Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  “The vast majority of Americans support what President Reagan is doing,” Shultz answered. There were indeed critics, but the way to deal with them was by making further progress.

  “I work very hard,” Gorbachev told Shultz. “I drive people and wear them out. I go at it all the way. If I tire, someone else will take over.” Shultz didn’t expect weariness to be a problem. “He looked as if he would never tire,” Shultz wrote.

  THE NEXT MORNING Gorbachev and Reagan picked up where they had left off in Reykjavík. “A good rousing meeting” was Reagan’s diary description of their opening round. Gorbachev complained about Reagan’s Berlin speech. “Mr. President, you are not a prosecutor and I am not on trial,” he said. “Like you, I represent a great country and therefore expect our dialogue to be conducted on the basis of reciprocity and equality. Otherwise there will be no dialogue.”

  Reagan considered Gorbachev’s admonishment to be part of the game. “I enjoyed the debate and I think he did, too,” the president wrote later. “We agreed to disagree.”

  They adjourned to the signing ceremony. The East Room of the White House was filled with diplomats, members of Congress and the executive branch, Gorbachev’s entourage, and the media. Reagan took the lead. The president was understandably proud. “This ceremony and the treaty we’re signing today are both excellent examples of the rewards of patience,” he said. “It was over six years ago—November 18, 1981—that I first proposed what would come to be called the zero option. It was a simple proposal—one might say, disarmingly simple.” Reagan smiled amid the expected laughter. “Unlike treaties in the past, it didn’t simply codify the status quo or a new arms buildup; it didn’t simply talk of controlling an arms race. For the first time in history, the language of ‘arms control’ was replaced by ‘arms reduction’—in this case, the complete elimination of an entire class of U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles.” Reagan acknowledged the opposition his proposal had encountered. “Reaction, to say the least, was mixed. To some the zero option was impossibly visionary and unrealistic; to others merely a propaganda ploy. Well, with patience, determination, and commitment, we’ve made this impossible vision a reality.”

  Reagan’s researchers had scoured Russian literature for an appropriate reference. The president turned to Gorbachev and said, “General Secretary Gorbachev, I’m sure you’re familiar with Ivan Krylov’s famous tale about the swan, the crawfish, and the pike. It seems that once upon a time these three were trying to move a wagonload together. They hitched and harnessed themselves to the wagon. It wasn’t very heavy, but no matter how hard they worked, the wagon just wouldn’t move. You see, the swan was flying upward; the crawfish kept crawling backward; the pike kept making for the water. The end result was that they got nowhere, and the wagon is still there to this day.” Fortunately, the American and Soviet governments knew better. “Strong and fundamental moral differences continue to exist between our nations,” Reagan granted. “But today, on this vital issue, at least, we’ve seen what can be accomplished when we pull together.”

  Reagan tallied the accomplishment. All of the Soviet Union’s ground-launched intermediate-range missiles would be destroyed, with their more than fifteen hundred warheads. America’s entire complement of Pershing IIs and ground-launched cruise missiles, with some four hundred warheads, would be destroyed as well. “But the importance of this treaty transcends numbers,” Reagan continued. “We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim. And I’m sure you’re familiar with it, Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty. The maxim is: Doveryai no proveryai—trust, but verify.”

  Gorbachev smiled for the cameras. “You repeat that at every meeting,” he said. The audience of notables laughed.

  “I like it,” Reagan protested. More laughter. He expressed hope that the INF Treaty would lead to progress on strategic arms but also on conventional weapons, regional conflicts, and human rights. He cited another Russian proverb (“as you can see, I’m becoming quite an expert in Russian proverbs,” he said, to further chuckles): “The harvest comes more from sweat than from the dew.” He invited Gorbachev to speak.

  Gorbachev said he would leave to future generations to pronounce on the importance of this single treaty. But the act of agreeing had a broader significance that was obvious even now. “For everyone, and above all, for our two great powers, the treaty whose text is on this table offers a big chance at last to get onto the road leading away from the threat of catastrophe. It is our duty to take full advantage of that chance and move together toward a nuclear-free world, which holds out for our children and grandchildren and for their children and grandchildren the promise of a fulfilling and happy life without fear and without a senseless waste of resources on weapons of destruction.”

