35 years ago today, unprecedented negotiations in Reykjavik, Iceland, to verifiably eliminate all US and USSR nuclear weapons collapsed when Reagan rejected Gorbachev’s stipulation that research on ballistic missile defenses be confined to laboratories (per the 1972 ABM Treaty).
Gorbachev had proposed and Reagan agreed to dismantling all nuclear weapons over a 10-year period, but Reagan stubbornly insisted there could be no constraints on his Strategic Defense Initiative, which he had been falsely assured was on the verge of a technological breakthrough.
In other words, Reagan put his faith in a dream that _might_ one day render ballistic missiles—and only ballistic missiles—“impotent and obsolete” over a concrete plan to achieve that goal within a decade. Reagan’s dream remains unfulfilled and nuclear weapons are still with us.
It’s worth noting (pun intended) that since Reagan launched the SDI in March 1983, the United States has spent more than $310,000,000,000 on various missile defense schemes, but to date we have not rendered ballistic missiles—or any other missiles—“impotent and obsolete.”
It’s also worth noting that Gorbachev’s proposal at Reykjavik, about which Reagan was enthusiastic until Gorbachev’s insistence on SDI R&D, was actually a pared-down version of a more sweeping proposal issued earlier that year to eliminate all nuclear weapons everywhere by 2000.
For more on that proposal, see:
And for more on this remarkable and nearly transformative top-level meeting, one that nevertheless presaged the end of the Cold War, see this excellent collection of previously secret US and Soviet documents published by the @NSArchive: nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2…:
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.