366 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
size of Soviet conventional forces in Europe. In Genscher’s opinion, he
should also immediately conduct a unilateral reduction in tactical
nuclear missiles. The Bush administration saw his intervention as
some sort of challenge to America’s dominance of policy-making.
Thatcher aligned herself with the Americans; she wrote in abrupt
terms to Kohl that he should apply some restraint to Genscher. She
and Bush at least agreed that NATO had to present a common face
to the Warsaw Pact. Bush started from a simple premise: if Western
Europe wanted America to continue to guarantee its security, it had to
accept the retention of nuclear missiles. When word went round the
allied capitals about all this, Mitterrand commented: ‘The new [Ameri-
can] administration will be even more brutal than the previous one.’^11
On 10 January Gorbachëv strove to assure the Party Central Com-
mittee plenum that Reagan’s departure would make no difference to
world politics. He declared the Cold War on the wane. He looked for-
ward to working for agreement on strategic offensive and chemical
weapons.^12 As usual it fell to the Big Five to make the preparations. On
16 January they discussed the technicalities of calculating the military
balance in diverse arms categories. According to Shevardnadze, the
USSR had more land-based nuclear weapons but fewer sea-launched
missiles. He hoped that America, like the USSR, would give up its pro-
gramme to upgrade tactical nuclear weaponry.^13
He found time in his own schedule for talks with Kissinger, who
called for the two superpowers to focus on the fundamental questions
of world politics and avoid a preoccupation with the details of dis-
armament. He assured Gorbachëv that Bush did not share Reagan’s
intense commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative.^14 The rest of
his message was blunt, even crude. He asked Gorbachëv why he had
taken ‘idealism’ as his compass and based his policies on concepts of
good and evil.^15 He was still thinking as he always had done. He hinted
that the USSR and the Americans should agree on a ‘condominium’
over Europe. He said that this would ensure that ‘the Europeans did
not play up’.^16 Giscard was more tactful but no less disturbing. He
enquired how Moscow would react if the East Europeans applied for
membership of the European Economic Community.^17 Kissinger told
Yakovlev of his concern about any idea for the withdrawal of Soviet
forces from Eastern Europe; he warned about ‘the adventurism of the
Europeans themselves’ and said it would be ‘politically harder for us of
necessity to return [our forces] there than for the Soviet Union’.^18 Gor-
bachëv refused to be drawn into any such discussion. He intended to