Word: inf
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There is some truth to that claim. But it is not the whole truth, and it may not turn out to be the most important truth. The story of the INF treaty is also one of Soviet persistence, Soviet ingenuity and, yes, Soviet success. That is a critical element of any arms-control agreement: both sides must feel they succeeded. The Soviet Union set out to keep American missiles as far from its territory as possible. And this week it will sign an agreement doing just that...
Shortly before Reagan's second Inauguration, in January 1985, Secretary of State George Shultz met Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Geneva and agreed to get negotiations started again. They settled on a formula for three sets of talks -- INF, the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, and a new negotiation on defense and space, focusing on the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars. But the Soviets insisted, and Shultz agreed, that the three sets of issues would eventually have to be resolved "in their interrelationship." The Soviets said at the time that this phrase meant hard- and-fast "linkage": there could...
...which the Soviets had hardened their position from the one they had left on the table when they walked out in late 1983. With much self-righteous fanfare, the Soviets slowly meted out "concessions" that they had already made in the past. Maynard Glitman, the chief American negotiator on INF, told his Soviet counterpart, Alexei Obukhov, "You may take six hours or six days or six weeks or six months to get back to where you were in 1983. We don't care. But you'd better know this: when you get back to those original positions...
...other key issue was whether, despite earlier Soviet statements to the contrary, INF might be delinked from an agreement on long-range strategic weapons and Star Wars. Glitman took Obukhov aside and tried to persuade him of what he called the "logic" of a separate deal on INF. "Let's assume," he said to Obukhov, "that we were to agree fully with the position you've taken on INF. We could see reaching an agreement without linkage. Couldn't you?" Obukhov paused, thought hard, then replied that he could indeed see such a possibility. A few days later, after checking...
Americans sensed that Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze, who had replaced Gromyko as Foreign Minister in July, had decided that INF was the one area where progress might be possible at the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit, which was to be held in Geneva in November. With that event looming, Karpov turned almost plaintive: "We have an opportunity to resolve some important issues in advance of the meeting of our leaders...