbachev rival, Boris Yeltsin, as the president of Russia on June 12, further eroded the viability of a strong Soviet Union. The “Grand Bargain” sought by the Bush administration was threatening to tear the Soviet Union apart. By the end of June, former foreign minister Shevardnadze was warning American visitors to Moscow of the real danger of a coup in which hardliners would seize control of the government and assume emergency powers in order to reverse the chaos that prevailed throughout the Soviet Union.77

Under pressure to complete a START agreement in time for a U.S.-Soviet summit in Moscow scheduled for the end of July 1991, Scowcroft finally conceded on the issue of downloading, allowing for multiple missile types but a limited number of warheads. This good news was offset by an embarrassing development in London, where the G-7 economic summit turned down the Soviet Union’s application for membership. When President Bush traveled to Moscow on July 29, he was confronted with a growing schism between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Bush and Gorbachev were able to stage one last meeting in the grand style of past summits involving momentous arms control agreements, signing the START treaty in the spectacular setting of Saint Vladimir’s Hall in the Kremlin in a ceremony on July 31, which saw each leader using a pen crafted from metal taken from missiles destroyed as part of the INF treaty.⁷⁸

Less than three weeks later, on August 18, while Gorbachev was on vacation in the Crimea, a group of hardliners led by Vice President Gennadi Yanayev seized control of the Soviet government and announced the creation of a State Committee for the State of Emergency. Russian President Boris Yeltsin immediately denounced the coup. Soviet troops were called out but were met by hundreds of thousands of protesters. Brief clashes killed three demonstrators before the troops were pulled back. In a matter of days, the coup collapsed, and Gorbachev returned to Moscow. However, the situation in Moscow, and indeed throughout all of Russia and the Soviet Union, was forever changed. Yeltsin had emerged as the key player, and it was clear that Gorbachev’s days as head of state were numbered.

In an effort to help strengthen Gorbachev’s standing with the Soviet defense industry, Bush pushed for a new round of arms reductions. On September 27, 1991, Bush announced that the United States would eliminate all its ground-based tactical nuclear weapons. This involved withdrawing all ground-launched, short-range weapons deployed overseas, including tactical nuclear weapons deployed on U.S. Navy surface ships, attack submarines, and land-based naval aircraft. Bush did reserve the right to redeploy these weapons if a crisis unfolded that warranted such an action. He had hoped his action would spur a similar response from Gorbachev, and he was not disappointed. On October 5, the Soviet leader announced his own cuts in tactical nuclear weapons, declaring his intention to eliminate all nuclear artillery munitions, nuclear warheads for tactical missiles, and nuclear mines; remove all tactical nuclear weapons from Soviet surface ships and multipurpose (non-SLBM) submarines; and separate nuclear warheads from air defense missiles, putting the warheads in central storage. 79

But these measures proved to be too little, too late to save the beleaguered Soviet economy and, with it, the political system. By the end of October 1991, the Soviet Union was bankrupt, fiscally and politically. One by one, the republics that comprised the Soviet Union voted to secede. On December 1, Ukraine voted to leave the Union. On December 8, Boris Yeltsin met with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus in Minsk and announced the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Gorbachev resigned as the president of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. The Soviet Union was finished. In its place was an amalgamation of newly independent states, many of which possessed nuclear weapons and none of which had a coherent foreign or national security policy in place to effectively deal with a situation that could easily spin out of control. After years of striving to contain Soviet power, the United States now found itself face to face with the difficult problem of managing the absence of Soviet power. As one commentator warned, “We will miss the Cold War.” How America and its leaders would deal with this problem would define global security issues for decades to come.

ENDNOTES

1 Mikhail A. Alexseev, Without Warning: Threat Assessment, Intelligence and Global Struggle (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 207–208.

2 Paul Kengor and Patricia Doerner, The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 200.

3 Beth Fisher, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 133.

4 Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994), 188.

5 Garthoff, The Great Transition, op. cit., 159.

6 Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York; Simon & Schuster, 1991), 473.

7 Robert Cowley, The Cold War: A Military History (New York: Random House, 2005), 449.

8 Dev Murarka, Gorbachov: The Limits of Power (London: Hutchinson, 1988), 125.

9 Robert Daniels, The End of the Communist Revolution (London: Routledge, 1993), 12.

10 Fred Holyrod, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Analyses and Prescriptions (New York: Routledge, 1990), 146.

