The Dead Hand

16 Tucker, p. 158.

17 Most of the weapons were quite old, according to documents in the Katayev files.

18 John-Thor Dahlburg, “Soviets Lift Secrecy on Chemical Weapons Program,” Associated Press, Oct. 4, 1987; Celestine Bohlen, “Soviets Allow Experts to Tour Chemical Weapons Facility,” Washington Post, Oct. 5, 1987. On the weapons, Katayev, Hoover.

19 Reagan diary, Dec. 18, 1987. This entry has been partly redacted.

20 Mirzayanov, interview with author; Oleg Vishnyakov, “‘I Was Making Binary Bombs,’ This Man Is Talking After Five Years of Silence. He Was Poisoned by Chemical Weapons Made by His Own Hands,” Novoye Vremya, no. 50, Dec. 1992, pp. 46–48, 49. An account is also given in David Wise, Cassidy’s Run (New York: Random House, 2000), Ch. 20.

CHAPTER 14: THE LOST YEAR

1 Gorbachev had hoped for a treaty to cut strategic weapons in half at the Moscow summit, but the United States was not ready. “Reagan, Gorbachev and Bush at Governor’s Island,” TNSA EBB No. 261.

2 Brent Scowcroft, who became Bush’s national security adviser in the White House, was deeply cautious about Gorbachev. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), pp. 12–13.

3 “Session of the CPSU Politburo,” June 20, 1988. Masterpieces of History: Soviet Peaceful Withdrawal from Eastern Europe, Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas Blanton and Vlad Zubok, eds. (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009), Doc. 26.

4 See TNSA EBB 261. To bypass possible military opposition, Gorbachev took the paperwork to the Defense Ministry for approval on a Sunday when Minister Dmitri Yazov was not present, Shevardnadze said at a Politburo meeting on December 27. “Comrades were not in place” then, he said. News reports at the time said that Akhromeyev decided to retire in protest of the troop cuts. In his memoir, Gorbachev said this was “sheer nonsense.” Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 459. Akhromeyev said the decision to retire came in September 1988, before the speech, but he was disenchanted. He remained an adviser to Gorbachev. Sergei Akhromeyev and Georgi M. Kornienko, Glazami Marshala i Diplomata (Moscow: International Relations, 1992), pp. 213–215.

5 Reagan diary, Dec. 7, 1988.

6 Any evaluation of Reagan’s legacy must deal with not only his avowed dream of nuclear abolition, but the fact that he did not consummate a strategic arms treaty by the end of his presidency. Some have argued that if he had been more interested in negotiating arms reductions in his first term, he might have had more to show at the end of his second. However, the author believes that Reagan’s first-term military buildup and challenge to the Soviets were set by his own internal compass—his campaign pledges, his desire to stand up to Moscow and his negotiator’s sense of timing and tactics. He could not have done it otherwise.

7 Bush said, “Wanting to avoid specifics, I pledged general continuity with Reagan’s policies toward the Soviet Union. I told Gorbachev I would be putting together a new team. I had no intention of stalling things, but I naturally wanted to form my own national security policies.” Bush and Scowcroft, p. 7.

8 Masterpieces, Gorbachev at Politburo, Dec. 27–28, 1988, doc. 34.

9 This Week with David Brinkley, ABC News, Jan. 22, 1989.

10 James A. Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989– 1992 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), p. 68.

11 Bush letter to Sadruddin Aga Khan, March 13, 1989, in Bush, All the Best, George Bush, p. 416.

12 Dennis Ross, director of policy planning at the State Department, said “testing” was his idea. “For those who said Gorbachev was not for real, I said, let’s test the proposition. If he’s for real, then he’s going to respond.” Ross, interview, June 2, 2008. In a speech at Texas A&M University in May 1989, Bush unveiled the results of the policy reviews, an approach that he called going “beyond containment.” He did not offer major new initiatives, but set the tone for the “testing” approach, which was also codified in NSD 23, written in March and signed in September 1989. The directive said, “the United States will challenge the Soviet Union step by step, issue by issue, institution by institution, to behave…”

13 Cheney made the comment on CNN. When Baker went to Moscow a few weeks later, the first thing he told Shevardnadze was, “We have no interest in seeing perestroika fail.” Baker, p. 73.

