Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked (39 page)

He stood apart in another regard. Fellow Cold Warriors held faith with nuclear weapons and the idea of the “balance of terror.” British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, for one, believed that the existence of nuclear deterrents had saved the planet from World War III, from the end of World War II in 1945 all the way through
until the 1980s. The fact that total war between the United States and the Soviet Union could mean launching their huge stockpiles of intercontinental ballistic missiles against each other was sufficient to keep either side from pushing the other too far. For the West, it was also a way of offsetting the mighty on-the-ground edge of the Red Army in Europe.

The fortieth American president found little comfort in this strategic reliance on nuclear arsenals. According to Ron Reagan, his father’s greatest nightmare was
“that through misunderstanding, unforeseen circumstance, or some bizarre technical glitch, he would be compelled to launch our nuclear missiles.” Though he understood the doctrine of “mutual assured destruction,” he questioned the morality of it. “I have to believe,” the elder Reagan had told his son, “the Russian people are no different from Americans. Hell, they’re victims of their own government. Why should millions of them have to die, along with millions of our people, because leaders on both sides couldn’t work things out?”

Secretary of State George Shultz would recall Reagan asking more than once:
“What’s so good about a peace kept by the threat of destroying each other?” Like John F. Kennedy, he’d seen in human history the rule that once a weapon is devised, it is only a matter of time before it is used.

The president’s own goal, as he’d explained in an
“Address to the Nation on Defense and National Security” in March 1983, was the establishment of a land- and space-based system of strategic defense.

When I took office in January 1981, I was appalled by what I found: American planes that couldn’t fly and American ships that couldn’t sail for lack of spare parts and trained personnel and insufficient fuel and ammunition for essential training. The
inevitable result of all this was poor morale in our Armed Forces, difficulty in recruiting the brightest young Americans to wear the uniform, and difficulty in convincing our most experienced military personnel to stay on.

There was a real question then about how well we could meet a crisis. And it was obvious that we had to begin a major modernization program to ensure we could deter aggression and preserve the peace in the years ahead.

He then went on to say,
“I’ve become more and more deeply convinced that the human spirit must be capable of rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence. Feeling this way, I believe we must thoroughly examine every opportunity for reducing tensions and for introducing greater stability into the strategic calculus on both sides.” Now came the point he was building toward: “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?” Describing the basis of this favored scheme as “defensive technologies,” he’d crossed into the seemingly futuristic realm of vast invisible missile shields soon to become popularly known—to Reagan critics, at least—as “Star Wars.”

He then concluded with what amounted to a vow: “I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. . . . We seek neither military superiority nor political advantage. Our only purpose—one all people share—is to search for ways to reduce the danger of nuclear war.”

Out of President Reagan’s triple ambition to win the Cold War, create a missile shield, and eliminate nuclear weapons altogether came his distinctive approach to the Soviet Union. What he had decided to do, essentially, was outgun them. What he and key advisors recognized was that the opportunity seemed to be at hand to exploit emerging U.S. advances in strategic weaponry as a way to drive the Kremlin to the bargaining table.

There was a sense of personal destiny at work—he’d followed his own path to the White House, arriving there when others had doubted—but there was also that instinctive patriotic positivism that so often informed the Reagan outlook. By exploiting two great American strengths—its innovative ingenuity and its economic dynamism—he, Ronald Reagan, might bring the Cold War to an end by finally convincing the other side of that which it most hated and feared: the possibility of our actual superiority. To his thinking, a shrewd Soviet leader might be convinced to see that.

At the same time, obvious obstacles presented themselves, not the least of which was his own historic hatred of the Soviet Union, a well-documented hostility he’d never softened on, had never been shy about. Why would he trust any leader who rose up to represent the communist system he so despised? Why, too, would any such person trust him?

Even if you got beyond the problem of mutual suspicion—well justified as it was—the issue was still whether anyone in Moscow could be found who’d consider listening to what he had to say. They keep dying on me, Reagan would complain.

Meanwhile, closer by, the president had a different set of historic antagonists with whom to contend—the Democrats. Among them, the idea of a nuclear “freeze”—stopping the nuclear arms
race at the status quo, letting both countries keep current stockpiles but build no more—had numerous adherents, particularly on the liberal left.
Back in the spring of 1983, the House had passed—with Tip O’Neill’s backing—a nonbinding “freeze” resolution by a vote of 278 to 149. Reagan had termed it “not
an answer to arms control that I can responsibly support.” Such an approach would, among other consequences, kill deployment of the MX missile, also known as the Peacekeeper, which could carry up to ten warheads, each with twenty times the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Just two weeks before his televised speech to the nation on national security, the president had traveled to Orlando to address the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals. There he’d added to the lexicon of immortal political phrases by referring to the Soviet Union as an
“evil empire,” declaring its “totalitarian darkness” and “aggressive impulses” as justification for the nuclear arms race. “I would agree to a freeze,” he said to applause and laughter, “if only we could freeze the Soviets’ global desires.” Yet, just minutes later, he assured the ministers listening to him in that Sheraton ballroom of this country’s commitment to negotiations toward “real and verifiable reductions in the world’s nuclear arsenals and one day, with God’s help, their total elimination.”

That he planned to “win” the Cold War by flashing our most lethal weapons at Moscow, as well as by developing and deploying a strategic defense shield against all incoming, presumably Soviet, nuclear missiles, was only part of the equation. He was also hoping for the happy ending.