  He turned to Reagan. “We have covered a seven-year-long road, replete with intense work and debate,” he said. “One last step towards this table, and the treaty will be signed.” He added, “May December 8, 1987, become a date that will be inscribed in the history books, a date that will mark the watershed separating the era of a mounting risk of nuclear war from the era of a demilitarization of human life.”

  THE GOOD FEELING of the signing ceremony persisted throughout Gorbachev’s visit. But it didn’t make additional agreements any easier. Reagan and Gorbachev went straight to the Cabinet Room for a discussion of the next steps. Reagan wanted to talk about strategic arms and press on toward START, but Gorbachev unexpectedly pushed the issue of conventional weapons. He didn’t say so, but the principal appeal of a conventional-forces agreement was that it promised greater cost savings.

  Reagan answered that he would be willing to talk about conventional arms, though he considered START the priority. Yet in either realm, trust was essential. “It is not armaments that create distrust,” he said, “but distrust that creates armaments.” He noted that the INF Treaty, historic as it was, still had to be ratified. Anything that caused distrust would jeopardize ratification.

  Gorbachev said he had his own ratification problems. The Soviet Union was destroying four times as many missiles as the United States. The Supreme Soviet, which, with two thousand members, was far larger than the American Senate, would ask why he had been so generous to the Americans. Many in his country distrusted the United States and therefore disarmament. “People ask how it is possible to have disarmament when the Soviet Union is ringed with U.S. bases. People ask how Gorbachev can bow down to the U.S.” Referring again to Reagan’s Berlin speech, Gorbachev said the American government accused the Soviet Union of all sorts of sins, but the Americans themselves had plenty to answer for. “During the forty-five years since the war, so much has piled up that if we just go on with the complaints—on the Soviet side there are all sorts of doctrines to complain about: the Truman Doctrine, the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Carter Doctrine—we will put each other on trial.” This was not the constructive approach people wanted. Looking beyond the Reagan years, Gorbachev turned to Vice President Bush. “Unless policy reflects what people want, you can win an election but not succeed in the long term,” he said.

  The topic of elections prompted Reagan to say that the United States supported Gorbachev’s steps toward democracy under glasnost. He said he didn’t want to offend the general secretary, but he couldn’t resist telling a story he had recently heard from an American academic who visited the Soviet Union. The professor said that as he left his house in his home city, he was taken to the airport by a part-time taxi driver who was about to finish college. He asked the young man what he would do after he got his degree. “He replied that he had not yet decided,” Reagan said. In the Soviet Union the professor had ridden in another taxi, similarly driven by a college student. He posed the same question as to what would come next. The driver said he didn’t know—“they haven’t told me yet.”

  Gorbachev frowned. He said he knew the president liked anecdotes, and Russia was a land rich with them. But he said he had a request to make of the president:
“that you not ask Matlock to collect anecdotes for you.”

  The meeting ended with nothing accomplished or agreed upon. Yet Gorbachev, referring to the treaty signing, said the day had been a success. “It is a bridge to the future. The Soviet side is ready to build it over. By the time the president comes to Moscow, the two sides of the bridge should be locked together.”

  “They should meet in the middle,” Reagan replied.

  Gorbachev said he concurred completely.

  TALKS THE NEXT day produced modest progress. Reagan pitched a START package that included 50 percent reductions in strategic weapons and an explicit acknowledgment of the right of both sides to test defensive systems outside the laboratory, including in space. Ignoring the reservations of Weinberger, Reagan proposed that each side commit to share with the other what it learned from the testing.

  Gorbachev, as before, rejected the concept of strategic defense. The president’s proposal, he said, would simply trigger a new arms race. Gorbachev repeated what he had said at Reykjavík about the Soviet Union’s not intending to match the Americans SDI for SDI. “It would develop a response,” he said. “But that response would take a different path from SDI.” For this reason alone the president’s technology-sharing provision was unacceptable.

