ENDINGS 489USSR and America accepted a restriction to deploy no more than
6,000 nuclear warheads. According to an agreed understanding, each
superpower would reduce its military capacity to 1,600 missiles
launched from land, sea or air. This would involve the largest and most
complex process of arms reduction in history, and its final implemen-
tation in late 2001 was to result in the removal of about eighty per cent
of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. What had begun in
the middle of Reagan’s second term was at last being realized. The
missiles that could be fired from one continent to the heart of another
had been discussed at every summit. Their very existence constituted
the acute risks of the struggle between the superpowers. They were the
symbol and reality of the Cold War.
Gorbachëv and Bush were conscious of the momentous impor-
tance of the treaty, and Bush wanted to do nothing to destabilize the
Soviet administration. On 1 August he flew on to Ukraine. In his
speech in Kiev he declined to espouse Ukrainian independence and
condemned anyone who decided to ‘promote a suicidal nationalism
based on ethnic hatred’. He also warned Ukrainians to recognize that
instant prosperity was not achievable. The reaction in America was a
mixed one, and critics on the political right as well as in several
national diasporas charged Bush with betraying the cause of the unfree
peoples. Scowcroft sprang to the President’s defence. He pointed out
that Bush followed the traditional policy of refusing to recognize the
incorporation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the USSR. At
the same time, Scowcroft asserted, Americans should appreciate that a
decent future for the Soviet population required a commitment to
ethnic tolerance, respect for minorities and a truly open society.
Political democracy alone was not enough. Building a better society
would require wisdom and caution – and Bush had attempted to show
favour neither to the central government in Moscow nor to its enemies
in the republics.^44
He had left Gorbachëv in Moscow finalizing a plan, which he co-
ordinated with Yeltsin, to introduce a new Union Treaty on 20 August
granting broad powers to republican administrations. Bush supported
his constitutional reform and assured him by letter that he had not
said anything untoward in Kiev.^45 Tired by his exertions, Gorbachëv
took a vacation in Crimea and refreshed himself in time for the sign-
ing ceremony. He stayed in the Yuzhny sanatorium at Foros.^46 Pavlov
and Yeltsin sent him some proposed amendments which Gorbachëv