11 Leonard Spector, Nuclear Proliferation Today (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), 129.

12 Scott Kennedy, ed., China Cross Talk: The American Debate over China Policy Since Normalization: A Reader (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 75–76.

13 George P. Shultz, “Address to the United Nations Association of the United States,” Current Policy 631 (1984).

14 Harald Müller, David Fischer, and Wolfgang Kötter, Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Global Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 31.

15 Cannon, 746.

16 Thomas Graham Jr., Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law (Seattle: Institute for Global and Regional Security Studies, University of Washington Press, 2002), 122.

17 J. Peter Scoblic, U.S. Versus Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America’s Security (New York: Viking, 2008), 123.

18 Robert Kaiser, Why Gorbachev Happened: His Triumphs and His Failure (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 95.

19 Jay Wink, On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind the Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 353.

20 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 622.

21 Lloyd S. Fischel, ed., Dear Mr. Gorbachev (Edinburgh, UK: Canongate, 1990), 275.

22 Jack Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House, 2004), 140.

23 Thomas Risse-Kappen, The Zero Option: INF, West Germany and Arms Control (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 107.

24 Alan Weisman, Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle: The Kingdom, the Power and the End of Empire in America (New York: Union Square Press, 2007), 88.

25 Martin Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009), 235.

26 Garthoff, 520.

27 Ibid., 521.

28 Weisman, 87.

29 John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 231.

30 Fred Kaplan, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 95.

31 Raymond Garthoff, Policy Versus the Law: The Reinterpretation of the ABM Treaty (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987), 9.

32 Garthoff, 523.

33 Scoblic, 121.

34 Kaiser, 125.

35 James Mann, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (New York: Viking, 2009), 41.

36 Donald M. Snow, The Necessary Peace: Nuclear Weapons and Superpower Relations (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), 67.

37 Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York: Random House, 1988), 614.

38 George Rueckert, Global Double Zero: The INF Treaty from Its Origins to Implementation (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 63.

39 George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Scribner’s, 1993), 728.

40 Anderson, 284.

41 Smith, 576.

42 Wink, 589.

43 Strobe Talbott and Paul Nitze, Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace (New York: Knopf, 1988), 316.

44 Anderson, 293.

45 Talbott and Nitze, 316.

46 Ibid., 363.

47 Ibid., 324.

48 Matlock, 291.

49 Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House, 2006), 294.

50 Max Kampelman, Entering New Worlds: The Memoirs of a Private Man in Public Life (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 320.

51 Lynn Eden and Steven Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 300.

52 Mann, 179.

53 Rueckert, 76.

54 W. R. Smyser, Restive Partners: Washington and Bonn Diverge (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), 72.

55 Garthoff, 244.

56 Talbott and Nitze, 354.

57 Mann, 288.

58 Cannon, 403.

59 Matlock, 327.

60 Mann, 298.

61 Garthoff, 358.

62 Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 702.

63 Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin (New York: Viking, 1990), 356.

64 Kaiser, 249.

65 Christopher Maynard, Out of the Shadow: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008), 28–29.

66 Tom Harkin with C. E. Thomas, Five Minutes to Midnight: Why the Nuclear Threat Is Growing Faster than Ever (New York: Carol Publishing, 1990), 168.

67 Lawrence Wittner, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 197.

68 Vilho Harle and Pekka Sivonen, ed., Nuclear Weapons in a Changing Europe (London: Pinter, 1991), 183.

69 Garthoff, 380.

70 John G. Tower, James Brown, and William K. Cheek, eds., Verification: The Key to Arms Control in the 1990s (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1992), 5.

71 Garthoff, 383.

72 Ibid., 404.

73 William Newmann, Managing National Security Policy: The President and the Process (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 154–156.

74 Appu Kuttan Soman, Double-Edged Sword: Nuclear Diplomacy in Unequal Conflicts: the United States and China, 1950–1958 (Praeger, 2000), 226.

75 Stephen Cimbala, Clinton and Post-Cold War Defense (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1996), 54–55.

76 Newmann, 155.

77 Richard J. Krickus, Showdown: The Lithuanian Rebellion and the Breakup of the Soviet Empire (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1997), 224.

78 Rudolf Avenhaus and Victor Kreminichuk, Containing the Atom (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 2002), 36.

79 James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 45.