ONE FOOT ON THE ACCELERATOR 147matching them.^56 Reagan and Shevardnadze spoke for three hours,
and Shultz told the press that the President had generally welcomed
what the Soviet Foreign Affairs Minister had put before him. But the
Strategic Defense Initiative was a big sticking point since Gorbachëv
had asked Reagan in his letter to halt work on it. Reagan told journal-
ists: ‘We are determined to go forward with the research.’^57
Geopolitics were in flux, and American leaders looked for support
from allies and friends. Some officials in Washington grew concerned
about the possibility that Gorbachëv might initiate a rapprochement
with Beijing. Deng had been repeating that America and the USSR
were equal obstacles to world peace and security; he had also eased the
tasks of Soviet diplomacy by criticizing America’s Strategic Defense
Initiative. Former President Nixon, on a private trip to China in
autumn 1985, counselled the Chinese leader that this sort of talk was
not going to make it easier for Reagan to continue the American
policy on technological transfer. Deng replied that Beijing would
reject every Soviet overture while the Kremlin occupied Afghanistan,
interfered in Cambodia and kept large forces on the Sino-Soviet
frontier; he strenuously denied that China would ever contemplate
selling on US technology to Moscow. Nixon had hit a raw nerve – and
Deng told him that the Chinese, regardless of their public statements,
saw the USSR as their biggest difficulty. Deng could see no fundamen-
tal change in the Kremlin’s policy on China since Gorbachëv had come
to power.^58
A month earlier, in October, he had in fact made an overture to
the new Soviet leader through Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was paying a
visit to China. He indicated that if the USSR helped in getting the
Vietnamese to withdraw from Cambodia, there would be political
room to consider a summit meeting with Gorbachëv. Deng was even
willing to travel to Moscow.^59
Nothing came of this very quickly, and neither China nor Japan
gave much real cause for Reagan to worry. He could feel confident
about Canada. His liveliest concerns were about Western Europe,
where several states – France, Belgium, Holland and even the United
Kingdom – kept a distance from American foreign and security policy
on one feature or another. Gorbachëv was obviously going to do what
he could to exert influence upon their governments. He predictably
picked France for his first foreign trip as General Secretary. The French
had withdrawn their forces from NATO’s integrated military com-
mand in 1966. Soviet foreign policy was to widen the division between