Post-Summit Optimism

Even for a journalist, as distinct from a historian, late can be not merely better than never, but better than early, where evaluation is concerned. Back at my London base after briefings in Washington, D.C., I am more optimistic than I expected to be about the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit in Geneva.

I am struck by the healthy contrast between the Geneva Summit of July 1955 (which I covered for The Economist) and the 1985 one. Healthy in more ways than one. Thirty years ago, in a quaint survival of the recent world war, the Summit was labeled a meeting of the “Big Four,” although some were distinctly bigger than others. Indeed there was a case for calling the participants the “Big Five,” for it was still not clear whether Premier Bulganin or First Secretary Khrushchev was the Soviets’ Number One.

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Brian Crozier

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Even for a journalist, as distinct from a historian, late can be not merely better than never, but better than early, where evaluation is concerned. Back at my London base after briefings in Washington, D.C., I am more optimistic than I expected to be about the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit in Geneva.

I am struck by the healthy contrast between the Geneva Summit of July 1955 (which I covered for The Economist) and the 1985 one. Healthy in more ways than one. Thirty years ago, in a quaint survival of the recent world war, the Summit was labeled a meeting of the “Big Four,” although some were distinctly bigger than others. Indeed there was a case for calling the participants the “Big Five,” for it was still not clear whether Premier Bulganin or First Secretary Khrushchev was the Soviets’ Number One.