Word: pacts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Reykjavik summit, the U.S. was determined this time to answer the Soviets only after fully consulting with the West Europeans. But Gorbachev and his subordinates could not resist taunting Shultz for seeming diffident about an offer that, on its face, not only met but topped American terms for a pact to take nuclear missiles out of Europe and open the way for another summit this fall in Washington. After Shultz's three-day mission to Moscow had ended last week, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov stuck the needle in deeper. If U.S. negotiators want an agreement, said he, "they must...
...terrified that Soviet cold-turkey proposals could, in the words of NATO's Supreme Commander in Europe, Bernard Rogers, make the Continent "safe for conventional war." Facing Soviet superiority in conventional arms, NATO has contemplated not just using nuclear weapons but using them first, to stop a Warsaw Pact invasion. If all the nukes were gone, the Soviets might be deterred from invading Europe only if they could be convinced that the U.S. would fire its intercontinental missiles in response, touching off a holocaust. And whether the Kremlin believes the U.S. would do so, many West Europeans...
...even battlefield nuclear weapons (for example, nuclear artillery shells). Shultz would not go that far. Asked in California if tactical nukes are on the negotiating table, the Secretary flatly answered no. He explained that "in order to have the ability to respond flexibly to any aggression from the Warsaw Pact forces, we have to have the different forces to be flexible with, and we will keep them...
...have before us the prospect for a good INF agreement, and we have the basic elements in place." At week's end White House sources were speculating about a Gorbachev visit to the U.S. to attend a summit conference with Reagan in September or October. That would imply a pact ready for signature: Gorbachev would not come otherwise...
...getting rid of U.S. nuclear missiles is a bad idea. Still less will anyone voice another reason for hanging on to American nuclear weapons: they give Europe a cheap means of avoiding the expenditures that would be necessary to build a conventional force capable of holding off the Warsaw Pact on the ground. For that matter, the U.S. has never been willing to spend the money required to support a nonnuclear defense of Europe...