Engineer Memoirs
Fortunately, even before the U.S. turned down Nitze's plan, the Soviets turned it
down in Moscow. I was greatly relieved. If Nitze had been successful in giving
up our Pershing IIs , we would never have achieved a satisfactory INF agreement.
Nitze was wrong. The Germans
courageously deployed P IIs and
GL CMs on their soil. As they had
threatened if deployments went
ahead, the Soviets walked out of the
INF treaty negotiations. We
continued our START negotiations
for several additional meetings. But
then Karpov told me that until the
INF problem was resolved the
Soviets would not come back to the
START negotiations. In December
of 1983, when we went home for the
Christmas break, we had no return
date in mind.
The talks remained suspended for a
year. Meanwhile, Brezhnev had died
and so had Andropov and Chemenko
who succeeded him. Gorbachev had
President Ronald Reagan, Paul Nitze, Edward
now emerged as the new Soviet
L.
and Vice President George Bush.
leader.
In January of 1985 Secretary Schultz met with Foreign Minister Gromyko in
Geneva. The Soviets said they would come back to the table but only if we
discussed the ABM treaty and space. We opposed this and wanted to negotiate
only START and INF. We said we were willing to talk about strategic defenses
but not about space. A compromise was worked out whereby there would be three
sets of negotiations, START, INF, and a new forum to deal with D&S [defense and
space].
The Soviets suggested, informally, that both sides start fresh with new negotiators.
Knowing how much stock they put in continuity, I didn't take this seriously and
recommended to the White House that they offer the job of negotiating D&S to
Max Kampelman. I had known Kampelman from my days in the Wilson Center
in 1979 when he was a member of the center's board of directors. Kampelman had
negotiated the Helsinki accords and had done a good job. When President Reagan
was elected, I recommended that Kampelman, although a Democrat, be kept on the
job. Nitze's wife was ill and he let it be known that he did not plan to go back to
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