[NYTr] The INF Treaty and the Washington Summit: 20 Years Later

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

National Security Archive Update -  Dec 10, 2007
http://www.nsarchive.org


The INF Treaty and the Washington Summit: 20 Years Later

Washington D.C., December 10, 2007 - Previously secret Soviet
Politburo records and declassified American transcripts of the
Washington summit 20 years ago between President Ronald Reagan and
Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev show that Gorbachev was
willing to go much further than the Americans expected or were able
to reciprocate on arms cuts and resolving regional conflicts,
according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive
at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

Today's posting includes the internal Soviet deliberations leading
up to the summit, full transcripts of the two leaders' discussions,
the Soviet record of negotiations with top American diplomats, and
other historic records being published for the first time.

The documents show that the Soviet Union made significant changes
to its initial position to accommodate the U.S. demands, beginning
with "untying the package" of strategic arms, missile defense, and
INF in February 1987 and then agreeing to eliminate its newly
deployed OKA/SS-23 missiles, while pressing the U.S. leadership to
agree on substantial reductions of strategic nuclear weapons.
Gorbachev's goal was to prepare and sign the START Treaty on the
basis of 50 percent reductions of strategic offensive weapons in
1988 before the Reagan administration left office. In the course
of negotiations, the Soviet Union also proposed cutting conventional
forces in Europe by 25 percent and starting negotiations to eliminate
chemical weapons.

The documents also detail Gorbachev's desire for genuine collaboration
with the U.S. in resolving regional conflicts, especially the
Iran-Iraq War, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Nicaragua. However,
the documents show that the U.S. side was unwilling and unable to
pursue many of the Soviet initiatives at the time due to political
struggles within the Reagan administration. Reading these documents
one gets a visceral sense of missed opportunities for achieving
even deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals, resolving regional conflicts,
and ending the Cold War even earlier.

The documents paint the fullest declassified portrait yet available
of the Washington summit which ended 20 years ago today and centered
on the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty--the
only treaty of its kind in actually eliminating an entire class of
nuclear weapons. By eliminating mainly the missiles based in Europe,
the treaty lowered the threat of nuclear war in Europe substantially
and cleared the way for negotiations on tactical nuclear and chemical
weapons, as well as negotiations on conventional forces in Europe.

Under the Treaty, the Soviet Union destroyed 889 of its
intermediate-range missiles and 957 shorter-range missiles, and the
U.S. destroyed 677 and 169 respectively. These were the missiles with
very short flight time to targets in the Soviet Union, which made them
"most likely to spur escalation to general nuclear war from any local
hostilities that might erupt." These weapons were perceived as most
threatening by the Soviet leadership, which is why the Soviet military
supported the Treaty, even though there was a significant opposition
among them to including the shorter-range weapons.

The Treaty included remarkably extensive and intrusive verification
inspection and monitoring arrangements, based on the "any time and
place" proposal of March 1987, which was accepted by the Soviets
to the Americans' surprise; and the documents show that the Soviets
were willing to go beyond the American position in the depth of
verification regime.  The new Soviet position on verification not
only removed the hurdle that seemed insurmountable, but according
to then-U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock, became a symbol
of the new trust developing in U.S.-Soviet relations, which made
the treaty and further progress on arms control possible.

The documents published here for the first time give the reader a
unique and never-previously-available opportunity to look into the
process of internal deliberations on both sides and the negotiations
both before and during the summit in December 1987.

Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more
information about today's posting.

http://www.nsarchive.org

________________________________________________________

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research institute and library located at The George Washington
University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes
declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information
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