ABSTRACT
Figure 36.1 Arms control treaties and conventions 1987-2002 574
Reagan and Gorbachev
Relations between the US and the Soviet Union changed at the beginning of 1985 with the arrival of a new leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, who embarked on economic and political reforms. At the end of 1985 Gorbachev launched a programme for economic reform in the Soviet Union that became known as ‘perestroika’. He made major personnel changes in the party and later the army leadership and replaced the long-serving foreign minister Andrei Gromyko with Eduard Shevardnadze. In their foreign policy Gorbachev and Shevardnadze embraced an approach known as ‘new thinking’. In March 1985 the Soviet Union resumed negotiations with the US on medium-range missiles (see §24.3), even though the earlier demand that these missiles be withdrawn from Western Europe had not yet been met. In October 1985 Gorbachev visited France, where he stated in a speech to parliament that nuclear weapons within range of each other’s territories would have to be abolished. In November Gorbachev met US President Reagan in Geneva, where he dropped the earlier Soviet demand that further negotiations would be conditional on the US abandoning its SDI project. Although no concrete results ensued, the relaxed atmosphere of the talks led to a rapprochement. Even so, there was a renewed chill in relations after this as a result of the US’s refusal to relinquish the Strategic Defence Initiative and its announcement in May 1986 that it no longer considered itself to be bound by the terms of SALT II, the
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks which in 1979 had resulted in the unratified Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.
