An insider’s account of how the president’s meeting with Gorbachev shaped the end of the Cold War.
An insider's account of how the president's meeting with Gorbachev shaped the end of the Cold War
P resident Ronald Reagan’s approach to foreign policy was not to preside over a system or to perpetuate a set of arrangements but to change the system, alter arrangements, and take us to a better place. He was troubled by the stalemate of the Cold War. He knew that conflicts in the developing world could be debilitating and was keenly aware of the budgetary drain of defense spending. But didn’t each of these concerns also apply to the Soviet Union? With the right approach, the right tools, and the right initiatives, the Soviet Union would be the one worried about a stalemate or developing-world conflicts or economic pressures. Its system could not survive an all-out competition. When asked his view of the Cold War, Reagan replied: “We win; they lose.”
Reagan adopted six tactics to push back against the Soviets: (1) Get the economy moving again, to reassure the general public and pay for defense increases. (2) Articulate an affirmation of liberty and Western values, to remind the world that this was not merely a geopolitical rivalry but that there was a profound moral dimension as well. (3) Rebuild America’s defenses, to meet or best the Soviets in every sphere of military competition. (4) Focus on technology, so that the U.S. could outcompete the Soviets. (5) Raise the cost of Soviet adventurism in Central America and elsewhere: the Reagan doctrine. (6) Do all this in an alliance structure that would earn the support of the free world.
Through my good fortune, I was to be a part of this. I joined the National Security Council staff in 1986 as deputy executive secretary, having previously served in two other White House offices. My main responsibility was to work with the U.S. policy community to set the goals and agenda and negotiate those with other governments. The NSC might have hosted the strongest policy expertise in the White House, composed of scholars, authors, diplomats, military personnel, members of the intelligence world, and other specialists. But amid all of the countries, issues, and personalities we dealt with, the overriding issue that touched almost everything we did was the Cold War.
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Mikhail Gorbachev represented a special sort of challenge to the Reagan administration. His rule carried all the traditional strengths of the Soviet system: enormous military power and an ideology that still resonated with some constituencies even as the Soviet economy was wheezing. In addition, Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader since Lenin who had a sense of public relations and who could deal with the media. He also had at least a sense of the shortcomings of the Soviet system, and he launched the perestroika and glasnost campaigns in an effort to improve things at home. Although these reform movements led to nothing but the unintended collapse of the Soviet system, in his early days Gorbachev managed to capture a mood of optimism. It was the first time since Eisenhower that a Soviet leader was younger than the American president. This presented quite a contrast with recent images of Soviet leadership, as the three previous ones (Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko) all died in office, following a repeated pattern of visible physical deterioration, guarded media appearances, and contradictory, minimalist, or dissembling statements regarding their health. Reagan joked that he wanted to negotiate, but “they keep dying on me.”
Gorbachev captured a rare moment in which the Soviets appeared to have the initiative. He stood for a hopeful future. The Cold War was the most important foreign policy issue in the world, and nuclear weapons were the most important element of that Cold War struggle. And now, in a spontaneous decision, the two leaders were to meet in Reykjavik to discuss this issue. There were only ten days from the announcement to the October 11–12 meeting in Iceland, making it as much a come-as-you-are event as a summit. But sometimes lengthy preparation does not improve outcomes. Unlike with other senior-level meetings, no position papers or proposals were exchanged beforehand.
I was on the U.S. delegation in Reykjavik, working on planning and coordination, while Ty Cobb, the NSC director for Soviet, European, and Canadian affairs, led the policy process. At the initial meeting of the U.S. and Soviet delegations, the Icelandic foreign ministry made one request to both sides: to make sure that neither leader arrived between noon and 1 p.m. on Monday, during the opening of the Icelandic parliament, which the prime minister would have to attend.
Our planning meetings with the Soviets were cumbersome though not adversarial. We would put forward proposals that we considered routine, even basic. The Soviets would be unable to respond. For example, the American side would propose that there be four sessions: 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, with that schedule repeating on Wednesday. The Soviets would respond that they would have to get instructions from Moscow. We would propose that each session last 90 minutes, and the Soviets would say that they would have to get instructions from Moscow. We would propose that each side host a lunch for the other side, and the Soviets would respond that they would have to get instructions from Moscow. On it went, with White House staffers in their twenties and thirties having full negotiating authority to plan the summit, and the Soviet senior staffers in their fifties and sixties having essentially no authority.
