Ronald Reagan by Jacob Weisberg

Author:Jacob Weisberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780805097283
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

11

They Keep Dying on Me

Because of Afghanistan, relations with the Soviets were already bad when Reagan took office. In the first days of the administration, the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev wrote to the new president requesting a summit meeting—a goodwill gesture somewhat obscured by the boilerplate condemning of American militarism and imperialism. Reagan dismissed the overture, in keeping with Alexander Haig’s admonition that arms control and trade benefits had to be conditioned on Soviet conduct, and in particular on restraining Fidel Castro. But then Reagan was shot, and he woke up possessed of the idea that God had saved him for the purpose of preventing nuclear war. Now he wanted to answer Brezhnev.

From his hospital bed, he wrote a conciliatory response asking for a “meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joint obligation to finding lasting peace.” As a token of friendship, Reagan offered something he intended to do anyway for domestic political reasons: lift the grain embargo imposed by Carter in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. These messages were embedded in a heartfelt expression of his political philosophy. “The peoples of the world, despite differences in racial and ethnic origin, have very much in common,” Reagan wrote. “They want the dignity of having some control over their individual destiny. They want to work at the craft or trade of their own choosing and to be fairly rewarded. They want to raise their families in peace without harming anyone or suffering harm themselves. Government exists for their convenience, not the other way around.”

His draft greatly alarmed his foreign policy circle, who wondered what had happened to the president’s distrust of the Soviets. Haig, committed to the policy of linkage, tried to talk him out of lifting the grain embargo and sending the letter, which he proposed replacing with a State Department version complaining about the Soviet military buildup. “I need to follow my own instincts. And I’m going to,” Reagan told Deaver. In the end, Reagan sent both: the State Department indictment, along with a handwritten version of his personal overture as a cover letter. Whether because he found the letter provocative or because he was addled from his addiction to sleeping pills and by a series of small strokes, Brezhnev sent what Reagan described as an “icy reply.”

Both sides were doing a fine job of misintepreting each other’s signals. Hearing Reagan’s charged rhetoric and his claims about Soviet nuclear superiority that they knew weren’t true, Soviet officials began to believe that the United States was pursuing a first-strike capability, if not planning an actual first strike. In May 1981 the KGB advised its stations in the West that the United States might be preparing an attack and asked them to relay any additional warning signs. The equivalent misunderstanding on Reagan’s part was that the Soviets viewed nuclear war as winnable and were trying to gain an edge, while still pursuing a strategy of world revolution.

As a result of these mutual misreadings, there would be no presidential summit meetings during Reagan’s first term.

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