TO GENEVA 153the summit.^18 This in turn worried his own friends on the American
political right. It would be the President’s first encounter with a
General Secretary, and Gorbachëv’s performance in Paris had proved
that he was a formidable politician with a panoply of skills. Senator
Jesse Helms feared that Reagan might succumb to his charm and make
undesirable concessions. On 29 October Helms and a group of sen-
ators signed a letter asking him to protest against violations of treaty
obligations; they referred approvingly to Defense Secretary Weinberg-
er’s statements on the topic.^19 Reagan refused to be deflected. He used
his next weekly radio address to inform Americans that he would
pursue the proposal for a drastic cut in the number of nuclear weapons
- he reminded everyone that he had been proposing roughly the same
reduction in strategic missiles for more than three years. He said he
felt ‘encouraged because, after a long wait, legitimate negotiations are
under way’.^20
Shultz took National Security Adviser McFarlane with him to
Moscow for his meetings of 4–5 November 1985. Gorbachëv readied
himself for some tough talking. The Americans would almost certainly
raise questions about regional conflicts, cultural and scientific ex -
changes and human rights.^21 If this was likely to be their approach,
Gorbachëv decided to get his retaliation in first. No sooner had he
shaken hands with Shultz than he delivered a tirade against the Stra-
tegic Defense Initiative. He described the American administration as
operating on the basis of the thinking laid out in the Hoover Institu-
tion’s publication America in the Eighties. He accused America of
aiming at military superiority. He told Shultz that the Americans
should cease to think that the USSR was in economic trouble and will-
ing to yield to them in order to solve its internal problems. He warned
that he would reject any kind of ‘linkage’ in the Soviet–American talks
such as the Americans had practised in the Nixon years, and he voiced
resentment about American objections to the abuse of human rights
in the USSR.^22 He was brusque with Shultz to the point of unpleasant-
ness.^23 He was obviously trying to drive home the message that he
would be no soft touch in Switzerland.
Shultz weathered the storm and, once back in Washington, told
Reagan about Gorbachëv’s frantic comments about the Strategic
Defense Initiative.^24 It was inept of the Soviet leader to reveal his sense
of the USSR’s vulnerability, and Shultz advised the President to spell
out the need for the Politburo to revise its thinking about America.
America was not an aggressive power; it was not run by its military-