Word: kremlin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...concessions are significant because the Reagan Administration has long feared that the Soviets' land-based forces give them the capacity to launch a pre-emptive attack. The Kremlin's 3-to-1 edge in ICBM warheads--which because of their size, speed and accuracy are called "prompt hard-target killers" or "silo busters"--could conceivably wipe out American land-based missiles in a first strike, making it hard for Washington to retaliate. Though many U.S. submarine- and bomber-based warheads would survive, most of these weapons are too slow or inaccurate to be effective against the Soviets' super-hardened military...
...technical and arcane, yet it was immensely important. At the least, it promised to deliver arms control from the realm of rhetoric to the real business of negotiated give-and-take over numbers and weapons. After months of stonewalling at the talks that began in Geneva in March, the Kremlin had at last presented a specific offer, one foreshadowed by Kremlin Leader Mikhail Gorbachev in a letter to President Reagan a few days earlier. The prospect of serious bargaining, however, did nothing to halt the war of words. On a highly publicized visit to France, Gorbachev played the familiar Soviet...
After presenting his plan, Karpov, in an unusual gesture, welcomed reporters to the Soviet delegation's spacious Geneva headquarters with some pointed banter. The Kremlin's offer "is balanced," the Soviet negotiator proclaimed, "as balanced as I am, standing on both my feet." He insisted that the Soviets were doing their part to ensure the success of the upcoming Geneva summit, but the U.S. had been "dragging its feet from the very start" on arms control. Quipped Karpov in the kind of Western cliche that seems to spill effortlessly from publicity-conscious Soviet diplomats these days: "It takes...
...United Nations and quiet conversation with Secretary of State George Shultz. But the new messenger from Moscow had given no clues about whether he was carrying the fresh arms-control proposal that other Soviet officials had been hinting at for two months. The silence surprised his hosts. Was the Kremlin continuing its long propaganda prelude to the November summit between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev? Had Moscow changed its mind about a significant new proposal...
Another story that made its way to the White House is that the dour Georgi Arbatov, the Soviets' top U.S. expert, was playing Reagan in the Kremlin's dry runs for the Geneva confrontation. The thought is so singular that it provoked laughs in the back corridors of the White House. One wag suggested that if that went well, Arbatov could move on to Hollywood and Bedtime for Bonzo...