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  THE USSR At the beginning of my first term, Pentagon leaders told me appalling stories of how the Soviets were gaining on us militarily, both in nuclear and conventional forces. The Soviets were spending fifty percent more each year on weapons than we were; meanwhile, in our armed forces, the paychecks were so small that some married enlisted men and women were eligible for welfare benefits. Many military personnel were so ashamed of being in the service that as soon as they left their posts, they put on civilian clothes.
I knew reversing the effects of years of neglect would be expensive and difficult. But during the campaign, the people of America had told me nothing mattered more to them than national security. Time and again, when I went around the country calling for a balanced budget, I'd get this question: "What if it comes down to a choice between national security and the deficit?" Every time, I answered: "I'd have to come down on the side of national defense." And every time I did, the audience roared. Nobody wanted a second-class army, navy, or air force defending our country. I wanted a balanced budget. But I also wanted peace through strength.
Responding to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter had imposed an embargo on the shipment of American grain to the Soviet Union. Lifting the embargo would be a big boost to our farmers and help our economy at a time when it needed help, but should we do it if it helped extend the life of Communism? It was a dilemma I had to deal with during my first months in the White House. We were also faced by another serious dilemma: How do we stop the advance of Communism in Latin America without making the people of Latin America think Uncle Sam is a bigger threat to them than the Communists. Although El Salvador was the immediate target, the evidence showed that the Soviets and Fidel Castro were targeting all of Central America for a Communist takeover. El Salvador and Nicaragua were only a down payment. Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica were next, and then Mexico.
We had already lost Cuba to Communism. I was determined the Free World was not going to lose Central America or more of the Caribbean to the Communists, but we had to tread softly. In the final analysis, I realized that the problems of Latin America would have to be solved by the Latin American countries themselves. I had believed for many years that the largest countries of North America - Canada, Mexico, and the United States - should forge a closer alliance and become more of a power in the world and help with the problems. Not only would it be to our mutual economic benefit - I thought that working together, those of us in North America might be able to help the Latin American countries help themselves. On my fist trip out of the country as president, a get-acquainted meeting in Ottawa with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, I found that he agreed. President José López Portillo of Mexico said he would work with Venezuela and other Latin American countries to help negotiate an end to the shipment of Communist arms from Cuba into El Salvador. The policy had gotten off to a good start. Through diplomatic channels, I sent word to our friends south of the border: "We'll help you do the things you need to do, but we won't come in and try to do them for you."
I thought a lot about the future of America and the "Mutual Assured Destruction", or MAD, policy. It was the name applied to the strategic policy of both of the world's superpowers. The United States and the Soviet Union each kept a big enough stockpile of nuclear weapons at the ready that, if one attacked, the other would still have enough to annihilate the attacker.
As president, I carried no wallet, no money, no driver's license, no keys in my pockets - only secret codes that were capable of bringing about the annihilation of much of the world as we knew it. On inauguration day, after being briefed a few days earlier on what I was to do if ever it became necessary to unleash American nuclear weapons, I'd taken over the greatest responsibility of my life - of any human being's life. From then on, wherever I went, I carried a small plastic-coated card with me, and a military aide with a very specialized job was always close by. He or she (I was pleased to be able to appoint the first female officer to this position) carried a small bag everyone referred to as "the football." It contained the directives for launching our nuclear weapons in retaliation for a nuclear attack on our country. The plastic-coated card, which I carried in a small pocket in my coat, listed the codes I would issue to the Pentagon confirming that it was actually the president of the United States who was ordering the unleashing of our nuclear weapons. The decision to launch the weapons was mine alone to make.
The Russians sometimes kept submarines off our East Coast with nuclear missiles that could turn the White House into a pile of radioactive rubble within six or eight minutes. Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radarscope and decide whether to unleash Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that? There were some people in the Pentagon who thought in terms of fighting and winning a nuclear war. To me it was simple common sense: A nuclear war couldn't be won by either side. It must never be fought. Advocates of the MAD policy believed it had served a purpose: The balance of terror it created had prevented nuclear war for decades. But as far as I was concerned, the MAD policy was madness.
There had to be some way to remove this threat of annihilation and give the world a greater chance of survival. On a Sunday afternoon, I wondered if it might be possible to develop a defense against missiles other than the fatalistic acceptance of annihilation that was implicit under the MAD policy. During my watch as president, there was nothing I wanted more than to lessen the risk of nuclear war. But how do we go about it?
Our relationship with the Soviets was based on "détente," a French word the Russians had interpreted as a freedom to pursue whatever policies of subversion, aggression, and expansionism they wanted anywhere in the world. Every Soviet leader since Lenin, up to and including the present one, Leonid Brezhnev, had said the goal of the Soviet Union was to Communize the world. It was our policy that this great democracy of ours had a special obligation to help bring freedom to their peoples, as we did after World War II when we helped the new nations that emerged from the colonial past. We spent billions to help the countries ravaged by World War II, including our former enemies, rebuild after the war. Sometimes the price of defending freedom was even higher: Many brave Americans made the ultimate sacrifice. America had always been willing to pay the price of defending human liberty.
With the breathtaking events that have occurred in Eastern Europe since then, it can be easy to forget what the world was like in the spring of 1981: The Soviets were more dedicated than ever to achieving Lenin's goal of a Communist world. Under the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, they claimed the right to support "wars of national liberation" and to suppress, through armed intervention, any challenge to Communist governments anywhere in the world. As the foundation of my foreign policy, I decided we had to send as powerful a message as we could to the Russians that we weren't going to stand by anymore while they armed and financed terrorists and subverted democratic governments. Our policy was to be one based on strength and realism. I wanted peace through strength, not peace through a piece of paper.
In my speeches and press conferences, I deliberately set out to say some frank things about the Russians, to let them know there were some new fellows in Washington who had a realistic view of what they were up to and weren't going to let them keep it up. At my first press conference, I was asked whether we could trust the Soviet Union. I said that the answer to that question could be found in the writings of the Soviet leaders: It had always been their philosophy that it was moral to lie or cheat for the purpose of advancing Communism. I said they had told us, without meaning to, that they couldn't be trusted. (Much of the press later got it wrong when it claimed I called the Soviets liars and cheaters, failing to point out that I was simply quoting what the Russians themselves had said.)
