James Mann - The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan

Gorbachev began to clash with the generals and the defense ministry over such issues as military spending and his arms-control negotiations with the Reagan administration. “Our military command as well as some members of the political leadership were decidedly unhappy about Gorbachev’s zeal in making deep concessions in order to achieve agreements with Washington,” wrote Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime Soviet ambassador to Washington, who had returned to Moscow in 1986. 16

There were also signs that Soviet military leaders were displeased with the doctrinal change from an offensive to a defense military strategy. Less than two weeks before the new doctrine was announced in East Berlin, Soviet military leaders gave a preview of it to the military chiefs of staff of other Eastern European nations at a session in Moscow. While explaining what Gorbachev had decided, Soviet defense minister Sergei Sokolov was careful to add that “the only way to definitively crush an aggressor is by executing decisive attacks.” Because NATO forces were continuing to modernize their forces and upgrade their technology, Sokolov said, “we cannot under any circumstances agree to unilateral reductions.” 17Those words seemed aimed at Gorbachev.

In the midst of the Warsaw Pact meeting, during Gorbachev’s second day in East Berlin, he and the rest of the world were stunned by an event no one would have believed possible. A nineteen-year-old West German bank trainee named Mathias Rust, pursuing a vague, self-appointed mission for “world peace,” flew a single-engine Cessna plane from Helsinki to Moscow, landed the plane on a bridge a short distance from Red Square, and then taxied to a stop between St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin. Soviet air-defense forces had picked up the flight on radar but did not want to shoot it down for fear of another incident like the Korean Airlines disaster of 1983. Instead, they allowed the plane to fly unimpeded at low altitude for nearly five hours across four hundred miles of Soviet territory, never forcing it to land, never reaching a decision whether it might be a flock of birds or some sort of aircraft. Once in Moscow, Rust stepped out of the plane and asked to be taken to Gorbachev. 18

The Soviet leader was furious at his generals. In East Berlin, he quickly briefed the Warsaw Pact, promising that he would take “severe measures against those who were responsible for the fiasco. This is even worse than Chernobyl,” Gorbachev told them. “This is a major embarrassment.” The Eastern European leaders were dismayed. “It is a very serious matter, if it is possible to fly that far without being seen or stopped,” warned Honecker, who had built his career and, indeed, his entire regime on the ability to make sure that border guards were watchful and willing to shoot. “From the point of view of the system on duty, this is absolutely incredible!” 19

Back in Moscow, Gorbachev seized upon the incident as reason to shake up his military command. The defense ministry and the generals were suddenly the subject of jokes and derision, undercutting their usual prestige in the Soviet Union. At a hastily called Politburo meeting, Gorbachev turned to Sergei Sokolov and said, “Under the present circumstances, I would resign at once.” Sokolov did, and Gorbachev proceeded to replace about a hundred other generals and colonels, most of them conservative military leaders who had opposed his reforms. 20“This will put an end to gossip about the military’s opposition to Gorbachev, that he’s afraid of them, and they’re close to ousting him,” Gorbachev told Anatoly Chernyaev, his foreign-policy adviser. 21

Gorbachev’s shakeups had profound implications not just for the Soviet Union but for Eastern Europe as well. His domestic reforms—his loosening of press controls and talk of elections—undermined the foundations of Communist Party rule. Gorbachev believed at the time that his own Soviet Communist Party could carry out democratization and still maintain control, but Eastern European leaders were under no such illusions. The new Warsaw Pact strategy based on defense rather than offense seemed to presage a more limited role for their armed forces. When Gorbachev replaced the top leaders of the Soviet military, he strengthened his own hand in pursuing arms-control negotiations and a new relaxation of tensions with the West. While Ronald Reagan’s advisers were wrestling with how to call upon Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev was beginning to create the relaxed climate in which the wall would eventually be torn down.

Even after Ronald Reagan had discussed the Berlin Wall speech with Griscom and his speechwriters in the Oval Office, the foreign-policy team was still trying to keep the text away from the president. Fearing that Reagan would like and approve Robinson’s draft, officials at the State Department and National Security Council resorted to delaying tactics. On May 27, Grant Green, an official at the NSC, wrote to one of Reagan’s administrative aides:

We understand that consideration is being given to forwarding the Brandenburg Address to the President this evening or first thing tomorrow….

In reviewing the revised draft it is clear that serious differences still remain. We have only had a short time to review the revised draft…. We do not concur with the speech being forwarded to the President in its current form. 1

From the State Department, Rozanne Ridgway, the assistant secretary for Europe, continued to tell the White House she disliked the entire thrust of Robinson’s Berlin Wall speech. In a memo to Colin Powell, the deputy national security adviser, Ridgway explained:

The draft emphasizes historical systemic conflicts and East-West differences. We prefer to be more forward-looking, emphasizing overcoming barriers, the tasks before us, and areas where progress might be made. The West Germans, who are working to develop a fragile dialogue with the East, have expressed concern to us on several occasions that the President’s speech not condemn the East too harshly. 2

Powell assigned to an experienced NSC staff aide, Peter W. Rodman, the task of rewriting and contesting Robinson’s speech line by line. During the Nixon and Ford administrations, Rodman had served as an aide to Henry Kissinger; the two men were sufficiently close that Rodman later helped write Kissinger’s memoirs. He had thus been closely involved in the policy of détente with the Soviet Union that Reagan had opposed. Rodman nevertheless viewed himself as a conservative. He saw no contradiction in working first for Kissinger and then for Reagan. (He would later serve as a Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration.)

In Rodman’s view, the détente policies of Nixon and Kissinger had been designed to preserve America’s position overseas and to outflank the political left amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War, at a time when a Democratic Congress was moving to bring American troops home. Rodman believed that in the changed political climate of the 1980s, Reagan, by virtue of his popularity, was able to succeed on some issues (such as, for example, Angola) where Kissinger had been unable to win public or congressional support. 3Despite this effort to minimize the philosophical differences between realists and conservatives, however, Rodman tended to be skeptical of Reagan’s young anti-Communist speechwriters, who knew less than he did about the details and history of various foreign-policy disputes.

Throughout late May of 1987, Rodman served as the point man for the National Security Council and State Department as they sought again and again to revise the Berlin Wall speech. State and the NSC had already been defeated in their attempt to throw out Robinson’s draft in its entirety. They next tried to edit the speech, suggesting major changes in some passages and attempting to delete others.