Word: pacts
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Sure enough, what began as a zany stunt swiftly escalated into a major crisis for the Soviet military command. Communist Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who returned to Moscow on Friday from East Berlin, where he and Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov had been attending a Warsaw Pact summit, acted decisively. The next day Gorbachev convened an emergency meeting of the Politburo in the Kremlin. After that session, the Politburo fired Sokolov, 75, and Marshal of Aviation Alexander Koldunov, 63, who headed the nation's air- defense system. Sokolov was replaced as the top Soviet military leader by General of the Army...
Before the East Berlin talks even got under way, however, Soviet officials moved to dampen expectations. Troop reductions, said a Soviet spokesman, would have to be on the basis of "mutual agreement." Still, the final communique reflected an awareness of Western concerns by stating that the pact stood prepared to redress the "imbalance that has arisen in certain elements." Mainly, however, the conference served the purposes Gorbachev had intended: to encourage policy discussion, in the spirit of reform, and to exert discipline over the Warsaw Pact, in the spirit of tradition...
...maintain four large military bases in Greece. With 19 months left before the accord expires, Papandreou last week announced he would call a referendum on the issue. The vote will take place only if Greece and the U.S. are able to come up with terms of a new pact for voters to ratify. Papandreou has gradually been softening his stand on the bases in recent months. Foreign Minister Karolos Papoulias will meet with Secretary of State George Shultz during this week's NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Iceland to discuss a timetable for negotiations...
...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...
...holding each other in check while the SS-20s allowed the Soviets to dominate the intermediate-range bishops and knights in the European squares on the board. As a result, the pawns -- tanks, artillery and infantry -- would suddenly become more important, and the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Warsaw Pact's conventional forces might be the determining factor in a political crisis...