REAGAN’S WINDOW OF DEPARTURE 353since he became Chancellor in Bonn, the Warsaw Pact’s press had
denounced him for advocating German reunification, loading East
Germany with debt and playing one Warsaw Pact member country
against another. Gorbachëv was ending the chorus of rebuke. The one
thing that he insisted upon was that if Kohl wanted to enhance West
Germany’s situation, he would have to respect the ‘legacy of Yalta’.
Eastern Europe’s separate status was sacrosanct for him.^5
The Politburo sought to keep up the momentum of rapproche-
ment with Washington. On 28 August 1988 the Soviet authorities gave
American officials a demonstration of their agreed process of ‘liquidat-
ing’ intermediate nuclear missiles.^6 They also arranged visits to the
Krasnoyarsk radar station. Gorbachëv wanted to use this as a way of
enabling further treaties with the Americans before Reagan left the
White House. He wrote a letter for Shevardnadze to deliver in person
to the President, lamenting that there was still no agreement about
how to obtain a fifty per cent reduction in strategic nuclear weapons
and commenting that ‘it takes two to tango’.^7
On 23 September Shevardnadze met Reagan and his officials in
the Oval Office and remonstrated about the American refusal to take
reciprocal steps after the USSR’s recent moves. He asked permission
for Soviet experts to inspect the American radar stations in Thule and
Fylingdales. Carlucci smiled while signalling a refusal. Shultz light-
ened the mood by describing Shevardnadze as his ‘friend’ and focusing
on the projected agreements about nuclear explosion tests, regional
conflicts and human rights. When Shevardnadze continued to object
to the American radar stations, Shultz repeated that America would
never sign a treaty on strategic nuclear weapons while the Krasnoyarsk
station remained.^8 Reagan added his demand for the Berlin Wall to
be pulled down, stressing that he had never accepted the legitimacy of
the German Democratic Republic. But then he recognized that the
conversation was becoming unproductive. This was not at all what he
had intended. Abruptly he changed direction by proposing that the
Olympic Games should be awarded to Berlin. Shultz picked up
the idea and recounted how Hitler had refused to shake the hand of
the black athlete Jesse Owens at the last Olympics held there in 1936.
This encouraged Reagan to say how much pleasure he took in what the
two superpowers had achieved during his second term in office. He
expressed regret that his time in the White House would be soon be
over.^9
Nothing came of the Olympics idea, and new practical initiatives