As far as getting to Iceland was concerned, it’s fair to say that moving the president is like moving God. We took something like 700 U.S. government employees with us, from senior White House staff to drivers. We had to bring in desks, typewriters, office supplies, and even toilet paper to tiny Iceland. And there were also about a thousand members of the American press. For unclear reasons, the Soviets violated the Icelanders’ one request: Gorbachev arrived during the opening of parliament, to the consternation of Iceland’s leadership.
Stories arose within the U.S. side about earlier Soviet behavior. During the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT), the Soviet negotiator asked the U.S. negotiators to cease mentioning specific numbers of weapons, a normal part of negotiations. Why? Because other members of the Soviet delegation were unaware of those numbers, and it was classified information. Someone else mentioned that the Soviets were quick to pocket the No. 2 pencils that U.S. government negotiators used. We took these ordinary pencils for granted, but for the Soviets they were the best they had seen. The Soviets in Reykjavik were not swiping office supplies, from what we could tell, but they appeared to be both prisoners in and custodians of an unforgiving system.
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The context of U.S.–Soviet relations was not promising. There was a pattern to Soviet military behavior in the 1980s. We would come to an agreement with the Soviets on force placement or exercises and subsequently detect some violation of this agreement. We would notify the Soviets, and they would apologize and say it was a one-off incident and would not happen again. They asked for our data as to what happened, but we could not share it because it might indicate how we captured or processed intelligence. There would be no more problems for several months but then more detections — sometimes weaker — prompting the same complaint from us, the same apology from them, and so on.
Then the violations stopped — or did the Soviets just get better at evading detection? Or was it that our signals intelligence people decided to not fully inform national decision-makers because we would once again be tipping our hand? I always suspected it was a version of the latter. Cheating persisted, but we were better off not reporting it. Only once the behavior hit a threshold similar to previous detections would we complain. Otherwise, we would be showing what we could detect. In any event, there was a universal view on the U.S. side that the Soviets were deliberately violating their accords and that they should not be trusted, regardless of Gorbachev’s public persona.
Gorbachev had shrewdly positioned himself as close to the antinuclear movement (breathtaking when you think about the Soviets’ numerical advantage in nuclear missiles) by supporting a nuclear freeze in Europe. This played to the hopes of the Left in Europe and those simply fatigued by the Cold War as well as the unquestioning anti-American constituencies.
For his part, Reagan had also pursued various nuclear initiatives, somewhat at variance with his hard-line reputation of the time. In 1981, he proposed eliminating all intermediate-range missiles (the “zero option”), and in 1982, he proposed reducing strategic nuclear warheads by one-third. Each of these initiatives represented a significant departure from conventional arms control, which had traditionally focused only on limiting future growth of these systems. “Reagan armed to disarm,” noted NSC senior staffer Henry Nau. Until Reykjavik, Soviet leaders dismissed these ideas as one-sided and insincere. Yet Gorbachev’s opening proposal in Reykjavik included a 50 percent reduction in strategic offensive arms, complete elimination of all intermediate-range missiles, and an extension of the 1972 ABM Treaty for ten years. Not surprisingly, Reagan embraced the negotiations with enthusiasm, delighted to see Moscow’s willingness to consider many of our more ambitious suggestions.
Reagan was both more pronuclear and more antinuclear than his American political opponents. He was pronuclear in that he recognized nuclear forces were a necessary evil and that the failure to maintain a robust nuclear deterrence made a bad situation worse. He was antinuclear in that he was skeptical about the premise of the U.S. deterrent strategy: mutual assured destruction, or MAD. MAD meant that we would be able to destroy the Soviet Union if it attacked the U.S. Reagan saw this as fatalistic and downside-oriented. “I will try to kill you if you try to kill me” is not the way to go through life. Reagan viewed the Strategic Defense Initiative as the path away from MAD.
Gorbachev proved to be an intelligent, knowledgeable, and facile negotiator. Reagan held firm in his principles. No more unverifiable treaties (“Trust but verify,” he loved to say in Russian), no more agreements codifying Soviet superiority in arms on the European continent, no more tolerating Moscow’s refusal to grant its citizens basic human rights, and — perhaps most important to the president — no more reliance on offensive nuclear missiles to provide for our security.
