James Mann - The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan

Richard Nixon once again challenged Reagan’s beliefs about Gorbachev and the Soviet Union. Reviving the arguments he had made earlier, Nixon claimed that Gorbachev was merely another in a long line of Soviet leaders pushing for global predominance. “Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s foreign policy has been more skillful and subtle than ever. But it has been more aggressive, not less,” wrote Nixon in the New York Times Magazine that March. “Like his predecessors, Gorbachev seeks to expand the influence and power of the Soviet Union.” 20It was hard to reconcile Nixon’s words with Moscow realities that spring or with Gorbachev’s actions, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nevertheless, Reagan administration officials worried that the former president would give further legitimacy to the political right.

Gorbachev, too, was concerned. He told American visitors that Nixon was clinging to old stereotypes about the Soviet Union. “The dead should not be allowed to take the living by the coattails and drag them back to the past,” Gorbachev said. 21

Reagan responded by courting and cajoling his adversaries. He kept in frequent touch with conservative leaders, even as they were denouncing the INF treaty. “He had a marvelous facility with the right wing,” recalled Carlucci. “Periodically, he would invite them into the White House, into the Roosevelt Room, and he would come in and shake everybody’s hand, and tell a joke or two, and leave the dirty work to the rest of us.” William F. Buckley, Jr., complained to Reagan that after the Soviet Union destroyed its SS-20 missiles under the treaty, it might replace them with different missiles. Reagan consulted with his advisers and offered Buckley a simple reply: “We don’t think that’s something we can’t handle.” 22

He treated the Nixon administration veterans with respect, despite their condemnation of his Soviet policy. He expressed disagreement with their views but avoided acrimony. He telephoned Nixon to wish him a happy birthday. He kept Henry Kissinger in mind for informal yet prestigious assignments. Reagan had earlier appointed Kissinger as chairman of a bipartisan commission on Central America. In early 1988, South Korea was to inaugurate a newly elected president, Roe Tae Woo, and the ceremonies required the presence of some prominent American. Vice President Bush, campaigning for president, was unavailable, as were Shultz and Carlucci. Reagan suggested Kissinger. (In the end, Treasury Secretary James Baker took on the assignment to represent the administration.) 23

The result of these efforts was to defuse the opposition. Some of the conservatives continued to criticize Reagan’s treaty, but without the passion or venom they were able to summon on other issues. Buckley wrote a column in National Review making the same points he had discussed with Reagan. But his column conveyed an air of inevitability to the treaty. It praised Jesse Helms, the leading Senate opponent of the INF treaty, but also portrayed Helms as quaintly out of touch with the times and with the romance between Reagan and Gorbachev: Buckley compared Helms to “the preacher who goes on and on with an endless sermon while the bride and groom are standing there, hands touching, in ardent desire to consummate their marriage.” 24

Meanwhile, the members of the old Nixon team could not quite bring themselves to come out in formal opposition to Reagan’s INF treaty. The most striking example was Kissinger. Having argued the previous year that an INF treaty would lead to a crisis, Kissinger testified in early 1988 that the treaty should be approved, because if the Senate turned it down, that, too, would lead to a crisis. “Failure to ratify the treaty or insistence on amendments requiring renegotiation would not cure its defects,” Kissinger said. “It would, on the contrary, vastly magnify all difficulties.” He said Senate rejection of the treaty would “generate a crisis in the Atlantic alliance which would in the end almost certainly lead to the unilateral withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Europe and undermine the coherence of the alliance.” 25

Most of the Senate opposition came from Republicans. When Shultz testified before the Foreign Relations Committee, Helms greeted him with a series of accusations. Democrats rushed to the secretary of state’s support. “He’s here because we invited him,” Senator Claiborne Pell, the committee chairman, admonished Helms. On the Armed Services Committee, Senator Dan Quayle led the charge, complaining that the administration had failed to address questions about how the treaty might apply to futuristic weapons, such as lasers.

The administration had some difficulties with a few Democrats too. David Boren, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, delayed action on the treaty to win a commitment from the administration for the funding of a new generation of surveillance satellites. 26Senator Sam Nunn, the Armed Services Committee chairman, and Robert Byrd raised the constitutional issue of whether the administration’s testimony about the treaty could be considered final and official; they did not want the Reagan administration to be able to “reinterpret” the treaty afterward, as it had with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

With Shultz taking the lead, the administration worked out understandings that would mollify several of the senators. The secretary of state assured Nunn that whatever administration officials told the Senate about the treaty would be authoritative. He overcame Quayle’s objections by going back to the Soviets for a statement agreeing with the U.S. interpretation of how the treaty would apply to lasers, microwaves, and other futuristic weapons. Shultz finally grew impatient with Quayle, telling him: “Dan, you have to shut down. We can’t have the president’s achievement wrecked by Republicans.” 27

The opponents failed to kill or amend the treaty, but they delayed it. In the process, they achieved one not-inconsiderable success: the time and energy taken up by the Senate’s consideration of the INF treaty forced the administration to slow down its other, even more ambitious efforts at arms control. At the Washington summit the previous December, Reagan and Gorbachev had said they hoped to settle on a separate treaty covering intercontinental missiles in time for the two leaders to sign it at the summit in Moscow. By the end of February, Reagan began to acknowledge that there might not be time to do this. Gradually, he and Gorbachev were forced to scale back their expectations. The Soviet leader told Shultz in late April that he hoped the Moscow summit could merely produce a statement that the two sides were making progress toward a treaty on long-range weapons. 28

In early May, with the Moscow summit only weeks away, it was still unclear whether the INF treaty would be approved in time for the president’s trip. By this juncture, administration officials and their Republican supporters in the Senate were virtually pleading for quick action. Failure to win Senate ratification would have been taken as a vote of no confidence in Reagan’s policy toward Gorbachev. “It’s our president who will be in Moscow next week, and he’d like to have this treaty,” said Bob Dole, the Republican minority leader. “I say that as a Republican on behalf of a Republican president.” 29

In the end, the Republican opposition faded away. Conservatives forced a series of test votes on amending the treaty. All failed. Helms, for example, argued unsuccessfully that Gorbachev, as general secretary of the Communist Party, had no authority to sign a treaty for the Soviet Union. A number of Senate conservatives, including Quayle, decided that they would vote for the treaty. And most of the proposed amendments won the support of fifteen or fewer of the one hundred senators. “I am licked,” Helms conceded. 30