Who won the war?

Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House, 2005), 254 pp., $25.95.

Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House, 2005), 327 pp., $27.95.

ONE OF the many puzzles with Ronald Reagan is why so many people found such an articulate man so puzzling, or rather, why so few people listened to what this supremely eloquent man was actually saying on some of the most profound issues of his time. This conundrum is at the heart of both of these valuable books. They deal with the same issue, but from rather different perspectives. They agree that the prime roles in ending the Cold War were played by Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev; that the obsession with the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) shared by the two leaders (from contrasting standpoints) was both exaggerated and invaluable in pushing forward the peace process; and that from first to last, Reagan made no secret of his grand strategy, which never deviated in essentials, though the circumstances in which it was implemented certainly did. Why then did so many apparently well-informed people fail to appreciate what he was up to?

Ambassador Matlock has provided a distinguished example of history from the engine room. From his days at the beginning of the 1980s as the senior officer in charge of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, through three years as the National Security Council expert on European and Soviet affairs, to his appointment at the end of 1986 as ambassador to Moscow, he was at the heart of American policymaking on the Soviet Union--both a uniquely privileged observer and a participant during the critical times.

He has rendered a detailed account and, at the same time, given a robust defense of his stewardship. A few bruises are nursed from the bureaucratic battles of not-so-long-ago. His considerable admiration for George Shultz as secretary of state does not deter him from a few stinging criticisms of Shultz's negotiating tactics. But one gets the impression that any settling of personal scores flows solely from such tactical differences.

Paul Lettow does not get as up close and personal as Matlock. His book is based on detailed research of the written record and a range of interviews. But the two books complement each other. They start from the essential point that so many people missed at the time and for quite some years afterwards: that Reagan came to office with a genuine hatred of all nuclear weapons. He did not aim simply to prevent the Soviets from having more of what he regarded as the hateful things. He wanted to rid the earth of them altogether.

BEFORE HE entered the White House, Reagan had developed a powerful loathing of the prevailing nuclear strategic doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, which was based on the premise that no country would ever attack a nuclear-armed adversary because it would be wiped out by the inevitable retaliation. It meant that the leader of a country facing such an attack would be confronted by an awesome dilemma. He could retaliate and have his own country wiped out as well, or he could give way to irresistible force. Suicide or surrender: For Reagan, the choice was unacceptable.

His anti-nuclear ambition perplexed so many people because it seemed so out of character for the Cold War hawk, the hardheaded critic of the "Evil Empire." Even some of those who admired him most and knew him best were thrown off balance. In an interview with me while she and Reagan were still in office, Margaret Thatcher described the idea as "pie in the sky."

The other reason why Reagan's basic purpose was so often undetected was that his tactics were the opposite of those employed by most nuclear disarmers. Rather than being overawed by the might of the Soviet Union, Reagan believed it was economically vulnerable and that it would be unable to sustain prolonged technological competition with the West. The path to nuclear disarmament therefore led through an arms race, but an arms race with a difference. Reagan's basic purpose was neither the accumulation of arms nor the setting of agreed limits, but their reduction or even elimination. This should have been clear from what he said and did right from the beginning. Matlock points out that, in his first month in office, "Reagan stated that he was in favor of negotiating to achieve 'an actual reduction in the numbers of nuclear weapons' on a basis that would be verifiable."

In his first major statement from the White House on arms negotiations in November 1981, he made two revealing proposals. The first was that negotiations on strategic nuclear weapons should no longer be known as SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) but as START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). This could be, and was, easily mistaken for a bit of cosmetic diplomacy--the statesman as spin doctor. But it indicated one of Reagan's most profound beliefs: that the purpose of such negotiations should not be to solidify the status quo or to moderate the increase in nuclear weapons, but to bring about an actual reduction. He made no secret of this intention, but it seemed so out of character that relatively few people appreciated the significance at the time.

The other proposal was to have no intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe, East or West. This became known as the "zero option." Reagan had inherited the NATO dual-track strategy, whereby the alliance would deploy these weapons only after seeking a negotiated agreement with the Soviet Union. The zero option was consistent with dual track: It was put forward by the Germans because of domestic political opposition to deploying the missiles, and it was supported by hardliners in the Pentagon because they did not believe that German opinion would ever permit effective deployment. But the policy was contested both within the administration and within the alliance. It was left to Reagan to decide, and his anti-nuclear instincts once again were decisive.

BOTH MATLOCK and Lettow stress Reagan's determination, especially in the early years, to make nuclear competition prohibitively expensive for the Soviets. Every time he intensified such competition, he was making it more and more difficult for the Soviet Union to keep up and therefore bringing serious disarmament that much closer. Both books show repeatedly that this was not just an accidental consequence of the Reagan strategy, but a deliberate objective.