The great dynamic success of capitalism had given us a powerful weapon in our battle against Communism - money. Moreover, incentives inherent in the capitalist system had given us an industrial base that meant we had the capacity to maintain a technological edge over them forever. I wanted to let them know that we realized the nuclear standoff was futile and dangerous for all of us and that they had nothing to fear from us if they behaved themselves. Someone in the Kremlin had to realize that in arming themselves to the teeth, they were aggravating the desperate economic problems in the Soviet Union, which was the greatest evidence of the failure of Communism. Yet, to be candid, I doubted I'd ever meet anybody like that.
Not long after I moved into the White House, Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador in Washington, made some guarded hints to Secretary of State Al Haig indicating that the Russians were interested in reopening East-West talks on controlling nuclear arms. But he said Soviet leaders were unhappy with some of the harsh things I'd said about them. I told Al to inform Dobrynin that my words were intended to convey a message: There was a new management in the White House along with a new realism regarding the Russians, and until they behaved themselves, they could expect more of the same. I didn't have much faith in Communists or put much stock in their word. Still, it was dangerous to continue the East-West nuclear standoff forever, and I decided that if the Russians wouldn't take the first step, I should.
During my recovery from the assassination attempt on March 30, I sat in the sun-filled White House solarium in robe and pajamas, waiting for doctors to give me a go-ahead to resume a full work schedule. Perhaps having come so close to death made me feel I should do whatever I could to reduce the threat of nuclear war in the years God had given me; perhaps there was a reason I had been spared. Finally, I decided to write a personal letter to Brezhnev, whom I had met briefly when I was governor. I wanted to send a signal to him that we were interested in reducing the threat of nuclear annihilation.
When I told Al Haig that I was thinking of writing a letter to Brezhnev, Al was reluctant to have me actually draft it. He had a toughness and aggressiveness about protecting his status and turf that caused problems within the administration. On the day I was shot, George Bush was out of town and Haig immediately came to the White House and claimed he was in charge of the country. Even after the vice-president was back in Washington, I was told he maintained that he, not George, should be in charge. I didn't know about this when it was going on. But I heard later that the rest of the cabinet was furious. They said he acted as if he thought he had the right to sit in the Oval Office and believed it was his constitutional right to take over.
In any case, I told Al that, despite his objections, I wanted to lift the grain embargo and that I was going to send a personal letter to Brezhnev aimed at reaching him as a human being. On April 24, 1981, two letters went out to Brezhnev from me. In the formal message, I questioned "the USSR's unremitting and comprehensive military build up over the past fifteen years, a build up which in our view exceeds purely defensive requirements and carries disturbing implications of a search for military superiority." An excerpt from the personal letter follows:
Mr. President, should we not be concerned with eliminating the obstacles which prevent our people from achieving their most cherished goals? And isn't it possible some of these obstacles are born of government objectives which have little to do with the real needs and desires of our people?
It is in this spirit, in the spirit of helping the people of both our nations, that I have lifted the grain embargo. Perhaps this decision will contribute to creating the circumstances which will lead to the meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joint obligation to find lasting peace.
A few days later, I got an icy reply from Brezhnev. He repudiated everything I'd said about the Soviet Union, blamed the United States for starting and perpetuating the Cold War, and then said we had no business telling the Soviets what they could or could not do anywhere in the world. So much for my first attempt at personal diplomacy.
I declared our commitment to reducing the risk of nuclear war and asked the Soviet Union to join us in doing so in a television address from the National Press Club in Washington on November 19, 1981. The address was broadcast live via Worldnet. As I made the speech, I couldn't resist an ironic thought: I was talking about peace but wearing a bulletproof vest. Our intelligence agents had been told that a Libyan assassin named Jack was in the country and planning to kill me on the day of the speech. If Jack was at the National Press Club, he wasn't able to get through the wall of security and pull off his assignment, and I was able to delivery the most important speech on foreign policy I'd ever made. The principles contained in the speech took shape during months of debate within the administration. Hoping it would be received in Moscow as a sincere effort to begin the process of arms reduction, I called for the elimination of all intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) weapons in Europe by both sides.
In addition, I invited the Soviet Union to enter with us in new negotiations aimed at reducing our mutual stockpiles of long-range strategic nuclear weapons to equal and verifiable levels. I proposed that we adopt a more positive approach (than the SALT talks) and call them START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks)." The journey leading to arms reduction wasn't going to be short or easy. And I knew it had to begin with an increase of arms. A few weeks before this speech, I had given the final approval to blueprints for a multibillion-dollar modernization of our strategic forces.
We had decided to build one hundred B-1B bombers to replace our deteriorating fleet of B-52 bombers (the B-1's development had been canceled by the Carter administration), one hundred new intercontinental-range missiles (the MX Peacekeeper), deploy new Trident nuclear submarines, develop the Stealth bomber, and construct space satellites for communications and other military purposes. We had to bargain with the Russians from strength, not weakness. If you were going to approach the Russians with a dove of peace in one hand, you had to have a sword in the other. During the period of great Soviet military expansion, we had built no new bombers, developed no new missiles, and the morale, weapons, and readiness of all our military forces had deteriorated.
Helmut Kohl, leader of the opposition party in Germany, told me during a White House visit that the (Soviet) propaganda offensive was becoming highly sophisticated and effective in convincing Europeans that the United States was a bloodthirsty, militaristic nation. This view of America shocked me. We were the most moral and generous people on earth. We'd spent thirty-five years since World War II helping to rebuild the economies of our former allies and enemies. It was clear we'd have to do a better job of conveying to the world our sense of morality and our commitment to the creation of a peaceful, nuclear-free world.
We eventually achieved our goal of zero-zero intermediate-range missiles in Europe. But it took longer than I hoped it would, and it was a lot more difficult than I expected.