The Soviet leader matched some of Reagan’s earlier ideas, proposing not a nuclear freeze but an actual reduction in nuclear weapons. He offered to eliminate all strategic forces, not just ballistic missiles. Reagan countered that it would be fine with him if they could agree to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Gorbachev agreed, but with a catch: The U.S. would have to abandon the SDI program. Gorbachev proposed that SDI be confined to the laboratory, but that eliminated any field-testing and any large-scale production — keeping it only a dream. Reagan again counter-proposed, offering to share SDI technology with the Soviets. Instead of mutual assured destruction, both countries would now have mutual assured defense. Gorbachev seemed to agree but again stipulated that SDI be confined to the laboratory. Nothing doing, said Reagan; we are going ahead with SDI development. The talks more or less fell apart, and eventually the Soviet Union fell apart as well.
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Late on the first afternoon of the summit, I had a break and ducked into the cafeteria near the meeting site. The place was empty except for one person sitting and reading a book, a man probably in his early thirties. He said good afternoon to me with a slight accent, asking, “Do you have a minute? I’m Sergei, with the Soviet delegation.” I introduced myself. He said he was with the supplies department, and to simplify matters, I told him I was with the administrative section.
“I have a question for you,” said Sergei in an affable manner, and he opened the English-language paperback he was reading. “What does this mean, to ‘let the cat out of the bag’?” “Well, it means to disclose a secret or a surprise,” I ventured. “I know that from the context,” said Sergei, “but it is such an unusual expression—where does it come from? Is there a secret cat in mythology or American history?” I had read somewhere a conjecture about its origins: “I believe the cat in this expression is the cat-o’-nine-tails, and letting the cat out of the bag refers to taking the whip out of storage so that it can be used.” Of course, this didn’t explain the expression’s meaning. We chatted for a few minutes more, and then I had to scoot.
The next day I was back in the cafeteria, again taking a break. Sergei was sitting in the same place, reading. Before I could walk over to greet him, another man came in — I recognized him as a member of our military contingent — and Sergei beckoned him over. I had come in a different entrance this time and was somewhat hidden behind a curtain divider. I decided to observe. “I have a question for you,” I could hear Sergei say in an affable manner, opening the English-language paperback.
I froze. It took me a minute to understand what was happening. At first, I thought he was just asking the same question of two different people. Then the penny dropped. He was always in the cafeteria. He was always just waiting. He was always posing a friendly question to whichever American wandered in, looking for whatever information he could glean.
The upshot of the talks? At the time, they were considered somewhat of a failure in that the two sides did not reach an agreement. But only one year later, at the 1987 Washington Summit, both sides signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty for the complete elimination of intermediate-range missiles. Sometimes a deal is not within reach. Sometimes you can compromise only so much. Sometimes not having a deal is better than having a deal, and walking away from the table is the shock you need. At the moment of Reagan’s departure from Reykjavik, Gorbachev asked him almost plaintively, “What more could we have done?” to which Reagan responded, “You could have said yes.”
The Soviets sacked their ambassador to Iceland, or in diplomatic parlance, he was “recalled.” Had he failed to pass on the timed landing request from Iceland, or was he simply taking the fall for a bad decision in Moscow? We never knew. My sense was that the Soviets had a limited feedback mechanism, so that problems or issues rarely got relayed to those at the top, and no adjustment could be made. At one point, someone at the top casually stated a preference to land at noon, that was taken as a diktat, and the Icelandic request was never passed along. As for “Sergei,” I mentioned my strange encounter to a security officer and was told later that “we got a good photo of him.” It seems that Sergei really had let the cat out of the bag.
Reflecting on the moment, Reagan said: “At Reykjavik, my hopes for a nuclear-free world soared briefly, then fell during one of the longest, most disappointing — and ultimately angriest — days of my presidency.” But assessments became more positive over time. Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz, recounted meeting with Gorbachev at Stanford after the end of his premiership. “I said to him, ‘When you entered office, and when I entered, the Cold War was about as cold as it got, and when we left office it was over. So what do you think was the turning point?’ And he didn’t hesitate one second. He said, ‘Reykjavik.’ I said, ‘Why do you say that?’ He said, ‘For the first time, the real leaders got together and really talked about the important subjects.’” The judgment of history is that Gorbachev gets credit for what he did not do — use force to try to save the Soviet Empire. Reagan gets credit for what he did — demonstrate the superiority of a free society.
This essay is drawn from the new book Inside the Reagan White House: A Front-Row Seat to Presidential Leadership with Lessons for Today.