This was particularly so with the most controversial of these policies, his cherished SDI. Reagan believed in it so strongly because he saw that it could serve a double purpose. If it worked, it could provide the defense against nuclear weapons for which he yearned. But even if it did not work (and he never seems to have committed himself to the proposition that it would), it would increase exponentially the burden of economic and technological rivalry for the Soviet Union.

Others in the administration had a more nuanced approach to SDI. Some, most notably Shultz and Robert (Bud) McFarlane, Reagan's national security advisor, regarded it simply as a bargaining chip that they would have been happy to trade away if the deal was good enough, though their determination to bargain hard made them effective instruments of his policy. Some saw it as valuable leverage on the Soviets, without having any great confidence that it would ever become operational as Reagan hoped, but also without being prepared to trade it away.

SDI would not have had any of these uses if Soviet leaders had been as confident as its critics in the West that it would never work. In that case, they could have watched the program proceed, happy in the belief that American resources were being wasted in a futile quest. But their awe of American technology was too great for such an assumption. If the United States was taking the program so seriously, surely there must be something in it. The Soviet authorities did not know enough to be able to sit back and let the Americans get on with it.

So East-West relations came to be dominated by two processes. One was the apparently endless negotiations over nuclear disarmament. The most dramatic session was at Reykjavik in October 1986. "The most productive summit we ever held", Shultz remarked to me a few years later. Had he said the most complicated, he could hardly have been challenged. Not even those who were in the most restricted meetings could agree what had been said there. When they briefed congressional leaders of both parties upon their return to Washington, Shultz said they had been discussing eliminating all ballistic missiles, whereas Reagan spoke of all nuclear weapons.

They had indeed gone that far, but not in a structured negotiation. Lettow documents, after studying the recently declassified U.S. memorandums of conversation, or "memcons", how they reached that point in a mood of almost casual enthusiasm. "Reagan declared that it would be fine with him 'if we eliminated all nuclear weapons.' Gorbachev replied, 'We can do that. We can eliminate them.' Shultz was not a silent spectator; he interjected to say, 'Let's do it.'"

Other rather less ambitious but still far-reaching proposals were on the table. But all of them foundered on SDI. Gorbachev had gone to Reykjavik with the overriding ambition of persuading the Americans to bargain it away. Reagan was prepared for almost any other deal except that. The meeting became a dialogue not so much of the deaf, but of the uncomprehending. Reagan could not understand Gorbachev's absolute resistance to a purely defensive system, especially since he was determined that it should be offered to the Soviets if it could be made to work. It was an offer that caused some consternation among his own advisors.

But Reagan was totally sincere and utterly determined. For him, SDI was potentially the answer to his nuclear nightmare, not a means for the Americans to get a step ahead in the nuclear race. One of the surprises in these books is to find just how insistent he was that the Soviets should be allowed to share its benefits. But Gorbachev could not be persuaded at Reykjavik that SDI was a purely defensive system. His persistent use of the phrase "space weapons" was revealing. The fear in Washington was that SDI might turn out to be useless. The fear in Moscow was that it might turn out to be a means of militarizing space and therefore be a decisive technological advance in the Cold War.

So Reykjavik ended in bitter deadlock. Both sides felt that they had come within a whisker of a historic arms settlement, and neither could understand why the other had balked. Gorbachev was uncompromising that SDI research had to be confined to the laboratory for ten years. Reagan feared that such a restriction would make it impossible to discover if SDI would ever really work.

Yet out of Reykjavik, out of a mutual sense of frustration, arms settlements did flow. First and most important, there was the treaty to get rid of all INF, signed in an almost carnival atmosphere during Gorbachev's visit to Washington in December 1987. Other arms agreements came after Reagan was succeeded by President George H. W. Bush, especially on strategic weapons and then on conventional forces in Europe.

It was not, however, these arms treaties, but another process, that brought about the end of the Cold War: that of bonding between the leaders. Mistrust and fear caused the Cold War in the first place. The rediscovery, of trust ended it. The interminable arms negotiations played a part. But it was the process that mattered, the tiresome wrestling with specific problems that convinced both sides of the other's sincerity, rather than the particular agreements that emerged. "Psychologically and ideologically", Matlock writes, "the Cold War was over before Ronald Reagan moved out of the White House."

Lettow is concerned not specifically with the end of the Cold War, but with the attempt to get rid of nuclear weapons. The two issues are, however, so closely intertwined that it is almost a distinction without a difference, and they reach similar conclusions. "Reagan", says Lettow, "laid the groundwork for his successor to complete the START Treaty, the first agreement to reduce strategic nuclear weapons." Both he and Matlock either explicitly or implicitly give the main credit for ending the Cold War to Reagan and Gorbachev. As Matlock says, "they could not have done it alone", and he pays particular tribute to Shultz and the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze. James Baker, Bush's secretary of state, "also worked effectively with Shevardnadze, but that was under different circumstances. The Cold War had ended in principle, and what remained was intricate 'cleanup' diplomacy." Much the same could be said of Boris Yeltsin.

