The Road to Zero

(7 of 13)
Back in Washington, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency prepared a study showing ten points on which the Soviets had hardened their position from the one they had left on the table when they walked out in late 1983. With much self-righteous fanfare, the Soviets slowly meted out "concessions" that they had already made in the past. Maynard Glitman, the chief American negotiator on INF, told his Soviet counterpart, Alexei Obukhov, "You may take six hours or six days or six weeks or six months to get back to where you were in 1983. We don't care. But you'd better know this: when you get back to those original positions, you get no credit for it with us."

Obukhov subjected Glitman to constant harangues. Once Glitman asked a simple question on an issue of fact and in response got a 65-minute filibuster on the perfidy of U.S. policy and the illegitimacy of the American nuclear presence in Europe. After another testy meeting, one American diplomat cracked, "I think these Russian boys miss their liquor, and they're taking it out on us."

The Soviet negotiators were indeed taking seriously Gorbachev's anti- alcoholism campaign. In the past, working lunches at the Soviet mission had been well lubricated with Stolichnaya vodka and Armenian brandy. No more. Now the Soviets served their guests soda and fruit juice, with only a sip of Georgian wine during the meal. Even the rathskeller in the Soviet mission -- named the Albatross -- began serving orange juice rather than draft beer when Americans were entertained there.

The U.S. had grown used to being the dealer, making imaginative proposals, then sitting back to wait and watch while the Soviets responded in their suspicious, cumbersome manner. Until earlier this year, the American proposals were virtually all minor variations on the interim solution that would leave some missiles on both sides, although the U.S. continued to pay lip service to the "ultimate objective" of zero option.

But before the first round ended in late April, the new General Secretary began to assert himself -- subtly at first, then spectacularly. American experts have often said the U.S. comes to the negotiating table as though arms control were a game of poker while the Soviet Union plays it as chess. Gorbachev showed an ability to combine the tactics of both games in a way that was sometimes masterly, sometimes maddening, sometimes both.

The first hint that the game might be changing came in 1985, when the Soviets tipped their hand on two critical points. One was the status of SS-20s in Soviet Asia. The U.S. had been insisting that the zero option must be "global in scope": it must eliminate SS-20s in Asia too, since they are mobile weapons that in a crisis could be moved to threaten Europe. In May 1985, Gorbachev publicly suggested that his government would be willing to freeze its SS-20 forces east of the Ural Mountains. Shortly afterward the Soviet delegation in Geneva tabled a proposal to that effect. The General Secretary was rapidly becoming his own chief negotiator.