A Triumph of Realism

...It is the author's view that this was a crucial factor in bringing the Cold War to a happy end...

...Then there are some unusual cameo roles...

...But as Jack F. Matlock Jr...

...Interestingly, Horowitz was an administrative assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass...

...Still, when Reagan took office a lot of the world, especially Europe, held its breath...

...points out in this new book, "In fact, the Cold War had ended in spirit before he [H.W] took office as President...

...I knew that was not what the President wanted, but Peggy Noonan, who had written them, and Pat Buchanan, who supervised the preparation of the speeches, were adamant...

...By June 1985 he was eager for his first summit...

...They refused to take them out...

...In 1983 Matlock was brought back to Washington to be the Soviet specialist on the National Security Council (NSC...

...Although Reagan himself never made such a claim, his Vice President and successor did...

...who signaled to Reagan's people that he considered certain foreign policy matters above partisan politics and said he was happy to cooperate—and keep quiet about it...

...He and others on the NSC tried to explain to the writers that to use Reagan's report to attack Gorbachev and the Soviet Union "would strike the public as proof that he had no intention of trying to improve relations...

...Of course there were also those, on both sides, who devoted themselves to blocking any improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations...

...His denouncing the USSR as "the evil empire," his dramatically increasing American defense spending and his doggedly pursuing the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is said to have forced the Soviets to capitulate...

...Send in your draft without any indication that the NSC objects and we'll see what happens...

...He thus became a key participant in developing U.S...

...The day before the Geneva summit, with Matlock "playing" Gorbachev, he went through a full rehearsal using his ever present threeby-five cue cards...

...Matlock got the top analysts in the government to prepare 24 papers, each eight to 10 singlespaced pages long and organized to present a rounded picture of the Soviet Union and its people and of Gorbachev, the man...

...There is a strong cast of supporting players here too, beginning with Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze...

...In Matlock's words, "Whereas most departments would obey a decision by the President, one could never be sure that Weinberger would...

...In those days Weinberger was the embodiment of the hard-line, conservative wing of the Republican Party and he had important allies, extending to the White House Office of Communications...

...After Gorbachev came on the scene, Reagan was energized and engaged...

...In 1987 he was made Ambassador to the USSR and had unprecedented access to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his reform team...

...Yet such explanations were usually met with charges that Matlock was being "soft," "defeatist" and "somewhat pro-Soviet...

...He likes to laugh and more than others is influenced by the language of peace...

...Without their efforts neither the American President nor the Soviet General Secretary would have gotten his priorities right and neither would have been able to implement what he wanted to do...

...Mitterrand told Gorbachev that he would get nowhere with Reagan ifhe insisted the U.S...

...And he has persuaded me...

...But his nuanced portrait shows Gorbachev to be a man of substance, "the only Soviet or Russian leader in history to use force last, not first, to solve political problems...

...He is not a machine...

...But National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane was "struck by the President's spotty command of historical facts," so he encouraged Matlock to create a program that would provide Reagan with some knowledge and understanding of the Soviet Union before he faced its new leader...

...The result was what became known among the NSC staff as "Soviet Union 101...

...The potential nuclear Armageddon was always present to focus the mind, but for all the verbal fireworks of those years, there were actually no major military crises along the lines of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis or the 1973 Middle East War when the U.S...

...Similarly, he applauds Reagan's setting firm, realistic goals for the U.S.-Soviet relationship that proved helpful to both sides...

...On the American side, Defense Secretary Caspar W Weinberger was almost constantly at odds over Soviet policy with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the NSC, the State Department, and— hardly least—the President...

...They were far more than lieutenants carrying out their superiors' orders," Matlock stresses...

...To his credit" Matlock says, "the President was acutely aware that there were serious gaps in his knowledge," and made a real effort to cooperate in this cram course...

...Matlock is uniquely qualified to make the judgment that the Cold War "ended" and was not won—at least not by any one person or side...

...In 1984, we learn, Dr...

...give up SDI before there could be an agreement to reduce nuclear weapons...

...I think I can work with this guy...