Once they were in power, the Sandinistas began trying to export their Marxist revolution to neighboring El Salvador and other countries in Central America. They proved themselves masters at propaganda, peddling an image of themselves in Europe and America as kindly men whose democratic reforms were being thwarted by the Great Colossus of the North - us. Bill Casey and others at the CIA drafted a plan to meet the Communist threat in Central America through a covert program that, over the next few months, would provide for the support of anti-Sandinista Nicaraguans that would try to halt the flow of Soviet-made arms from Cuba to Nicaragua and El Salvador. These men, just a few in the beginning, were the nucleus of Nicaragua's Contra freedom fighters. A month later, after we went over the program in more detail, I formally approved the plan, hoping that it would halt the advance of Communism seven hundred miles from our border. Only time would tell.
As all this was going on, we were witnessing the first fraying of the Iron Curtain, a disenchantment with Soviet Communism in Poland, not realizing then that it was a harbinger of great historic events to come in Easter Europe. Brave men and women in Poland had demanded one of the most basic human liberties, the right to organize a trade union in defiance of a government that forbade any instrument of power or influence beyond itself. When this heroic and spontaneous ground swell on behalf of freedom refused to recede, Poland's Communist leaders had been forced to grant Lech Walesa's Solidarity trade union an inch of freedom and recognized it as a bona fide representative of the workers.
Under more pressure, the leaders even spoke of introducing a modicum of democratic reform to the Polish Communist Party. As seen from the Oval Office, the events in Poland were thrilling. One of man's most fundamental and implacable yearnings, the desire for freedom, was stirring to life behind the Iron Curtain, the first break in the totalitarian dike of Communism. Moscow responded to these acts of insubordination by sending its troops on maneuvers along the Polish border during the spring of 1981. It installed a military regime in Warsaw with orders to halt the liberalization. It also cut off loan credits, thus leaving the Polish economy, already unable to feed its people and nearly in ruin because of the failure of Communism, teetering near the brink of collapse.
Our options were limited and presented us with several dilemmas. We wanted to help the hungry of Poland fill their stomachs, yet we didn't want to do anything that would prop up the ailing government and prolong the survival of Communism. We didn't want to keep the Communist government afloat by shoring up its economy, yet if the economy collapsed, the result might be violent popular uprisings that would bring in Soviet tanks and doom the embryonic democratic movement. That summer we supported efforts by U.S. and European banks to negotiate an extension of Poland's international debt payments to avert a collapse of the economy, and agreed to send millions of dollars' worth of food to feed the people of Poland. We were striking a delicate balance.
Poland's brave shipyard workers continued their fight for freedom throughout the fall of 1981, triggering persistent rumors and intelligence reports that the Soviets were considering an invasion, along with continued expressions of our opposition to this possibility. On Sunday, December 13, Poland - and Moscow - finally acted. Without warning, the Polish military government closed the country's borders, shut off communications with the rest of the world, arrested the leaders of Solidarity, and imposed martial law.
In writing my speech to the nation, although it was supposed to have been a Christmas message, I decided to deliver a strong message to the Soviets condemning their action in Poland. "We can't let this revolution against Communism fail without our offering a hand," I wrote in the diary afterward. "We may never have an opportunity like this in our lifetime." Then I wrote a message to Leonid Brezhnev condemning the Soviet role in the crackdown:
The recent events in Poland clearly are not an "internal matter" and in writing to you, as the head of the Soviet government, I am not misaddressing my communication. Your country has repeatedly intervened in Polish affairs during the months preceding the recent tragic events . nothing has so outraged our public opinion as the pressures and threats which your government has exerted on Poland to stifle the stirrings of freedom. Attempts to suppress the Polish people certainly will not bring about long term stability in Poland and could unleash a process which neither you nor we could fully control.
On Christmas morning, after we'd opened our gifts around the family tree in the White House, I was handed Brezhnev's reply:
"If a frank exchange of opinion between Communist parties and the expressions by them of their opinions to each other is not pleasing to someone in the United States, then, in reply, we must firmly say: That is the business of the parties themselves and only them. If we are to speak frankly, it is your Administration that has already done enough to disrupt or at the very least undermine everything positive which was achieved at the cost of great effort by previous American administrations in the relations between our countries. One cannot help notice that the general tone of your letter is not the way in which leaders of such powers as the Soviet Union and the United States should talk with each other, especially considering their power and position in the world and their responsibility for the state of international affairs. That is our opinion."
Apparently referring to several recent speeches I had made, Brezhnev accused me of defaming the Soviet social and state system, a charge to which I pleaded guilty. What a good Christmas present: I'd made my point to Brezhnev.
Shortly before New Year's Day, we backed up our words with action: I announced that we were imposing sanctions against Poland and the Soviet Union in an expression of our displeasure over the crushing of human rights in Poland. When I sought the support of our European allies for this policy, I was disappointed. They agreed we should send a signal of disapproval to the Russians, but not if it involved halting work on the pipeline; the reaction of some of our allies suggested that money spoke louder to them than principle. They said they wanted freedom for the Polish people but also wanted to expand trade with the Eastern bloc, and they refused to join our efforts to block work on the new pipeline that was to bring natural gas from Siberia to Western Europe.
How could the Soviets afford their huge arms buildup? Perhaps, I mused to myself in March 1982, America should "explore if the time hasn't come to confront the Russians and tell them all the things we could do for them if they'd quit their bad acting and decide to join the civilized world ." In the spring of 1982, in a speech at a Eureka College reunion marking the fiftieth anniversary of my graduating class, I renewed my invitation to the Soviets to initiate the START (the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks), which we'd put on hold after the Soviets imposed martial law in Poland. I wanted to remind Brezhnev that we knew what the Soviets were up to and that we weren't going to stand by and do nothing while they sought world domination. I also tried to send out a signal that the United States intended to support people fighting for their freedom against Communism wherever they were - a policy some writers later described as the "Reagan Doctrine."
