James Mann - The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan

In April 1987, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate distributed a commentary that carried the byline “By Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger,” an unprecedented joint op-ed by the two onetime architects of the policy of détente. It was published not only in the Los Angeles Times but in the Washington Post and, a few weeks later, in William F. Buckley’s National Review , the conservative magazine that had long been Ronald Reagan’s favorite publication. “Because we are deeply concerned about this danger, we, who have attended several Summits and engaged in many negotiations with Soviet leaders, are speaking out jointly for the first time since both of us left office,” wrote Nixon and Kissinger. 4

The article was brooding in tone. It warned of impending disaster if Reagan continued on the course of Reykjavik. Nixon and Kissinger were worried in particular about trying to eliminate missiles or nuclear weapons from Europe. They suggested that the Reagan administration might, however inadvertently, “create the most profound crisis of the NATO alliance in its forty-year history—an alliance sustained by seven administrations of both parties.” Nixon and Kissinger proposed that the Reagan administration should go along with the elimination of missiles in Europe only if this could be linked to a separate deal reducing conventional forces. Such a linkage would have made it difficult, it not impossible, to reach any agreement at all.

Nixon and Kissinger made plain that their concerns were not simply about NATO or Europe: they were profoundly opposed to the idea of eliminating nuclear weapons. “Soviet strategy since the end of World War II has been to exploit the West’s fear of nuclear weapons by calling repeatedly for their eventual abolition,” asserted Nixon and Kissinger. “Any Western leader who indulges in the Soviets’ disingenuous fantasies of a nuclear-free world courts unimaginable perils.” Amplifying on this theme in a separate interview with Time magazine, Nixon asserted that “nuclear weapons have helped keep the peace for 40 years.” 5

Their other broad theme was that Gorbachev was a traditional Soviet leader seeking to reassert traditional Soviet foreign policy and military power. Gorbachev’s foreign policy “can be said to be a subtler implementation of historic Soviet patterns,” the two men wrote. At the beginning of 1987, Kissinger had met with Gorbachev when he visited Moscow for the first time in a decade. Upon returning home, he pronounced his verdict. “Gorbachev and his associates seem less constrained by the past and more assertive with respect to Soviet power,” Kissinger wrote in a column in Newsweek . Even if Gorbachev’s domestic reforms succeeded, Kissinger said, “it does not automatically guarantee a more benign foreign policy. On the contrary, it may provide additional resources for expansionism and ideological challenges.” 6

Above all, Nixon and Kissinger warned Reagan against trying to play the role of a peacemaker or worrying about his place in history. A president, they said, “must always remember that however he may be hailed in today’s headlines the judgment of history would severely condemn a false peace.” 7

Among Reagan’s longtime supporters on the political right, the reaction to Reykjavik was considerably worse. Nixon and Kissinger had couched their criticisms in the careful idiom of foreign policy specialists. Others were not similarly constrained, particularly not the leaders of conservative groups.

In early 1987, Reagan met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with a group of conservatives, such as Paul Weyrich of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, and Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus. The conservatives condemned Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union and his negotiations with Gorbachev. When the session ended, the president left amid a frosty silence. Outside, Reagan turned to Jim Kuhn and observed how different it had been from such meetings in the past. “There was no applause,” Reagan observed. 8

Conservative newspaper columnists were becoming increasingly savage. George Will, who had held six dinner parties for the Reagans at his Washington home and helped edit Reagan’s Westminster speech in 1982, had turned against the president. “The prudent person’s answer to Gorbachev’s question—‘What are you afraid of?’—is ‘You—and perhaps Ronald Reagan,’” wrote Will in April 1987. “Reagan seems to accept the core of the catechism of the antinuclear left, the notion that the threat to peace is technological, not political—the notion that the threat is the existence of nuclear weapons, not the nature of the Soviet regime.”

In a column called “Gorbachev’s Iron Smile: Why do democratic leaders fall for it?” Charles Krauthammer repeatedly conjured up the traditional metallurgical metaphors. “Mr. Gorbachev, your iron teeth are showing,” he wrote. 9

Reagan had always been able to deflect questions about his Soviet policy from the political right. A few days before the Reykjavik summit, his former aide Lyn Nofziger had gone to the White House to warn Reagan that conservatives were concerned Gorbachev might try to deceive or manipulate him. In a one-on-one meeting in the White House living quarters, Reagan had quickly soothed Nofziger’s anxieties. “I don’t want you ever to worry about me dealing with the communists,” Reagan said. “I still have the scars on my back from fighting the communists in Hollywood.” Nofziger left the session reassured. 10But by the spring of 1987, Reagan found that he would have to work considerably harder to overcome the mistrust of the conservatives—and indeed, they remained deeply critical of Reagan for the remainder of his time in the White House.

By the time of Nixon’s clandestine visit to the White House on April 28, 1987, Reagan and his top aides, including Shultz and his new chief of staff, Howard Baker, were incensed. Nixon and Kissinger, once the architects of détente with the Soviet Union, were now giving high-level credibility to the argument that Reagan was being seduced by Gorbachev.

Frank Carlucci, Reagan’s national security adviser, had recommended that the president meet, separately, with both Nixon and Kissinger. Reagan quickly rejected Kissinger, his main adversary of the mid-1970s. Nixon, however, was different; Reagan would not say no to the former president whom he had once supported so determinedly. When Carlucci suggested the idea of smuggling Nixon into the White House for a quiet chat, Reagan’s response was, “Great idea.” 1

Once settled into a soft chair alongside Reagan in the White House residence, with Baker and Carlucci looking on, Nixon seized the initiative. He said he realized the administration was unhappy with the public criticism, but he and Kissinger were sincere. Nixon took Reagan and his aides through the arguments he had already made in public. A deal to eliminate missiles and nuclear weapons in Europe was wrongheaded; the Soviet superiority in conventional arms was far more significant than nuclear weaponry, and any agreement the Reagan administration negotiated must address this problem. 2

Nixon sought to create divisions within the administration by taking direct aim at the secretary of state, who was not present at the White House that day. Nixon viewed Shultz as the driving force behind Reagan’s diplomacy with Gorbachev. During the Nixon administration, Shultz had served in three cabinet-level jobs, but all had been concerned with the domestic economy, not foreign policy, and after Reagan was elected president, Nixon had opposed the appointment of Shultz as secretary of state. Now, in the secret White House meeting, Nixon made it clear he thought Shultz was not up to the job of dealing with the Soviet Union.