A World Without Nuclear Weapons

In the surrealistic atmosphere within the haunted Hovde House at Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, Presidents Ronald Reagan of the US and Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union had come incredibly close on the late Sunday afternoon of 11 October 1986 to an epic agreement, to  destroy all their thousands of nuclear weapons within a decade. This recap gives the background on the boldest and most momentous move to denuclearize the global military at the height of the Cold War.

        President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) has been described as “an extraordinarily complex character” by Henry Kissinger. This could mean that no one was quite able to read his mind. Nevertheless, he was like another other American, who wanted his country to be the best and the strongest in the world. That was exactly he did during his two eventful terms at the White House.

        After President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) had raised the ceiling on military spending to its highest level in peacetime militarization, Reagan came in to double the defense budget from US$140.7 billion in 1980 to $281.4 billion in 1986.

        Reagan brought back the strategic B-1 bomber (dropped by Carter), started deploying the long-range cruise missiles in 1982, and planned to start deploying the highly controversial MX (America’s most accurate and powerful ICBM with up to ten 310 KT warheads) in 1986, the advanced cruise missiles in 1988, and the Trident II (the most advanced submarine-launched missiles) in1989. However, both the MX and the Trident II had started their development under Carter.

        Paradoxically enough, Reagan was known to abhor nuclear war all his conscious life and he was even described as a dyed-in-the wool nuclear abolitionist. A staunch believer in the biblical prophecy of Armageddon, he also feared an apocalyptical nuclear conflict.

        At the high point of the ‘nuclear freeze’ movement in the US, Reagan spoke of “dismantling the nuclear menace” (while he was building up his nuclear arsenal) when he delivered his commencement address at Eureka College (his alma mater) in Illinois on 9 May 1982. Under pressure by public clamor for nuclear restraint/disarmament, he also called for substantial and verifiable reductions of nuclear arms (in his so-called ‘build-down’ modernization strategy) to enhance security and reduce the risks of war.

        In 1983 he made known his wish to see the Soviet leader Yury Andropov, Chairman and General Secretary (1982-84), to propose eliminating all nuclear weapons.

        When he announced on 16 May 1983 his planned deployment of the MX  missiles to counter the Soviet SS-18s (with ten 550 KT warheads) and SS-19s (with six 550 KT warheads), he expressed the hope that the nuclear arms race would be reversed, and that all nuclear weapons would be eliminated.

         He said: “I can’t believe that this world can go on beyond our generation and on down to succeeding generations with this kind of weapon on both sides poised (to strike) at each other without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us…”

         Earlier on 23 March1983, Reagan had called on American scientists to build a new defense system against ballistic missiles (in his ‘dream’ project known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, the SDI) to make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete”.

         He did not say (though the thought of military superiority could be subliminally present in his mind) that if such a technically perfect or near-perfect defense system could be developed and deployed, American would regain its original nuclear predominance which it had had for three golden decades from the beginning of the nuclear era in 1945 to 1975 when the Soviet military achieved nuclear parity following its unprecedented nuclear expansion in the wake of utter humiliation from the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

        “If Reagan’s claim of a 100 percent effective defense came even close to reality,” Kissinger wrote, “American strategic superiority would become (once again) a reality…” What American presidents have always in mind – the ‘Holy Grail’ in the military field.

        

        Gorbachev described SDI development as “the creation of a shield which would allow a first strike (with nuclear weapons) without fear of retaliation.” It was also his fear that the SDI would extend the arms race into space, an untoward venture that could bust the treasury in Moscow.

         On 15 January1986, Gorbachev proposed abolishing all nuclear weapons. Then in late February, delegates at the 27^th Party Congress in Moscow called for making progress towards a nuclear-free world.

          At their two summit meetings in Geneva (November 1985) and Reykjavik (October 1986), Reagan and Gorbachev discussed and negotiated what the US side called going to zero – the zero option, the total elimination of all nuclear weapons, total nuclear disarmament.

          According to Donald Regan, Chief of Staff in the White House who was present at both summits, Reagan and Gorbachev spent a total of nine hours and forty-eight minutes over two days of face-to-face discussions on October 10-11, 1986. On the final session in the late Sunday afternoon from 5.32 p.m. to 6.30 p.m., Regan has written in his memoirs:

          “What, Reagan asked Gorbachev, had he meant by the reference in his letter (to Reagan) to “the eliminating of all nuclear forces”?

           “I meant I would favor eliminating all nuclear weapons,” Gorbachev replied.

           “All nuclear weapons?” Reagan said. “Well, Mikhail, that’s exactly what I’ve been talking about all along. That’s what we have long wanted to do – get rid of all nuclear weapons. That’s always been my goal.”

            “Then why don’t we agree on it?” Gorbachev asked.

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            “We should,” Reagan said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

            “It was a historic moment. The two leaders had brought the world to one of its great turning points. Both understood this very clearly.

            “Then came the impasse: Mikhail Gorbachev said, “I agree. But this (referring to their agreement on total nuclear disarmament over a 10-year period, 1986-1996) must be done in conjunction with a ten-year extension of the ABM treaty and a ban on the development and testing of SDI outside the laboratory.”

             “Outside the laboratory. Those words negated (for the US) all that had  been agreed upon. As soon as they were uttered, Reagan and Gorbachev were down from the mountaintop and right back where they had started.

            “Reagan, astonished by this sudden reversal, said, “Absolutely not. I am willing to discuss all details, including the timing of a plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons in conjunction with a plan to reduce conventional forces to a state of balance. But I will not discuss anything that gives you the upper hand by eliminating SDI.”

            “Gorbachev did not reply. After a long silence, Reagan assumed that the Soviet leader had nothing more to say. Thereupon he closed his briefing book and stood up. Gorbachev seemed startled by the President’s action and remained in his chair for a moment in puzzlement. Then he rose to his feet also. The summit at Reykjavik was over…”

            Kissinger has written:”Years later when I asked a senior Gorbachev

adviser who had been present at Reykjavik why the Soviets had not settled for what the United States had already accepted, he replied: “We had thought of everything except that Reagan might leave the room.”

           “Shortly afterward, George Shultz (Secretary of State) gave a thoughtful speech describing why Reagan’s vision of eliminating nuclear weapons was actually to the West’s advantage. But the language of his speech, artfully phrased in support of a “less nuclear world” showed that the State Department – painfully conscious of allied concerns – had not yet signed onto Reagan’s vision of the total abolition of nuclear weapons…”

           When Michael Charlton of BBC London interviewed Edward Heath in 1985, the former British prime minister suggested that the two superpowers and America’s allies in Europe had agreed “about the non-establishment of SDI forces…” In Charlton’s interview with Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor sounded much more in favour of military integration in Europe than in  “all this bloody nonsense about ‘Star Wars’ (the more popular label for Reagan’s dream SDI)…”

           Through one man’s obsession and another ’s dread, the highly delusive SDI had very strangely zapped their last-minute breakthrough to a world without nuclear weapons.