Son of Dr. Strangelove

 

 Or, how I learned to love worrying and stop the bomb                                    

Ken Adelman, Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-eight hours that ended the Cold War.  Broadside Books.  2014.

It was a close shave.

At the end of their October 1986 summit in Iceland, President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev nearly pulled off the impossible.  “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons,” Reagan blurted.

“We can do that,” said Gorbachev.  “We can eliminate them.”

“If we can agree to eliminate all nuclear weapons, I think we can turn this over to our Geneva folks with that understanding, for them to draft up an agreement.  Then you can come to the US and sign it.”

“Well, all right.  Here we have a chance for an agreement.”

Then the euphoria disappeared.

“It is incomprehensible,” said Gorbachev, warming to his favorite theme, “why research, development, and testing of SDI should go on and not be confined to the laboratories.”  He was referring to the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan’s proposal to base in outer space a system to shoot down missiles. 

Reagan warmed to his favorite response.  “I have promised the American people I would not give up SDI.” And that was the end of that.

  

Why did they fail to connect?

Neither leader – much less their staffs – was prepared for the radical step.  Each might have felt pushed by the other to the political brink.  Reagan would have had to fetter his beloved Star Wars system.  Gorbachev would have had to give up the Soviet Union’s advantage in ballistic missiles in Europe and Asia.   

The summit was not a waste of time.  The two sides came to better understand each other.  The US agreed to extend the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty for a decade.  But it would not consign the SDI to the lab – Gorbachev’s condition for deep cuts in arms.  So the elimination of intermediate-range missiles in Europe came off the table.  Adelman, Reagan’s adviser on arms control, recalled telling reporters that “the prevailing narrative – that SDI sank the summit – was wrong.  It was Gorbachev who sank the summit – by tying SDI to nuclear cuts.” 

Like most spins, this was only half right.  The Americans and the Soviets expected too much of one another.  “While [Eduard] Shevardnadze sought to eliminate all strategic weapons, [George] Shultz sought to scrap only strategic ballistic missiles,” Adelman writes of the exchange between the two foreign ministers.  “This formulation left America’s two strengths – strategic bombers and cruise missiles – outside the ban, and put the Soviets’ main strength – ballistic missiles – inside it, on the chopping block.”

Perhaps the two sides were too evenly matched.  They found it hard to come up with concessions that could not have left one side stronger than the other.  Since the two antagonists would not upset the delicate balance, history would have to do the honors for them, in the form of the Soviet Disunion.  --Leon Taylor tayloralmaty@gmail.com