In May 1982, I sent a letter to Brezhnev suggesting a resumption of arms control talks at Geneva before the end of June. While Brezhnev's response was not cordial, he agreed to new talks. "It is not our fault," he wrote, "that the Strategic Arms Limitation process was interrupted for a long time . The position with which the U.S., judging by your speech of May 9, is approaching the negotiations cannot but cause apprehension and even doubts as to the seriousness of the intentions of the U.S. side." While I was reading the letter, I jotted down my reactions to his comments in the margin. Next to the sentences above, my comment was: "He has to be kidding."
Time was on the side of the democracies: All over the world there were indications that democracy was on the rise and Communism was near collapse, dying from a terminal disease called tyranny. It could no longer bottle up the energy of the human spirit and man's innate drive to be free, and its collapse was imminent. "The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us," I said. One of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward, the Communist world.
In the summer and fall of 1982, the Democratic majority in Congress tried to kill many of the most important elements of our military modernization program, including the MX missiles and B-1 bomber, and our efforts to improve the quality of our all-volunteer army. Attempts to slash the military budget continued even after we began seeing tangible evidence of success.
Throughout most of 1982, I tried to persuade our European allies to restrict credit to the Soviets and join us in imposing other sanctions aimed at halting construction of the trans-Siberian natural-gas pipeline. I eventually had little success.
At 3:30 A.M. on November 11, 1982, Nancy and I were awakened by a telephone call from my national security advisor, who told me Brezhnev had just died. I asked George Bush and George Shultz to attend the funeral along with our ambassador in Moscow, Arthur Hartman. Before Brezhnev's death, I had decided I was going to announce, in the middle of November, a lifting of the sanctions on construction of the trans-Siberian pipeline because our major trading partners had agreed to impose limited trade and credit restrictions on the Soviets.
A portion of my diary entry for November 13, 1982:
Then an emergency. With all seven nations agreed on a uniform policy on East West trade, something we've been after for a year and a half, we got word that Mitterrand had some objections. My script was written as an announcement of our agreement and that as a result I was lifting the pipeline sanctions. I put in a call to Mitterrand. He was unavailable. I had in my hand Chancellor Kohl's and Margaret Thatcher's messages of joy about the agreement. I said to hell with changing and did the announcement. Maybe Francois Mitterrand will get the message, and maybe the striped pants types at State will too
On November 15, I wrote:
More flak from Paris but we're not answering. We've told them if they are reneging for any reason about the east west trade agreement, take it up with all of us, not just the U.S. During the day a meeting with John Tower re the MX. No doubt we're going to have trouble - the Dems will try to cancel out the whole system. It will take a full court press to get it. If we don't, I shudder to think what it will do to our arms reduction negotiations in Geneva.
The case was presented in a speech to the American people:
Let me begin with the negotiations on the intermediate-range nuclear forces that are currently underway in Geneva. As I said earlier, the most threatening of these forces are the land-based missiles that the Soviet Union now has aimed at Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In 1972 there were 600 of these missiles. The United States was at zero. In 1977 there were 600. The United States was still at zero. Then the soviets began deploying powerful new missiles with three warheads and a reach of thousands of miles - the SS-20. Since then the Soviets have added a missile with three warheads every week. Although the Soviet leaders earlier this year declared they'd frozen deployment of this dangerous missile, they have in fact continued deployment.
Last year, on November 18th, I proposed the total, global elimination of all these missiles. I proposed that the United States would deploy no comparable missiles, which are scheduled for late 1983, if the Soviet Union would dismantle theirs. The Soviet Union has thus far shown little inclination to take this major step to zero levels. This summer we also began negotiations on strategic arms reductions, the proposal we call START. Here we're talking about intercontinental missiles, the weapons with a longer range than the intermediate-range ones I was just discussing. We're negotiating on the basis of deep reductions. I proposed in May that we cut the number of warheads on these missiles to an equal number, roughly one-third below current levels. I also proposed that we cut the number of missiles themselves to an equal number, about half the current U.S. level. Our proposals would eliminate some 4,700 warheads and some 2,250 missiles. I think that would be quite a service to mankind .
Through a heavy volume of phone calls and letters to the White House and public opinion polls after the speech, I felt I had convinced millions of Americans that we were on the right track with the "peace through strength" policy.
I felt that if I could ever get in a room alone with one of the top Soviet leaders, there was a chance the two of us could make some progress in easing tensions between our two countries. I have always placed a lot of faith in the simple power of human contact in solving problems. I had made no progress with Brezhnev. Now there was a new leader in the Kremlin, Yuri Andropov, former head of the KGB. I didn't expect him to be any less of a doctrinaire Communist than Brezhnev, but at least there was a clean slate.
Meanwhile, I kept trying to win the support of our people and Congress for staying the course on the military modernization program. The Democrats were fighting tooth and nail to repeal virtually all the new programs we had started in 1981. They were fighting to cut defense spending by more than $163 billion over five years, increase social spending by $200 billion, and increase taxes $315 billion, and to win their case they were exploiting some of the public's understandable fears about nuclear war. Besides wanting to get my message across to the people, I wanted to get Andropov's attention.
On March 8, 1983, I flew to Florida to make a pair of speeches. The first was an address at Walt Disney's EPCOT Center to a group of young people regarding the challenges facing their generation in the future. Next I spoke in Orlando to the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization of ministers.
Here are a few thoughts from that speech, which came to be known as the "Evil Empire" speech:
I would agree to a freeze if only we could freeze the Soviets' global desires. A freeze at current levels of weapons would remove an incentive for the Soviets to negotiate seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major arms reductions which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve their objectives through the freeze. A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military buildup. It would prevent the essential and long overdue modernization of United States and allied defenses and would leave our aging forces increasingly vulnerable. And an honest freeze would require extensive prior negotiations on the systems and numbers to be limited and on the measures to ensure effective verification and compliance. And the kind of a freeze that has been suggested would divert us completely from our current negotiations on achieving substantial reductions . I believe that Communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in history whose last pages even now are being written .