  Gorbachev nonetheless made a crucial concession on SDI. He accepted the principle of 50 percent cuts in strategic arms while saying nothing about confining SDI testing to the laboratory. He insisted only that the United States commit to a period of nonwithdrawal from the ABM Treaty; during that time testing, but not deployment, of SDI could proceed. Gorbachev indicated that the Soviet Union considered SDI a losing proposition, regardless of what the Americans did. “It could wear out the Soviet economy,” he said. “It is up to the United States to decide if SDI makes sense for itself in economic terms; the Soviet Union has decided it does not.” Should the United States deploy SDI at the end of the nonwithdrawal period, the Soviet Union would respond, but by more cost-effective methods than SDI. “For the Soviet side, it would be less expensive to explore ways other than through SDI-type deployments to ensure its security,” Gorbachev said.

  Reagan reiterated that SDI was central to his vision of a nuclear-free world. “The secret of nuclear weapons is spreading inexorably,” he said. “If the U.S. and the Soviet Union ever reach the point where they have eliminated all their nuclear arms, they will have to face the possibility that a madman in one country or another could develop a nuclear capability for purposes of conquest or blackmail.” Reagan knew Gorbachev would cringe, but he trotted out once more the analogy from the period after World War I, when poison gas had been outlawed. “People kept their gas masks,” Reagan said. “There will always be a need for defense.”

  Gorbachev said he needed an American commitment to nonwithdrawal from the ABM regime. “If the U.S. wants the 50 percent reductions, there has to be a commitment of ten years on the ABM Treaty.” He observed that nothing would come of SDI before that time anyway.

  Reagan refused to limit SDI in any manner. He didn’t think he should have to. His voice rising, he said, “I don’t want to talk about links to SDI but about 50 percent reductions, about how the hell the two sides are to eliminate half their nuclear weapons. I want to talk about how we can sign an agreement like the one we signed yesterday, an agreement which made everyone in the world so damned happy it could be felt in the room at dinner last night. Let’s get started with it!”

  “I’m ready,” Gorbachev said. But he could not go forward without reaffirmation of the ABM Treaty.

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  NANCY REAGAN MADE certain to participate fully in this summit. And she found Raisa Gorbachev as insufferable as ever. “Raisa and I hadn’t seen each other in two years, but nothing much had changed,” Nancy wrote later. While their husbands prepared to sign the INF Treaty, Nancy hosted a reception for Raisa, Barbara Bush, and several other women. “I had a fairly good idea of what to expect, but my guests were taken completely aback when Raisa proceeded to lecture us for the entire hour about the history of Russia, its political system, and how there were no homeless people in the Soviet Union,” Nancy recalled. “Later, one of the guests came up to me and said, ‘That was the rudest thing I’ve ever seen.’ The others just shook their heads in amazement. I was glad that other people could see what I had been going through.” Nancy noted disapprovingly that Raisa didn’t ask about her struggle with cancer or offer condolences on the death of her mother. “The Soviets know everything, so I can’t believe she didn’t know what I had gone through only a few weeks earlier. Maybe I was overly sensitive, but I don’t think so.”

  Nancy grudgingly took Raisa on a tour of the White House. She had extended an invitation three weeks earlier, but Raisa had been slow to respond. “I was offended,” Nancy said. “In the circle we moved in, you don’t ignore an invitation from the head of state or his wife.” Eventually, Raisa said she would come but at a different time than Nancy had mentioned, as her schedule was very demanding. Yet she made time to speak with reporters. One asked her whether she would like living in the White House. She said that it seemed like a museum rather than a regular house. Nancy simmered. “It wasn’t a very polite answer,” she said, “especially from somebody who hadn’t even seen the private living quarters.”

  Nancy’s vexation extended into the state dinner she had arranged for that evening. “The Gorbachevs were understandably tired from their long trip,” she recounted. “Because they had specifically requested an early evening, we made several changes in our routine to allow them to leave by ten o’clock, as they had asked.” Nancy canceled a private reception she had planned for the Yellow Oval Room. She ordered that coffee be served at the dining tables in the State Dining Room rather than separately in the Blue Room. She told the violinists she had hired for the evening to trim their repertoire. Even Van Cliburn, the musical star of the evening, was urged to keep it short.

