Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 10. december 2007 / Time Line December 10, 2007
Version 3.59. December 2007, 11. December 2007
12/10/2007
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menneskerettighedsdag.
12/12/2007
National Security Archive Update, December 10, 2007
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
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.
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