As I've said, I wanted to let Andropov know we recognized the Soviets for what they were. Frankly, I think it worked, even though some people - including Nancy - tried persuading me to lower the temperature of my rhetoric. I told Nancy I had a reason for saying those things: I wanted the Russians to know I understood their system and what it stood for.
Two weeks after the "Evil Empire" speech, the Joint Chiefs of Staff returned to me with their collective judgment that development of a shield against nuclear missiles might be feasible. I decided to make public my dream and move ahead with the Strategic Defense Initiative by laying down a challenge to our scientists to solve the formidable technological problems it posed. Here are excerpts from my diary that spring:
March 23
The big thing today was the 8 p.m. TV speech on all networks about national security. We've been working on the speech for about 72 hours and right down to the deadline. We had a group in for dinner at the W.H. I did the speech from the Oval Office at 8 and then joined the party for coffee. I guess it was okay, they all praised it to the sky and seemed to think it would be a source of debate for some time to come. I did the bulk of the speech on why our arms buildup was necessary and then finished with a call to the science community to join me in research starting now to develop defensive weapons that would render nuclear missiles obsolete. I made no optimistic forecasts - said it might take 20 years or more but we had to do it. I felt good.
March 24
the reports are in on last night's speech. The biggest return - phone calls, wires, etc., on any speech so far and running heavily in my favor.
During the spring and summer of 1983, Yuri Andropov was pursuing the old Soviet agenda of world domination, funding rebel guerrillas, keeping an iron hand on Poland, and, in general, acting like all the other Soviet leaders of the past. The administration won a series of close votes in Congress that kept the MX program and other major elements of the military modernization program alive. In a new attempt at quiet diplomacy, I tried to communicate privately with Andropov, hoping, as I had with Brezhnev, to initiate the kind of personal relationship that might lead to better relations between our countries. Although Andropov and I had exchanged formalities after the death of Brezhnev, his letters were stiff and as cold as a Siberian winter.
On July 11, 1983, I sent a handwritten note to Andropov assuring him that the people of the United States were equally dedicated to the cause of peace and elimination of the nuclear threat. Then I asked, Wasn't it time that we took the next step and began trying to implement these goals at the meetings of our arms negotiators in Geneva? Historically, I wrote, "our predecessors have made better progress when they communicated privately and candidly." I wrote that if he wished to engage in such direct communication, "you will find me ready. I await your reply. Ronald Reagan."
In early August, Andropov responded with a letter that demanded we cancel the deployment that fall of the new NATO missiles and refused to discuss the issues I'd raised in my letter, especially Soviet subversion of Third World countries. On the plus side, he expressed a willingness to communicate with me privately. Here is a portion of his letter:
Dear Mr. President:
Thank you for your personal letter, which was conveyed to me on July 21. I have considered its contents with all seriousness. I agree with you, Mr. President, that we are obliged to remember the responsibility for maintaining peace and international security which rests on our two countries and their leaders.
The important thing, of course, is to begin to move forward on issues of limiting and reducing nuclear arms. It is a particularly urgent necessity to prevent a nuclear arms race in Europe, the results of which would be extremely serious. If we can achieve that, I believe that the peoples of our countries and of many other countries will be grateful to us. We believe that a just, mutually acceptable agreement in Geneva, an agreement on the basis of equality, is still possible I will tell you, Mr. President, the same thing I told Chancellor Kohl when I met him in Moscow: we believe that we must take advantage of the opportunity, while it exists, to reach a genuinely honest agreement which takes into account the legitimate interests of both the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries so that medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe are significantly reduced. I agree that the exchange be confidential when the interests of the matter so dictate. For my part I would propose to do this through the Soviet Ambassador in Washington and a person whom you would designate.
Respectfully,
Andropov
August 4, 1983
The letter made me more certain than ever that we had to go ahead with plans to deploy the new intermediate-range NATO missiles in Europe, because once that threat was removed, the Soviets wouldn't have any reason to eliminate their INF weapons.
If the Free World needed any more evidence in the summer of 1983 that it was facing an evil empire, we got it the night of August 31 when a Russian military plane cold-bloodedly shot down a Korean airliner, Flight 007, murdering 269 innocent passengers including a U.S. congressman and sixty other Americans. This crime against humanity not only set back my attempt at "quiet diplomacy" with the Kremlin, but put virtually all our efforts to improve Soviet-American relations on hold. When Andropov finally admitted that Soviet fighters had downed the jumbo jet, he claimed the massacre was justified because the Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 was flying through Soviet airspace on a "spy mission" for the United States. I was outraged.
In response to the incident, we imposed new restrictions on U.S. landing rights for Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, and suspended implementation of several bilateral agreements with the Soviet Union.
The Soviets walked out of the Geneva talks on intermediate-range missiles, and shortly after that, the START discussions on long-range missiles. They'd left the ballpark, but I didn't think the game was over. We had just changed the rules of the game. And they didn't like it. The United States was in its strongest position in two decades to negotiate with the Russians from strength. The American economy was booming. We'd come a long way since the late seventies, when our country was plagued with self-doubt and uncertainty and neglecting our military forces.
In spirit and military strength, America was back, and I figured it would be only a matter of time before the Soviets were back at the table - which reminds me of a story I heard about two Russian generals. One of them said to the other: "You know, I liked the arms race better when there was only on of us in it." Now there were two of us in the arms race and the Russians knew it. That's why I expected them to come back to Geneva.
During my first years in Washington, I think many of us in the administration took it for granted that the Russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them. But the more experience I had with the Soviet leaders, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike. Because of this, and perhaps because of a sense of insecurity and paranoia with roots reaching back to invasions of Russia by Napoleon and Hitler, they had aimed a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons at us.
Less than a week before the Soviets walked out of the INF talks in Geneva in November 1983, I decided to make another attempt at communicating with Yuri Andropov outside the normal diplomatic channels. As I remarked in my diary after a meeting with George Shultz at which we agreed to created a small group within the National Security Planning Group with the goal of opening new channels to the Kremlin, "I picked his brains about the Soviet Union. He was an ambassador there for a time. He believes that coupled with their expansionist philosophy, they are also insecure and genuinely frightened of us. He also believes that if we opened them up a bit, their leading citizens would get braver about proposing changes in their system. I'm going to pursue this."