...In the summer of 1986 French President François Mitterrand visited Moscow just after a meeting with his American counterpart...

...A few hours later Reagan came into breakfast carrying the speech draft with the three offending paragraphs marked out...

...But he thought that a little tinkering with the mechanism was all that was needed...

...Matlock faults Gorbachev for obsessing about SDI, a weapons system that would ne ver have been a thre at to the Russians because it wasn't ever likely to work...

...Reviewed by Barrie Dunsmore Former ABC News Correspondent After all the fulsome eulogies upon his death in early June, it would be easy to conclude that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War...

...By 4:30 a.m...

...Reagan's willingness to let realism trump ideology is a theme that runs through this important book...

...policy and was at Reagan's side during the Geneva, Reykjavik and Washington summits...

...Two decades later, while running the U. S. Embassy there as chargé d'affaires, he was named Ambassador to Czechoslovakia...

...Weinberger was utterly convinced that there was no potential benefit in negotiating anything with Soviet leaders and that most negotiations were dangerous traps...

...After hours of laborious editing there remained three passages in one of the speeches that Matlock was certain Gorbachev would take as a direct personal insult...

...At the close of the Geneva summit, the speechwriters put together several addresses on the summit's results for Reagan to deliver to NATO, the Congress and the American people...

...Of his adversary Matlock writes: "When he came to power Gorbachev still believed in the Soviet system as it had evolved...

...He knew it had its flaws, and serious ones...

...Instead he gives us a sophisticated insider's look at the people and happenings of the 1980s, one of the more tumultuous periods in the history of the Cold War...

...The other school, favored by Democrats and by many Western Europeans, thinks it was Gorbachev's courageous efforts to restructure his country—which did indeed end the power of the Communist Party and ultimately cause the breakup of the Soviet Union—that finally changed the world...

...As the diplomatic correspondent for ABC News during Reagan's first four years and the senior foreign correspondent working in Europe and the Soviet Union during the next four, I tended to lean toward that second school...

...We won the Cold War," boasted President George H.W...

...He continued, "Notwithstanding his political past, Reagan has the intuition that the tension must be ended...

...A career diplomat and Russian scholar, he had three assignments to Moscow starting in 1961...

...Since the end of the Cold War, two schools of thought have developed about how this menace that dominated international affairs for nearly half a century was defused...

...But Matlock belongs to neither school...

...One school, popular among Republicans, attributes the turn of events to Ronald Reagan's hard line...

...It is an irony that Gorbachev's policies eventually turned out to be not only more radical, but truly revolutionary, for they ended by destroying the system they were intended to save...

...His peers whom I have spoken to praise him for the balance of his skepticism and pragmatism...

...Matlock writes, "At a time when other Democrats were telling [Soviet] Ambassador [Anatoly F.] Dobrynin that Reagan was dangerous, Senator Kennedy's quiet coordination with the White House helped convince the Soviets eventually that Reagan was serious about negotiations...

...Turning to Buchanan Reagan said, "Pat, this has been a good meeting...

...Bush while campaigning for a second term...

...Matlock was not involved in fashioning the hard-line approach of Reagan's first term, but given the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rapid turnover of aging leaders in the Kremlin, he supports it...

...an exasperated Matlock gave in...

...All he had to do was set the terms of settlement...

...the only Soviet leader to place principle above personal rule...

...moved to stop Russian arms shipments to Egypt...

...Gorbachev later told one of his aides, "This is extremely important and I am taking special note of it...

...In my view, Gorbachev was unique among Soviet leaders in his desire to reform his country and any American President would have recognized that and tried to help him...

...I can't just keep poking him in the eye...

...All of the initial speech drafts were larded with disparaging statements about the Soviet Union and Communism," Matlock says, "and even contained slighting references to Gorbachev...

...Lawrence Horowitz gave the White House details of important contacts he had with a senior Soviet official in Moscow...

...Ultimately, he would sign the agreement to eliminate intermediate range nuclear weapons without resolving the SDI issue...

...By October Reagan was ready to discuss concrete issues and to work on talking points for his meetings...