3. THE REAGANAUTS
Everyone Reagan brought into his administration wanted to avoid
undue concessions to the USSR. They scorned the idea of contain-
ment. They shared the President’s contempt for détente and his resolve
to overtake the other superpower in the arms race. The Reaganauts, as
they were sometimes called, wanted America to show a new face to
the world and challenge the Soviet leadership in every dimension of its
activity. None of Reagan’s appointees thought that Moscow would
come to acceptable terms with Washington until American military
power attained superiority. This dictum was fixed in the White House
credo and was repeated time and time again by the President and his
officials. It was scarcely surprising that when Reagan declared that he
wanted to prevent world war and abolish all nuclear weapons, he failed
to convince the Kremlin. The truth was that nearly every one of his
appointees believed that the sheer frightfulness of atomic bombs had
served to keep the peace since 1945. If nuclear weaponry were to be
banned, there would immediately be global insecurity that could soon
lead to world war. American arms control officials were distinctly
unenthusiastic about his goal of abolishing all nuclear weapons. Not
until Reagan was elected for a second presidential term did Secretary
of State George Shultz hear any of them even discussing the topic.^1
The Soviet leadership judged the President by his threats and
actions as well as by the kind of people he promoted to high office.
Reagan had campaigned for the presidency as someone who would
take no nonsense from the USSR. Little wonder that the Politburo did
not see him as a peacemaker.
In 1976, shortly before he stood for President against the Demo-
cratic challenger Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford had allowed a review of
policy towards the USSR. He and the then CIA Director George Bush
did this in a most unusual way by commissioning two rival reports,
one by Team A and the other by Team B. Team A consisted of CIA
experts and people who agreed with their analysis; Team B, headed by