15. PRESENTING THE SOVIET PACKAGE
On 28 November 1985 Reagan sent a handwritten letter to Gorbachëv
that offered grounds for hope of further progress. The President wel-
comed their shared ambition to halt the arms race and abandon work
on new kinds of offensive nuclear weaponry. Reagan put the question:
‘And can’t our negotiators deal more frankly and openly with the
question of how to eliminate a first-strike potential on both sides?’
He admitted that the USSR had understandable concerns about the
American negotiating position; he also gave a welcome to Gorbachëv’s
wish for military withdrawal from Afghanistan and offered help to
achieve this outcome.^1 ‘In Geneva,’ he assured the General Secretary, ‘I
found our private sessions particularly useful. Both of us have advisers
and assistants, but, you know, in the final analysis, the responsibility to
preserve peace and increase cooperation is ours.’^2 Gorbachëv replied
in a constructive spirit, accepting Reagan’s sincerity in promising to
keep the Strategic Defense Initiative clear of developing first-strike
offensive weapons. He asked the President to accept that as General
Secretary he had to assess the objective potential of the research. For
this reason, he indicated, he would go on asking for the programme’s
abandonment as part of the process of rapprochement.^3
The President and General Secretary agreed to deliver a New Year’s
television address to each other’s people. The idea was Reagan’s, and
Gorbachëv greeted it with enthusiasm.^4 There had never been any-
thing like it. Reagan assumed that his powers of delivery would win
him friends with people in the USSR; Gorbachëv thought the same
in reverse about America. They had no deficiency in self-confidence.
On 5 December 1985 Reagan groaned to Foreign Trade Minister
Boris Aristov about the USSR’s failure to honour its purchasing obliga-
tions under the Long-Term Grain Agreement. While wanting to
expand trade between the two countries, he said, he could not afford
to overlook the interests of American cereal farmers.^5 When Com-
merce Secretary Baldrige visited Moscow a few days later, he assured