The collapse of the Geneva talks understandably worried many in the world that were anxious for the superpowers to begin the process of nuclear disarmament. As a result, the new year brought calls from people in Europe and the United States to submit to the Soviet demands and suspend deployment of the INF missiles. I believed the last thing we should do was yield to the demands. If we did, we'd not only be reneging on promises to our NATO allies to supply the weapons, we'd be accepting the status quo of a dangerous imbalance of nuclear missiles aimed at the capitals of Europe and be rewarding the Soviets for walking out of the negotiations.
Still, from a propaganda point of view, we were on the defensive. In a speech to the nation televised to many other countries of the world January 16,1984, we went on the offensive. I said that I was sincere in wanting arms reduction and peace and that despite recent reversals in U.S.-Soviet relations, the United States stood ready to undertake another attempt at negotiating an arms agreement with the Soviets based on three guiding principles - realism, strength, and dialogue.
Twelve days later, I received a harsh letter from Yuri Andropov that again criticized deployment of the INF weapons in Europe and was unyielding on virtually every other aspect of the differences I'd raised regarding the U.S. and Soviet positions at Geneva. Here are a few paragraphs from his very long letter:
If one must state today that the affairs between our two countries are taking on, to put it frankly, an extremely unfavorable shape, then the reason for it is not our policy - we did not and do not want it to be so . We are prepared to accept very deep reductions both of the strategic and European nuclear weapons. With regard to the latter, even to the point of riding Europe entirely of medium-range and tactical-range nuclear weapons. However, the United States has destroyed the very basis on which it was possible to seek an agreement. We have only one view of this step - it is an attempt to upset both the regular and global balance. So we are acting accordingly. It appears that the U.S. side has underestimated our resolve to preserve the military and strategic equilibrium, nothing short of equilibrium. Let us be frank, Mr. President, there is no way of making thinks look as if nothing happened. There has been a disruption of the dialogue on the most important questions. A heavy blow has been dealt to the very process of nuclear arms limitation.
Yuri Andropov
Twelve days after Andropov sent me this letter, he died, and soon we had another new man - Konstantin Chernenko - in charge at the Kremlin. Once again, I felt I had a chance, through quiet diplomacy, to reduce the psychological barriers that divided us. U.S.-Soviet relations were not yet at the point where I thought I should attend Andropov's funeral. George Bush led our delegation to Moscow (which also included Senator Howard Baker) and he returned with the opinion that Chernenko seemed less hard-nosed and abrasive than Andropov. But the next day a letter arrived from Chernenko that was not the kind to encourage expectations of an early improvement in our relations. After thanking me for sending my condolences to the funeral with the vice-president, Chernenko in no uncertain terms said that he and other members of the Soviet leadership stood by the letter Andropov wrote to me just before his death. The Soviet Union remained unswervingly opposed to NATO deployment of the Pershing II and cruise missiles. These are excerpts from his letter:
There is another important point which the U.S. leadership must clearly understand: Not only the U.S. has allies and friends, the Soviet Union has them too; and we will be caring for them .
Chernenko ended his letter on a slightly positive note: The Soviets were
resolute advocates of a serious and meaningful dialogue, a dialogue that would be aimed at searching for common ground, at finding concrete and mutually acceptable solutions in those areas where it proves realistically possible," and improvements in U.S.-Soviet relations were "feasible given the same desire on the United States side.
But something else had changed: I felt we could now go to the summit, for the first time in years, from a position of strength. I wrote in my diary that: As a result of these past three years, our technology is superior to what our possible adversaries have and our improvement in training and readiness are inspiring. In all military branches, 91 percent of our recruits are high school graduates. This is the highest level in our history. I wish it was possible for our people to know what has been accomplished but too much of it must remain secret.
At a National Security Council meeting in early March, I announced that I had decided to draft a response to Chernenko without asking input from the bureaucracy. From then on, I would consult only with a small group - George Bush, George Shultz, Cap Weinberger, and Bud McFarlane, my national security advisor. The Group would help determine whether we could develop a long-range plan that offered the Russians a series of small steps, and then showed that we were sincere about wanting to improve relations as a prelude to a summit.
In the letter to Chernenko, I said I believed it would be advantageous for us to communicate directly and confidentially. I tried to use the old actor's technique of empathy: to imagine the world as seen through the eyes of another and try to help my audience see it through my eyes. "I fully appreciate the priority you attach to the security of the Soviet state," I wrote, "particularly in light of the enormous costs shouldered by your people in helping to defeat Nazi Germany." I said it was my understanding that some people in the Soviet felt a genuine fear of our country.
Mr. General Secretary, following his visit to Moscow, Vice President Bush conveyed to me your message that we should take steps to insure that history recalls us as leaders known to be good, wise and kind. Nothing is more important to me, and we should take steps to bring this about.
Sincerely,,
Ronald Reagan
Moscow's response to this attempt at quiet diplomacy was a cold shoulder: Ambassador Dobrynin told George Shultz the Soviet leadership wasn't interested in a summit. Chernenko also said that the United States had no business raising human rights issues involving the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, in Congress, Tip O'Neill said he had taken on a moral commitment to block further development of the MX missile, and this, I knew, wouldn't make it any easier for me to convince the Soviets that we were a united country committed to a policy of peace through strength. Once again, a committee of 535 was trying to set foreign policy. I asked George Shultz, without retreating in any way from our basic positions, to keep probing for the possibility of a summit.
The 1984 election was coming up. Several of our Soviet experts told me not to expect any movement from the Russians until it was over. Our intelligence analysts believed Chernenko and other Soviet leaders had decided not to respond positively to suggestions for a summit because they felt that if they did they would help me get reelected. I have no way of knowing whether that was true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
Like Andropov, we were told Chernenko was ill and might not live long. When he appeared in public, he seldom said anything without a script. Another old hard-liner from the Stalin era, Andrei Gromyko, was calling the shots on Soviet foreign relations, and it was at his recommendation that the Soviets boycotted the Olympics. In the middle of the summer, the Russians told George Shultz that they would be willing to return to the arms control table, but to discuss one item only, what they called the "militarization of space," a reference to our research on the Strategic Defense Initiative. The Soviets were demanding that we halt work on the SDI just as we were beginning to get indications from our scientists that it might work.
