The U.S. and Soviet versions of Reykjavik

This letter, carried by Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze to Washington, initiated the Reykjavik summit meeting when Gorbachev proposed "a quick one-on-one meeting, let us say in Iceland or in London," in order to break out of the cycle of spy-versus-spy posturing and inconclusive diplomatic negotiations after the 1985 Geneva summit. The English translation includes underlining by Reagan himself, who marked the sentence accusing the U.S. of deliberately finding a "pretext" to "aggravate" relations, and the two sentences about making "no start" on implementing the Geneva agreements and not "an inch closer to an agreement on arms reduction."

Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze reports to the Politburo on his talks in Washington and informs the Soviet leadership about Reagan's decision to accept Gorbachev's invitation to meet in Reykjavik on the condition that 25 Soviet dissidents including Yury Orlov and Nicholas Daniloff, accused of spying, are released. Gorbachev accepts the conditions and sets forth his main ideas for the summit. The Soviet position, according to him, should be based on acceptance of U.S. security interests, otherwise negotiations would be unproductive. Gorbachev is aiming at a serious improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations.

At this Politburo meeting Gorbachev stresses once again the importance of taking U.S. interests into account and the fact that his new policy is creating a positive dynamic for disarmament in Europe. He emphasizes the need for an "offensive" and the active nature of new Soviet initiatives for Reykjavik.

This briefing memo from Shultz to Reagan, labeled "Super Sensitive" as well as formally classified as "Secret/Sensitive," shows that the U.S. did not expect any actual agreement at Reykjavik, but rather, mere preparations for a future summit in the U.S. Shultz talks here about ceilings on ballistic missiles but fails to predict Gorbachev's dramatic agreements to 50% cuts and a process leading to the abolition of nuclear weapons. Ironically, Shultz says one of the U.S. goals is to emphasize progress "without permitting the impression that Reykjavik itself was a Summit," when history now sees Reykjavik as in many ways the most dramatic summit meeting of the Cold War.

Gorbachev explains his top priorities and specific proposals to the group charged with preparing for Reykjavik. He calls for preparing a position with a "breakthrough potential," which would take into account U.S. interests and put strategic weapons, not issues of nuclear testing, at the forefront. Gorbachev's ultimate goal for Reykjavik-he reiterates it several times during the meeting-is total liquidation of nuclear weapons based on the Soviet 15 January 1986 Program of Liquidation of Nuclear Weapons by the Year 2000. Whereas Gorbachev sees the value in making concessions in hopes of achieving a breakthrough, his Politburo colleagues (including Chebrikov) warn him against using this word in the negotiations. In the evening Gorbachev gives additional instructions to Chernyaev on human rights and on the matter of Gorbachev's wife, Raisa Maksimovna, accompanying him to Iceland.

This briefing memo prepared (on the same day as Gorbachev's Politburo discussion above) by one of the National Security Council's senior Soviet experts, completely mis-predicts Gorbachev's behavior at the Reykjavik summit. Far from being "coy" or "undecided" about a future U.S. summit, Gorbachev was already planning major concessions and breakthroughs. Far from having to "smoke" Gorbachev out during the talks, Reagan would be faced with an extraordinarily ambitious set of possible agreements.

This detailed briefing book for Secretary Shultz provides a one-stop-shopping portrait of the state of U.S.-Soviet relations and negotiations on the eve of the Reykjavik summit. The complete table of contents gives the list of briefing papers and backgrounders that are also available in the collections of the National Security Archive (from FOIA requests to the State Department), but posted here are only the first two sections of the briefing book: the "Checklist" of U.S.-Soviet issues, and the "Walk-Through" of subjects for the Reykjavik agenda. Notable is the very first item on the latter, which presupposes that the best they will achieve is some agreement on a number of ballistic missile warheads between the U.S. proposal of 5500 and the Soviet proposal of 6400, rather than the radical cuts that wound up on the table at Reykjavik.

