Pic Of The Moment: That Trump/Kim Summit In Full

[TomVilmer]

18. The walk out is now hailed as a Reagan Moment, but...

... an American Conservative has a better memory about 1986 and The Art Of The Deal then. Gorbachev had offered to eliminate all strategic forces, not just ballistic missiles. Reagan then countered that it would be fine with him if they could agree to eliminate all nuclear weapons. They almost had an agreement, but then president Ronald Reagan walked out, clinging to his Star Wars project:

What's interesting is that Reagan's decision not to give up on SDI is arguably one of the biggest missed opportunities in the history of arms control. Ever since, it has been hailed and built up in Republican mythology as an example of what Reagan got right dealing with the Soviets.

It would be easy enough to dismiss such selective memory of how Reagan related to Gorbachev as more of the usual ideological Reaganolatry that is unfortunately so common, but it becomes more meaningful when this distorted interpretation of Reagan's second term is used to mislead the audience into thinking that Reagan was opposed to diplomatic flexibility.

In fact, the failure of the Reykjavik summit encouraged flexibility on both sides.

Despite the apparent failure at Reykjavik the two parties resumed negotiations and the following year signed the INF treaty, totally eliminating the intermediate range missiles. By 1991 the two sides agreed on a START treaty that cut the US and Soviet nuclear arsenals by 80% over the next decade.

But they could have eliminated all nuclear weapons...