In late July, I came to a decision. Gromyko usually attended the opening session of the UN General Assembly in New York each September. After talking it over with George Shultz and Bud McFarlane, I decided to invite him to the White House after the UN meeting for a visit and some person-to-person diplomacy. After first indicating he had no interest in my invitation, Gromyko agreed to come to the White House September 28. In the diary, I wrote: "I intend to open up the whole matter of why we don't trust them. Maybe if we can ease the mutual suspicion, arms talks can move better."
This is how I recounted my session with the Soviet foreign minister:
Sept. 28
The big day - Andrei Gromyko. Meeting held in Oval Office. Five waves of photographers, first time that many. I opened with my monologue and made the point that perhaps both of us felt the other was a threat, then explained by the record we had more reason to feel that way than they did. His opener was about 30 minutes, then we went into dialogue. I had taken notes on his pitch and rebutted with fact and figure a number of his points. I kept emphasizing that we were the two nations that could destroy or save the world. I figured they nurse a grudge that we don't respect them as a super power. All in all, three hours including lunch were, I believe, well spent.
At a small luncheon in the White House, Gromyko came over to Nancy before lunch, took her to the side, and whispered in her ear: "Does your husband believe in peace?" Nancy said, "Yes, of course." And he said, "Then whisper the word peace in his ear every night." And she said, "I will, and I'll also whisper it in your ear," and she leaned over and did it. For the first time that day, "Grim Grom," as he had been nicknamed by some, cracked a smile.
As I expected, a few days after the election Gromyko said he wanted to meet with George in Geneva to discuss holding a new round of arms control talks. George agreed and a meeting was set for January.
Following the election, I also got a very unusual message congratulating me on my reelection. Scrawled by hand in Russian on a tiny piece of tissue paper about half the size of a business card, in characters so small a microscope was almost necessary to read them, the message came from ten women who were imprisoned at a Soviet forced-labor camp:
Mr. President:
We, women political prisoners of the Soviet Union, congratulate you on your reelection to the spot of President of the USA. We look with hope to your country which is on the road of FREEDOM and respect for HUMAN RIGHTS. We wish you success on this road.
In early January 1985, while George Bush and I were getting ready for our second inaugural, George Shultz met with Gromyko in Geneva and they agreed to a resumption of arms control talks. When we rejected the Soviets' insistence that the talks be limited to questions of space defense, Gromyko agreed they would also involve offensive nuclear missiles. After additional wrangling, a date and place were set for the resumption - March 12 in Geneva, fifteen months after the Soviets had walked out of the previous negotiations.
Some excerpts from my diary that month:
March 8 A large breakfast with members of Senate and House teams who are going to Geneva for opening of arms talks plus our negotiators. There seemed to be a feeling of unity even including Senator Ted Kennedy. Then over to the Roosevelt Room and we had formal send off then it was off to Bethesda Naval Hospital for my annual check up. I'm so healthy I had a hard time not acting smug.
March 11 Awakened at 4 a.m. to be told Chernenko is dead. My mind turned to whether I should attend the funeral. My gut instinct said no. Got to the office at 9. George Shultz had some arguments that I should. He lost. I don't think his heart was really in it. George Bush is in Geneva. He'll go and George Shultz will join him, leaving tonight. Word has been received that Gorbachev has been named head man in the Soviet Union.
So, once again, there was a new man in the Kremlin. "How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians," I asked Nancy, "if they keep dying on me?"
I decided not to waste any time in trying to get to know the new Soviet leader. When George Bush went to Moscow for Konstantin Chernenko's funeral, he took an invitation from me to Gorbachev for a summit conference in the United States. "You can be assured of my personal commitment to working with you and the rest of the Soviet leadership in serious negotiations," I wrote. Gorbachev replied two weeks later. In doing so, he completed the first round of a correspondence between us that was to last for years and encompass scores of letters. As I look back on them now, I realize those first letters marked the cautious beginning on both sides of what was to become the foundation of not only a better relationship between our countries but a friendship between two men. Here is a portion of his letter:
It appears to us that it is important first of all to start conducting business in such a manner that both we ourselves and others can see and feel that both countries are not aiming at deepening their differences and whipping up animosity, but rather, are making their policy looking to the prospect of revitalizing the situation and a peaceful, calm development. This would help create an atmosphere of greater trust between our countries. For trust is a specially sensitive thing, keenly receptive to both deeds and words.
I would like you to know and appreciate the seriousness of our approach to the negotiations, our firm desire to work through positive results there. I hope, Mr. President, that you will feel from this letter that the Soviet leadership, including myself personally, intends to act vigorously as to find common ways to improving relations between our countries.
I think that it is also clear from my letter that we attach great importance to contacts at the highest level. For this reason I have a positive attitude to the idea you expressed about holding a personal meeting between us.
As to a venue for the meeting, I thank you for the invitation to visit Washington. But let us agree that we shall return again to the question of the place and time for the meeting.
