Word: reagan
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Nonetheless, Reagan's decision to disappear with Gorbachev for nearly an hour at the very outset came as a surprise to his advisers. As the two leaders remained behind closed doors on that first morning and their aides began a reverse countdown, ticking off how long they were exceeding their schedules, one American official came up to Shultz, nervously pointing at his watch and fretting that the Big Two were not keeping to the program. Retorted Shultz: "If you're dumb enough to go in there and break it up, you don't deserve to be employed here...
While their aides fidgeted outside, Reagan and Gorbachev were educating each other on their divergent world views. Gorbachev charged that America was run by a military-industrial complex that tries to fatten defense spending by inducing U.S. paranoia about the Soviet Union. He told Reagan that the President was in the thrall of a cabal of archconservatives. He claimed that American think tanks, citing the Heritage Foundation in Washington and the Hoover Institution in California, were feeding Reagan plans "designed to break down the Soviet economy." Reagan replied with astonishment to Gorbachev's conspiracy theories. Indeed, he said...
...time the two men finally emerged from their 64-min. tête-à-tête, they had already begun to hash over regional issues, which, according to the summit agenda, were not supposed to be discussed until the next day. While Reagan found the large number of Soviet advisers in Nicaragua "intolerable," Gorbachev insisted that the U.S.S.R. was bound by its constitution to aid "wars of national liberation." Disavowing imperialist ambitions, he went on, "We have no commercial interests or desire for bases. We are just helping people achieve freedom." The Soviets, he added, in a dig at Reagan for supporting anti...
...Reagan spoke first, and clearly from the heart. He inveighed against the "uncivilized nature" of mutually assured destruction (MAD), the doctrine of deterrence that has governed the superpower rivalry for more than two decades. He could not condone the notion, he said, of keeping the peace by threatening to blow up the world. We must, he implored Gorbachev, "find a better way." To the President, that meant reducing offensive weapons while seeking a transition to defensive weapons. He was quite conscious, he allowed, that Gorbachev sees a space defense system as simply a cover for achieving the capacity to wipe...
Gorbachev attempted to interrupt. "Please," Reagan said, "let me finish." The Soviet leader's concern, he said, was perfectly legitimate. But he had an answer: a promise of "open laboratories." Once the U.S. has developed the technology to build an effective shield against nuclear missiles, Reagan offered, "I intend fully to share this with...