In January 1986, when Gorbachev called Reagan’s 1982 bluff on a nuclear-free world at the Reykjavik summit, the US president seriously considered his Soviet counterpart’s position, worrying that “we’d be hard put to explain how we could turn it down,” new documents published by the National Security Archive show.
🔊 “We should see this as an opportunity to transform Gorbachev’s concept so that it matches your own vision for achieving a non-nuclear world,” Secretary of State Shultz wrote Reagan two weeks later.
➡️ Shultz stressed that beyond nukes, Moscow must also agree to “intrusive verification,” a “redress of conventional imbalances,” START and INF concessions, and “acquiescence to our SDI program.” British and French nuclear arsenals would be left untouched.
➡️ Reagan’s hardline START negotiator E. Rowny rejected any changes to the US negotiating position
➡️ Pentagon chief Weinberger accused Gorbachev of using the proposal to try to kill SDI
➡️ NSA Poindexter rejected Moscow’s year 2000 deadline, highlighting nukes’ importance to NATO’s conventional defense and “maintaining alliance cohesion,” and saying the “goal of the total elimination of nuclear weapons” would “take a long time” in practice, requiring “alternative means of maintaining security” or changes to “the international situation to the point that the contribution of nuclear weapons is no longer needed.”
At a National Security Council meeting in February, Reagan appeared to have been convinced to go back to his old hardline self, fearing only public backlash if he was seen as the one who refused to reduce, and stressing the need to “make the Soviets expose the fact that they are not really serious about reductions negotiations.”
In his February 22 response to Gorbachev, Reagan tied moving forward to “the most stringent verification,” as well as “non-nuclear military issues, regional problems, human rights and bilateral ties” in general.
In the subsequent years, Moscow fulfilled almost all US conditions, including INF (1987), START I (1991), the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (1990), total pullback from Eastern Europe (1991-1994), Open Skies (1992), Start II (1993) and New START (2010). Despite this, the US continued NATO’s eastward expansion, staged a coup in Ukraine, and ultimately scrapped its nuclear treaty commitments.
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