  “After making all these changes to ensure an early evening, I was slightly annoyed when the Gorbachevs arrived late for dinner,” Nancy recalled. Yet that wasn’t the worst. “The real holdup came in the receiving line. Maybe it’s a cultural difference and she was merely trying to be polite, but Raisa tried to have a real conversation with practically every guest. ‘What is your name? How many children do you have?’ She seemed very well briefed on who many of our guests were, and she obviously wanted them to know this. But the line was moving like molasses, and I thought I would go crazy.”

  IF RAISA GORBACHEV registered Nancy’s annoyance, she gave no sign. Neither did her husband, who seemed to enjoy himself at the dinner. Nancy seated Richard Perle, the combative assistant secretary of defense, at the same table as Gorbachev, doubtless in part so she, seated at Gorbachev’s side, wouldn’t have to carry the conversation. Perle, a stout man, had been played by a slim actor in a British television re-creation of the Reykjavík summit. Gorbachev teased him: “When I saw you on television, you were a lot thinner.”

  Perle responded by asking Gorbachev what percentage of Soviet economic production went to the military.

  “That’s a secret,” Gorbachev replied.

  “Are you sure you know?” Perle demanded.

  “I know everything,” Gorbachev said. “I’m head of the defense council, so you’re dining with a military man.”

  “I think you’re spending twenty percent, and probably more,” Perle said.

  Gorbachev turned away, leaving Perle to guess. But he enjoyed the evening. “During those days so full of interesting meetings there were some truly emotional moments,” he wrote in his memoir. “One was the dinner at the White House. Van Cliburn gave a recital after dinner. We remembered him as the young pianist who had won the 1958 Tchaikovsky Prize in Moscow for his rendering of the great Russian composer’s first piano concerto. After exchanging an affectionate hug with us, Van Cliburn sat down at the grand piano and started softly playing and singing ‘Moscow Nights.’ This was a genuine gift for the Soviet guests. The song, which h
ad been written by Soloviev-Sedoi for the 1957 Moscow Youth Festival, had become virtually an informal popular anthem. We could not resist the temptation and joined in, Russian and English lyrics blending into one emotion.”

  Gorbachev’s good cheer infused his visit. He worked a Washington street crowd like a seasoned American pol. Ordering his limousine to stop, he leaped out and shook hands. “Hello, I’m glad to be in America,” he told the first person he encountered, a woman. “I’m glad to be friends with all of you.” To another observer he said, “My people are pushing me very hard to come to a better understanding of the American people.” His exuberance took hold. A restaurant owner invited him in for borscht. A group of expense-account lunchers burst into applause when he waved. “Even from the balcony you could sense the charisma of the man,” one said. “It was almost like a parade or a celebration. There was a world leader out shaking hands and you kind of felt the world was going to be okay. None of us wanted to let go of the moment. It was such a warm moment, of love. I’m a cynic, but I got chills.”

  He stirred an audience at a State Department reception hosted by George Shultz. “Today, hundreds of millions of people are gradually realizing that the end of the twentieth century represents a watershed for mankind,” Gorbachev said, “a watershed which separates not so much political systems and ideologies but common sense and the will to survive on the one hand, and irresponsibility, national egotism, prejudices—in short, the old thinking—on the other hand. Mankind has come to realize that it has had enough wars and that it is time to put them to an end for good.” Peace in the past had been based on a balance of force. This was dangerous. “Peace from a position of force is inherently weak, whatever people say about it. It is in the nature of such peace to be founded on confrontation, hidden or open, and on the permanent danger of flare-ups and the temptation to use force.” The world could not afford to continue to indulge this misconception. The INF Treaty represented a first step beyond deterrence toward a new era of security based on trust. “To put it in simple, human language, what we have achieved is—both in Russian and English—the revival of hope.”