In this last Politburo session before the delegation departed for Reykjavik, Gorbachev goes over the final details of the Soviet proposals. He allows for the possibility that the meeting could be a failure, and suggests making "concessions on intermediate range missiles," and French and British nuclear weapons. Gorbachev believes there should be no "intermediate" positions or agreements, driving for his maximum program even if concessions would have to be made. Shevardnadze sounds most optimistic predicting that the U.S. side could agree with the Soviet non-withdrawal period on the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and on 50% cuts of the nuclear triad (missiles, bombers, submarines) and intermediate-range missiles.

This side-by-side presentation of the official U.S. transcripts of the Reykjavik summit meetings and the Soviet transcripts as published in Moscow in 1993 and translated by the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service puts the reader inside the bullet-proof glass over the windows of Hofdi House as Reagan, Gorbachev, their translators, and their foreign ministers discuss radical changes in both U.S. and Soviet national security thinking.

The two sets of transcripts are remarkably congruent, with each version providing slightly different wording and detail but no direct contradictions. Reagan and Gorbachev eloquently express their shared vision of nuclear abolition, and heatedly debate their widely divergent views of missile defenses. For Reagan, SDI was the ultimate insurance policy against a madman blackmailing the world with nuclear-tipped missiles in a future where all the superpowers' missiles and nuclear weapons had been destroyed. Reagan comes back again and again to the metaphor of keeping your gas masks even after banning chemical weapons, but Gorbachev feels as if Reagan is lecturing him, and says "that's the 10th time you talked about gas masks."

For Gorbachev, SDI was a U.S. attempt to take the arms race into space and potentially launch a first-strike attack on the Soviet Union - the ultimate nightmare for Soviet leaders seared into their consciousnesses by Hitler's blitzkrieg. But Gorbachev's scientists had already told him that missile defenses could be easily and cheaply countered with multiple warheads and decoys even if the defenses ever worked (which was unlikely).

The great "what if" question suggested by the Reykjavik transcripts is what would have happened if Gorbachev had simply accepted Reagan's apparently sincere offer to share SDI technology rather than dismissing this as ridiculous when the U.S. would not even share "milking machines." If Gorbachev had "pocketed" Reagan's offer, then the pressure would have been on the U.S. to deliver, in the face of a probable firestorm of opposition from the U.S. military and foreign policy establishment. Working in the opposite direction in favor of the deal would have been overwhelming public support for these dramatic changes, both in the U.S. and in the Soviet Union, and especially in Europe.

Perhaps most evocative is the Russian version's closing words, which are not included in the U.S. transcript. This exchange comes after Reagan asks for a personal "favor" from Gorbachev of accepting the offer on SDI and ABM, and Gorbachev replies by saying this is not a favor but a matter of principle. The U.S. version has Reagan standing at that point to leave the room and a brief polite exchange about regards to Nancy Reagan. But the Russian version has Reagan saying, "I think you didn't want to achieve an agreement anyway" and "I don't know when we'll ever have another chance like this and whether we will meet soon."

In the all-night negotiations of Soviet and U.S. military experts during the middle of the Reykjavik summit, the Soviet delegation led by Marshal Sergei Akhromeev starts from the new Soviet program, just outlined by Gorbachev in his meeting with Reagan earlier in the day-proposing 50% cuts of strategic weapons across the board, a zero option on intermediate-range missiles in Europe, and a 10-year period of non-withdrawal from the ABM treaty. At the same time, the U.S. delegation led by Paul Nitze conducts the discussion practically disregarding the new Soviet proposals and negotiating on the basis of U.S. proposals of 18 January 1986, which by now are overtaken by the latest developments in the Reagan-Gorbachev talks. Responding to U.S. proposals on allowing development of SDI while proceeding with deep cuts in strategic weapons, member of the Soviet delegation Georgy Arbatov comments "what you are offering requires an exceptional level of trust. We cannot accept your position," directly implying that the necessary level of trust was not there. This document, prepared as a result of the all-night discussion, outlined the disagreements but failed to integrate the understandings achieved by the two leaders on October 11 or approached again on October 12.

This blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute chronology sums up not only the discussions given in detail in the transcripts above, but also all the preparatory meetings and discussions and logistics on the U.S. side.