14 William C. Wohlforth, ed., Cold War Endgame: Oral History, Analysis, Debates (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), p. 26. An analysis of the pause in 1989 is contained in an essay in the same volume, “Once Burned, Twice Shy? The Pause of 1989,” Darek H. Chollet and James M. Goldgeier, pp. 141–173. By contrast, in three long and illuminating cables from Moscow in February, Matlock laid out the extent of change. “In sum,” Matlock said, “the Soviet Union has, in effect, declared the bankruptcy of its system, and just as with a corporation which has sought the protection of Chapter XI, there is no turning back.” Matlock included a section on “The Military Burden,” which accurately captured Gorbachev’s desire to restrain the military to save the domestic economy. “The Soviet Union over the Next Four Years,” Feb. 3, 1989. The subsequent cables covered Soviet foreign policy and U.S.-Soviet relations. Masterpieces, docs. 42, 44, 46.

15 On the Shevardnadze warning, a confidential source. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 82–83. The Gorbachev offer was certainly a gambit to influence Europe, but also a genuine proposal. The United States was pushing allies to modernize the eighty-eight short-range Lance nuclear- tipped missiles in Europe. After implementation of the 1987 INF treaty, these shorter-range missiles would be among the remaining battlefield nuclear weapons available to NATO against a possible Soviet conventional attack. (There were also thousands of other weapons on bombers.) West Germany was balking at modernization, since use of the Lance missiles in war would quite probably be on its soil. Baker thought Gorbachev was undercutting support for Lance modernization. Wohlforth, Cold War Endgame, p. 32; and Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), p. 67. Baker said of Gorbachev, in an interview with the author, “the way he went about it was the gimmicky part. He did it in order to divide us from our European allies.” When I asked Baker if he thought he could have responded differently, he said no. “It was a unilateral move. It wasn’t a question of our having to accept it.” Baker, interview, Sept. 4, 2008. While Katayev’s files show the Kremlin was well aware of the politics in Europe, they also suggest that Gorbachev was serious about tactical nuclear reductions. The issue was included on a Kremlin work plan for arms control in 1989. A memo in the files argues that these weapons in Europe were dangerous and militarily useless. The undated memo said a group of specialists for the Big Five—whom Katayev described as the “non-military” experts in the working group—“believe that short-range land-based nuclear weapons are the most inconvenient and dangerous for all countries in the deterrence arsenal.” Katayev.

16 Fitzwater quickly regretted the words. Marlin Fitzwater, Call the Briefing: Reagan and Bush, Sam and Helen: A Decade with Presidents and the Press (New York: Times Books, 1995), Ch. 10.

17 Masterpieces, July 20, 1989, doc. 73.

18 “Work Plan,” a list of decisions and deadlines for 1989, Katayev.

19 “On reduction of the Armed Forces and spending of the Soviet Union on defense,” January 1989, Katayev.

20 “Growth of Military Spending USSR and USA in 1980–1991,” a chart, Katayev. In January, Gorbachev ordered a reduction of 14.2 percent in military spending, compared to 1987, and a cut in arms manufacture by 19.2 percent, over a two-year period. Military spending in the Soviet Union was 69.5 billion rubles in 1987, 73 billion in 1988, 77.3 billion in 1989, 71 billion in 1990 and 66.5 billion in 1991, the chart says.

21 Akhromeyev, pp. 204–205.

22 Bush and Scowcroft, p. 130. Bush gave a letter suggesting a summit meeting to Akhromeyev during his visit to the United States, to courier back to Gorbachev, bypassing Shevardnadze, who was furious when he found out.