IN BOTH books, there is not exactly a missing dimension so much as an underplayed one. Both pay warm tribute to Margaret Thatcher. Yet neither accords her quite so large a role in ending the Cold War as she deserves. Not all her interventions were successful, but they all had an impact. She had the inestimable advantage of forming strong personal relationships with Gorbachev and Reagan early on. First and perhaps most important of all in this context was her ringing declaration after her initial meeting with Gorbachev that he was a man she could do business with. From anyone else, such a remark would have provoked either raised eyebrows, or else a little derision, in Washington. From her, the remark was regarded with surprise but also respect, something to make people take notice. True to form, she followed up this public comment almost immediately in private conversation with Reagan. "Because I believe the same things as you do", she said to him, as she recalled in an interview with me while still prime minister, "this is a man you can do business with without compromising any of your beliefs."

When Reagan released news of SDI to a startled world in March 1983, both the Soviets and the Europeans were deeply disturbed. Thatcher had misgivings too, but--so she maintained--only about the excessive claims that Reagan made. It was his suggestion that SDI could make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete that upset her. There was no way, she believed, it would be possible to stop all incoming missiles. "Life is not like that."

Even among her close advisors there were doubts as to what her view of SDI really was. The best assumption is probably that her scientific skepticism was at war with her determination that the alliance should not be torn apart over this issue. It was on the second point that her attitude mattered. At the end of 1984, she visited Reagan to seek an agreed basis for the program. That was the purpose of what became known as the Four Points of Camp David, which left the way clear for research and testing while specifying that deployment would be a matter for negotiation. Although this infuriated the Pentagon, it was enough to soothe troubled nerves in the alliance.

Reykjavik presented a much more difficult problem. Thatcher was outraged by what Reagan and Gorbachev so nearly agreed between them. "The only time", in her words, "when I really have felt the ground shake under my feet politically was when for one moment it looked as if they had agreed to surrender all nuclear weapons." In their excitement, the participants almost forgot to let her know what was being contemplated. When she knew the full story of what had happened at Reykjavik, she must truly have given thanks for SDI.

Furious though she was, Thatcher saw her role once again as being to steady the alliance. After consulting other European leaders, who were at least as alarmed as she by what had so nearly occurred at Reykjavik, she flew to another meeting with Reagan at Camp David. Once again, a statement was concocted that did not directly challenge what he had done or tried to do, but gave a different direction to American policy by leaving the doctrine of nuclear deterrence in place. European anxieties were shortly to be overtaken by events, but they were not irrational. They were based on a fear of losing U.S. nuclear protection and being left to face overwhelming Soviet conventional military strength in Europe.

One does not often think of Thatcher as a smooth diplomat, but that was the role she played in both these visits to Camp David. She may not have brought about any dramatic changes in Western policy, but that was not her purpose. She helped to prevent an outburst of alliance angst that would have had powerful sympathizers in the United States and might at least have complicated Reagan's path to ending the Cold War. Panic-stricken allies at what was supposed to be a time of hope and confidence would have struck a discordant note.

Thatcher's stubborn resistance to German reunification later became an obstruction. But right up to the end of the Cold War, her role was constructive. The Russians appreciated her contribution partly because of the warm personal rapport she established with Gorbachev, and partly because they saw that her even stronger relationship with Reagan made it easier for them to deal with him as well. Both aspects were evident at the stopover that Gorbachev made in England on his way to the United States to sign the INF Treaty in December 1987. The stop, made on Gorbachev's initiative, had both a practical and symbolic purpose. He had no aspiration to detach Thatcher from Reagan. Gorbachev knew that was impossible, and it would not have suited his purpose anyway. It was her closeness to Reagan that made her so helpful as an interlocutor. But Gorbachev would have looked to her for any hint as to how he should conduct himself in Washington.

The occasion was also something of a celebration, as Gorbachev made clear in his public remarks before flying on to sign the treaty in Washington. "The agreement on the elimination of two kinds of nuclear weapons was not an easy one. But we have covered this road together, for the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and your allies and partners." It was virtually an open acknowledgement of a triangular relationship.

But am I, as a British commentator, attributing too much significance to Thatcher's role in ending the Cold War? That was a question I put to Alexander Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev's closest advisors, in a conversation some years ago. "No", he told me, "you are not exaggerating. She was the link weapon", a happy description of the Iron Lady. Then he went on, "Reagan, Gorbachev, Thatcher, they all made mistakes, big mistakes. But together they changed the world." A fitting epitaph and a flair verdict.

Geoffrey Smith is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a former columnist at the London Times and author of Reagan and Thatcher (1991).

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