THE STALLED INTERACTION 189encouraging message should be passed to Gorbachëv. Shultz assured
Ambassador Dubinin that America was taking Soviet arms control
statements seriously and recognized the steps of progress in respect of
human rights in the USSR. Reagan, he said, welcomed the possibility
of another summit in the near future.^59
Weinberger disliked the direction that things were taking. On
12 June he struck back at Shultz in the follow-up meeting of the
National Security Planning Group. He contended that Gorbachëv only
wanted an arms treaty agreement because the USSR’s defence budget
had become unaffordable. In Weinberger’s opinion, the Soviet leader-
ship was thoroughly untrustworthy. He argued for a deployable space-
based defence system as a crucial requirement for American security.
Casey agreed with Weinberger, contending that America should
demand changes to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Shultz picked up
the gauntlet. While continuing with the Strategic Defense Initiative
and pursuing the ‘zero option’, he wanted to resume talks with
Moscow. Reagan sided with him. He repeated his willingness to share
the space-based defence technology with the entire world once all
nuclear weaponry had been destroyed.^60 He reminded everyone that
Gorbachëv was having to face down his ‘hardliners’; he also accepted
that Soviet leaders had genuine fear that ‘we seek a first-strike advan-
tage’. But he thought that Chernobyl had brought the General Secretary
to appreciate the dangers of a nuclear war. Until then he had doubted
Gorbachëv’s sincerity about disarmament. Now he felt more confident:
‘The time is right for something dramatic.’^61
He was right about the impact of the Chernobyl disaster on
Gorbachëv’s thinking. A year later, Gorbachëv was to tell Bush about
the danger facing both East and West:
If nuclear power reactors were destroyed in France or some of
these countries, it would be a kind of nuclear war. The elimination
of the effects of Chernobyl cost us four billion roubles. And this
was not even the most difficult situation. So the idea that one can
do something when a nuclear war starts is a fantasy. Therefore if
our foreign ministers cannot produce results in their arms control
negotiations, they should be fired.^62Even the Soviet military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda printed articles
along these lines.^63 Gorbachëv hoped that everyone in the American
leadership, then and now, shared the new understanding.
On 19 June 1986 Reagan delivered a speech at Glassboro High