The Last Great Nuclear Debate

Abstract

On 7 December 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan signed the INF Treaty at the White House in Washington, eliminating with a flourish the weapons which had exemplified the peaks and valleys of East-West relations during the 1980s. Weakened by Iran-Contra and leading a lame-duck administration, President Reagan looked increasingly to foreign policy, and improved relations with Moscow, to redeem his reputation. Radical and unexpected Soviet foreign policy initiatives, like the decision in principle to leave Afghanistan and the unilateral withdrawal of forces from Eastern Europe, announced at the United Nations in December 1988, were meeting longstanding American objectives and rewarding Reagan’s interpretation of an ever less threatening Soviet Union. Indeed Gorbachev’s ability to turn a fundamentally weak political position into continual international diplomatic triumphs flummoxed those in Washington who believed Reagan was becoming too friendly with Gorbachev and naive toward Moscow. Critics saw Reagan and Gorbachev walk arm in arm through Moscow’s Red Square in the summer of 1988, ruminate on the benefits of radical strategic nuclear reductions in START, and grew nervous. Was the Cold War really over?