In August 1945, the United States accepted Japan`s surrender after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Four years later, on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb. With the development of jet aircraft, both superpowers gained a greater ability to transport nuclear weapons inside the opposing country. The official U.S. nuclear policy became a “massive response” that required a massive attack on the Soviet Union if it were to invade Europe, whether it was a conventional or nuclear attack. In the early 1950s, U.S. foreign policy officials knew that the Cold War would stay here. Communism seemed to be on the move, most dramatically with the North Korean invasion in June 1950 that began the Korean War. Western policymakers believed that countries threatened by communist aggression could fall if their neighbors succumbed like so many dominoes: if one country was lost to the communists, it would be the next and the next.
The development of means to deliver nuclear weapons prompted the United States to develop a strategy of three complementary means to bring nuclear weapons to the target, which became known as the “triad”. The nuclear triad consists of land-based nuclear missiles, submarines armed with nuclear missiles, and strategic aircraft equipped with atomic bombs and missiles. A three-pronged nuclear capability eliminated the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation`s nuclear forces in a first attack; This, in turn, ensured the credible threat of a devastating retaliatory strike against the aggressor and increased a country`s nuclear deterrent. Over the next year, a remarkable transformation took place when Gorbachev and Reagan were collectively enthusiastic about ending the balance of terror, and they pursued this goal against almost universal objections within their own governments. In January 1986, Gorbachev wrote to Reagan with a proposal: Elimination of all nuclear weapons by the year 2000. “Why wait until the year 2000?” Reagan responded to advisers in the Oval Office. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and CIA Director William Casey, who had done their best to sabotage previous nuclear treaties, were horrified. Few others in the Reagan administration took the idea of nuclear abolition seriously. But Shultz did. He ordered the State Department`s arms control group to address the issue of “what a world without nuclear weapons would mean to us” and how we can get there. “I know that many of you and others here are against the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons, but the President of the United States does not agree with you, and he has said so on several very public occasions,” he told his colleagues. After much back and forth, Weinberger and Shultz were able to agree on a proposal to abolish the ballistic missiles that Reagan sent to Gorbachev in July 1986.
Mikhail Gorbachev, of course, is accused or attributed by virtually all observers for losing an empire. But almost all historians and economists also admit that the seeds of the demise of the Soviet Union were planted when successive general secretaries of the Communist Party refused to carry out fundamental reforms in the Soviet economic structure that had been established roughly under Stalin`s regime. Nikita Khrushchev, who succeeded Stalin in 1953, put an end to the most repressive features of Stalin`s governance, but did not significantly change the economic system. Khrushchev`s reckless decision to deploy ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads to Cuba in 1962 can be seen as a desperate attempt to reduce the enormous cost of building a new fleet of nuclear ballistic missiles. His failure, described by the Chinese Communist Party as “adventurism and capitulationism,” led to his impeachment in 1964. Gorbachev`s anti-nuclear sentiments only intensified after the catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in April 1986, which made the Soviet leader all the more eager to reach an agreement. The same applies to the deterioration of the economic situation in the Soviet Union. In the fall of 1985, Saudi Arabia announced its intention to increase its oil production. By the spring of 1986, the world oil market had fallen from over $30 a barrel to less than $10. Without hard currency oil revenues, there was no way for the Soviets to pay for imports of grain and other staple foods while servicing their external debts and keeping pace militarily. “The United States has an interest in keeping the negotiating machine unused while the arms race is overloading our economy,” Gorbachev told a colleague.
“That`s why we need a breakthrough; We need the process to move forward. In September 1986, Gorbachev wrote to Reagan offering him a series of unilateral concessions and proposing a meeting before his planned visit to the United States the following year. Shultz encouraged Reagan to meet Gorbachev the following month in Reykjavik, Iceland. Just before leaving for Geneva, Reagan dictated his own long memo describing his assessment of the man he would meet. Reagan`s game plan was to seek areas of common interest, be open to points of contention, and support Gorbachev`s reforms, while (in Matlock`s paraphrase) “any demand for `regime change` was avoided.” He warned members of his government not to rub Gorbachev`s nose with any concessions he might make. Above all, Reagan wanted to build a relationship with his Soviet counterpart that would facilitate conflict management so that it would not escalate into a thermonuclear war – an imperative for any US president since Eisenhower. By 1983, however, no agreement had been reached on the INF with the Soviet Union, and the deployment of ground-based cruise missiles had begun that year in some NATO countries. West Germany had agreed to station Pershing II intermediate-range missiles on its territory, and these deployments also began in 1983, despite a major Soviet effort to convince the German government and people not to do so. The Soviet delegation to the Geneva inf talks was ordered to abandon its blockade campaign of Pershing II failed, and this act meant the suspension of all negotiations on the INF.
After becoming secretary general in 1985, Gorbachev wasted no time in joining President Reagan for the so-called “Kamingipfel” in Geneva, Switzerland, in November. 19-20, 1985. The joint statement issued by the two leaders included these words from President Reagan`s State of the Union message: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and only president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, accepted the reality that there was no longer a viable legal entity called the Soviet Union, and he resigned as president, recognizing that the position no longer existed. The flag of the Soviet Union, which had been hoisted on the walls of the Kremlin that morning, was lowered for the last time in the evening, and in its place, the old flag of Russia was hoisted. The following day, on 26 December 1991, the upper house of the Congress of People`s Deputies of the Soviet Union also recognized that the Soviet Union no longer existed. These formalities aligned the de jure situation with the de facto situation: a revolution had taken place within the borders of the former USSR. Matlock describes in detail how Reagan rehearsed for his first meeting with Gorbachev, which took place in Geneva in November 1985. Reagan entrusted Matlock with the role of the Soviet leader, who played his role in Russian for maximum authenticity, imitating Gorbachev`s confident and talkative style. Matlock also sent Reagan a series of “parody memos” that were “interwoven with jokes and anecdotes,” based on an educated guess about what Gorbachev`s own advisers told him in preparation for the meeting. As a result, Reagan experienced his own transformation without much hassle and without many of his supporters noticing. The fire-breathing cold warrior set out to convince Gorbachev through intense and sustained personal commitment that the United States would not regret the path he had chosen.
What explains Reagan`s remarkable transformation from a Cold War hawk into a nuclear peacemaker? Its nuclear abolitionism had deep roots and dated back to a flirtation with pacifism in the early 1930s. His anti-war side was associated with stories and images that touched him deeply: when he saw the British anti-war play Journey`s End in 1929, showed footage of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 and watched the ABC TV movie The Day After in 1983. .