Despite his deep antipathy to Moscow, Reagan had entered the White House back in 1981 with a keen personal interest in
establishing a one-to-one relationship with Leonid Brezhnev, the tough and toughly enduring Soviet leader. As general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, succeeding Nikita Khrushchev, Brezhnev had held on to the position over a formidable seventeen-year span. Still recovering from the attempt on his life, Ronald Reagan, in the spring of his inaugural year, had joined in a quiet exchange of letters with his Russian counterpart. In one correspondence, he’d included a request that Brezhnev release dissident Natan Sharansky, a well-known figure in the campaign to permit Jewish emigration to Israel. “If you could find it in your heart to do this,” Reagan said, “the matter would be strictly between us which is why I’m writing this letter by hand.”

Early the following year, Reagan was urged by West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt to hold a meeting with Brezhnev.
“He says he is very curious about me & doesn’t know what to expect,” was his journal entry for January 5. “Also says B. truly fears war. Maybe our disarmament talks might work after all.”

But by year’s end, Brezhnev was dead.

Reagan turned down the State Department’s suggestion he go to Moscow for the funeral. After being briefed by George Shultz upon his return, the president noted in his diary that the secretary of state had agreed
“I was right not to go.”

Leonid Brezhnev was succeeded in November 1982 by Yuri Andropov, former chairman of the KGB. Very quickly, there was talk of setting up a personal back channel between the two heads of state. To this end,
“Geo. Shultz sneaked Ambassador Dobrynin (Soviet) into the W.H. We talked for 2 hours. Sometimes we got pretty nose to nose. I told him I wanted George to be a channel for direct contact with Andropov—no bureaucracy involved. Geo. tells me that after they left, the ambas. said ‘this could be an historic
moment.’ ” That unofficial but obviously lively conversation between the president and the Russian diplomat took place on February 15.

Three months later, the idea of a personal meeting between Reagan and Andropov once again became a topic for discussion, this time during a National Security Council meeting.
“There is possibility Andropov might come to the U.N. If so we should invite him to Wash. & will,” recorded Reagan. In the end, the new Soviet leader stayed home, though Andropov himself gave encouragement to the president after another handwritten note was sent from the White House.
“Expressed a desire to continue communicating on private basis and wants to talk about main issues,” Reagan jotted that summer.

Unfortunately, in October, the American ambassador in Moscow, Arthur Hartman, confirmed what had been previously reported, that Andropov had dropped out of view. In fact, General Secretary Andropov had apparently been seriously ill since the moment of assuming the Soviet leadership; by February 1984, he, too, was being given a state funeral and laid to rest in the Kremlin.

This time, Reagan wasn’t waiting around. He was ready to talk to the new Soviet leader, Konstantin Chernenko, from the start. Having sent Vice President George Bush to represent him at the Andropov funeral, he discussed the report he brought back with Secretary of State Shultz:
“George S. & I met and discussed mainly the Soviets & how we should react to Chernenko’s mild sounding talk with George B. I have a gut feeling I’d like to talk to him about our problems man to man & see if I could convince him there would be a material benefit to the Soviets if they’d join the family of nations etc. We don’t want to appear anxious which would tempt them to play games & possibly snub us. I have our team considering an
invitation to him to be my guest at the opening of the Olympics—July in L.A. Then he & I could have a session together in which we could start the ball rolling for outright summit on arms reductions, human rights, trade etc. We’ll see.”

Over the next months, President Reagan wrote three times in his diary about having a
“gut feeling” that it was time for him to meet personally with the new Russian chairman. Talking to the new West German leader, Helmut Kohl, further convinced him.
“He confirmed my belief that Soviets are motivated, at least in part by insecurity & a suspicion that we & our allies mean them harm. They still preserve the tank traps & barb wire that show how close the Germans got to Moscow before they were stopped. He too thinks I should meet Chernenko.”

Later that month, though, the picture shifted once again when intelligence reports from Moscow revealed that the newest Soviet boss, Chernenko, was not truly in charge, that Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko was the one calling the shots. By the summer, President François Mitterrand of France had informed Reagan of his own recent encounter with Chernenko, saying the Russian had given every
“evidence of not being well & doesn’t say a word without a script in front of him.”

As November rolled around, Reagan continued to hold out hope for the appearance of a figure of authority in Moscow with whom he could meet and come to an accord. But, in March 1985, Konstantin Chernenko, too, joined the roll call of the recent Kremlin dead, and was succeeded by the relatively young—certainly in Soviet leadership terms—Mikhail Gorbachev, a Politburo member trained as a lawyer.

President Reagan now came to a shrewd realization. Before trying to establish contact in Moscow, he first needed to deal with the Democratic opposition in Washington. When he approached
Gorbachev on matters of strategic policy, he could not afford to find himself undercut by Congress. He needed, as much as possible, to be speaking for a united America.

• • •

In the same way as Ronald Reagan, Tip O’Neill had his own complex set of motivations and goals. He wished to keep faith with his party, which was strongly pro–nuclear “freeze” and very much against production of the MX missile—Reagan’s “peacekeeper.” In the eyes of the Democrats, such a weapon—with its vast potential for destruction—could have
no
upside. Because the MX itself held so many missiles, it would be vital for any enemy to strike it before it ever left its silo. For the identical reason, it was equally vital for the country that possessed it to launch it before it was hit.

A secondary concern was jobs. Pulling the plug on the MX meant a serious economic loss to locales like Seattle, Washington (Boeing), and Lexington, Massachusetts (Raytheon). The Speaker understood this.

A further warring set of elements in Tip’s mind pitted his Democratic loyalties against his hierarchical feeling toward the president—any president—when it came to superpower negotiations. Well aware that he was no strategic policy expert, he, even more crucially, believed the United States needed to speak, in such instances, with a single voice.

These different pressures explain, perhaps, the Speaker’s changing positions in the long debate over the MX. When we staffers expressed our opposition to the proposed missile system and were eager to fight it, Tip himself held back.