TO GENEVA 155from his predecessors, but sixty-two per cent of them – according to a
Harris poll – believed he could not be trusted. Reagan could depart
for Switzerland in a calm frame of mind.^31 On 14 November 1985 he
gave an address to the nation on television: ‘This, then, is why I go to
Geneva – to build a lasting peace.’^32 Behind the scenes, ex-President
Nixon steadied Reagan’s nerve in a friendly fashion.^33 The US delega-
tion at Geneva, headed by Max Kampelman, shared the objective of an
arms reduction agreement while cautioning against undue conces-
sions. The British and French nuclear forces should be excluded from
the talks. America’s military modernization and the Strategic Defense
Initiative should be continued; and Gorbachëv should be told to
dismantle the Krasnoyarsk radar station.^34 If the Soviet delegation
travelled with confidence, the Americans matched them in temper.
The Swiss authorities kept crowds of people waving anti-Soviet
placards away from the Soviet delegation, but Gorbachëv was anyway
adept at rolling with the tide. He knew that Western lobby groups
would exploit his arrival for their own ends, and he refrained from
overreacting to the placards and oral abuse. He fixed his mind on
Reagan rather than on local protests.
Reagan’s initial problem was not in Geneva but in Washington.
Defense Secretary Weinberger thought the summit was a waste of time
at best and at worst even dangerous. His concern was that the Presi-
dent, left to himself, might make undesirable compromises with the
dynamic General Secretary. Weinberger was not part of the American
delegation. He decided to make his mark on the proceedings by leak-
ing his thoughts to the New York Times just days before Reagan left for
Europe. This took the form of a memo he had written to Reagan
against any idea of acceding to the resumption of the START talks or
to the abandonment of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Weinberger
underscored the USSR’s attested violations of such treaties as existed.
The American priority at the summit, he went on, should be to insist
that any progress in fresh talks would depend on Moscow complying
with its commitments and allowing a reliable system of verification.^35
Another President might have fired Weinberger for the embarrass-
ment he was causing him, but Reagan was a reluctant disciplinarian
- and he anyway shared Weinberger’s commitment to American mili-
tary modernization.
On 19 November 1985 Reagan welcomed Gorbachëv to the
summit at the Maison de Saussure, which the Aga Khan had put at
their disposal. This was an eighteenth-century chateau near the