M. Gorbachev
March 24, 1985
In late March, I was awakened shortly after dawn by Bud McFarlane, who said Major Arthur D. Nicholson, Jr., a thirty-seven-year-old Army officer, one of fourteen U.S. military men based in East Germany, had been shot by a Soviet guard as he was legally reconnoitering border facilities in that country. It was all but wanton murder. The guard continued shooting after the officer fell, pinning down an American sergeant who might have gotten to Major Nicholson to administer first aid. By the time Soviet medics arrived an hour later, the major was dead. A few days later, Tip O'Neill and Bob Michel, the Republican leader in the House, were scheduled to lead a bipartisan Congressional group to the Soviet Union to meet Gorbachev. I gave them my blessing, plus a letter for Gorbachev in which I protested the killing of major Nicholson and the continuing Soviet backing insurgents in Third World countries. Here are excerpts from my letter:
In seizing new opportunities, we must also take care to avoid situations which can seriously damage our relations. In addition to the personal tragedy of this brave officer, this act seems to many in our country to be only the latest example of a Soviet military action which threatens to undo our best efforts to fashion a sustainable, more constructive relationship for the long term. I want you to know it is also a matter of personal importance to me that we take steps to prevent the recurrence of this tragedy and I hope you will do all in your power to prevent such actions in the future. Let me close by affirming the value I place on our correspondence. I will be replying in greater detail to your last letter. I hope we can continue to speak frankly in future letters as we attempt to build stronger relations between ourselves and between our two countries. Sincerely, Ronald Reagan
April 4, 1985
About this same time, George Shultz told me he was tired and wanted to resign before the summer was over. I told him that from the time he took over as secretary of state, I never envisioned anyone but him serving me in that job. Although I said I didn't have the heart to lean on him if he really wanted to go, I also said I really needed him, especially to look after our new approach to the Soviets. I think I convinced him how important he was to our hopes of improving relations with the Russians, and George agreed to stay on the job.
Addressing some of the complaints I'd raised about Soviet adventurism in Central America and other parts of the world, Gorbachev wrote:
with regard to third world countries, we impose neither our ideology, nor our social system on anybody. And do not ascribe to us what does not exist. As to the assertions that the USSR is allegedly engaged in a "large research program in the area of strategic defense," as the Americans put it, apples are confused with oranges. The Soviet Union does nothing that would contravene the ABM treaty, does not develop attack space weapons. Mr. President, I would like to hope that you will have another close look at the problem of non-militarization of space and its interrelationship with solving the problem of nuclear weapons and from that angle, at the prospects for the Geneva negotiations .
Gorbachev proposed that both our countries continue voluntary compliance with the SALT treaties, impose a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing, ban space weapons, negotiate a reduction of conventional forces in Central Europe, and continue the process I had suggested of assisting each other in trying to see events through each other's eyes:
It seems that the American side frequently ignores the in-depth causes of events and does not take fully into account the fact that today a great number of states operate - and most actively, too - in world politics, each with its own face and interests. All this immensely complicates the general picture. A correct understanding of the world helps avoid serious mistakes and miscalculations.
Without saying so, Gorbachev implied that the Soviets would like to extricate themselves from the war in Afghanistan and urged us to convince the Pakistanis not to support the Afghan rebels. If we did, it would be a "positive signal" from the U.S.
In mid-June, I got a tough letter from Gorbachev in which he attacked our deployment of the Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe as well as the qualifications I'd expressed in announcing the decision to continue abiding by the SALT limitations (I had reserved the right to change my mind if we became further convinced of Soviet violations):
Mr. President, your version of the past and present state of affairs cannot stand comparison with the facts the United States crossed a dangerous threshold when it preferred to cast aside the practicality of the SALT treaty instead of taking up, as was envisaged, the resolution of those issues that were dealt with it is no secret the U.S. wanted to do so, so it could deploy cruise missiles. The "Star Wars" program - I must tell you this, Mr. President - already at this stage is seriously undermining stability. We strongly advise you to halt this sharply destabilizing and dangerous program while things have not gone too far. If the situation in this area is not corrected, we shall have no choice but to take steps required by our security and that of our allies the SALT II treaty is an important element of the strategic equilibrium and one should clearly understand its role as well as the fact that, according to the well known expression, one can't have one's pie and eat it too.
M. Gorbachev
We were both speaking with frankness. But we were talking. Although Gorbachev refused to come to Washington for a summit, he agreed to meet me in Geneva in November.
Two weeks earlier, Gorbachev had arranged for Andrei Gromyko to be designated president of the USSR, a purely ceremonial job that ended Gromyko's twenty-eight-year career as foreign minister. His successor was Eduard A. Shevardnadze, a Communist Party official from the Soviet republic of Georgia about whom we knew relatively little. In late July, George Shultz flew to Finland to meet Shevardnadze and make arrangements for the upcoming summit. Calling from Helsinki on a secure phone, George told me his instinctive reaction to the new Soviet foreign minister was positive: He was tough, but less hostile and more personable than Gromyko.
After an NSPG meeting in August, I made this note in my diary: "Made a decision we would not trade away our program of research - SDI - for a promise of Soviet reduction in nuclear arms."
In early November, 1985, George Shultz met in Moscow with Gorbachev for four hours to go over the issues we were to consider at Geneva. Gorbachev, he said, wasn't going to be a pushover. "Apparently not much progress," I wrote after I spoke to George on the secure phone from Moscow. "Gorbachev is adamant we must cave in on SDI. Well, this will be a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object." Privately, I had made a decision: I was going to offer to share SDI technology with the Soviets. This, I thought, should convince them it would never be a threat to them.
After returning to Washington from his meeting with Gorbachev, George said he was convinced Gorbachev was an intelligent man who was sure of himself, had a good sense of humor, and seemed to be fully in charge in the Soviet Union. But he said Gorbachev seemed to be filled with anti-American, anti-capitalist propaganda. He believed, for example, along with other falsehoods about us, that Americans hated the Soviets because our arms manufacturers controlled our economy and stirred the people up with anti-Soviet propaganda, all for the purpose of keeping the arms race alive.
Well, I thought, in Geneva I'll have to get him in a room alone and set him straight.
On the eve of our flight to Geneva, I made an address to the nation in which I said we were at a special moment in history. The American goal at Geneva, I said, was not only to avoid war, but to strengthen peace. Not only to prevent confrontation, but to begin the process of removing the sources of tension that produced confrontation. Not to paper over our differences, but to acknowledge and address them realistically . Since the dawn of the nuclear age, every American president has sought to limit and end the dangerous competition in nuclear arms. I have no higher priority than to finally realize that dream.
In going to Geneva, I was also planning to live by an old Russian adage:
Dovorey no provorey (Trust, but verify).
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