The INF Treaty of 1987

Der von Ronald Reagan und Michail Gorbatschow am 8. Dezember 1987 unterzeichnete »Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty«, kurz INF-Vertrag, stellte einen Meilenstein der nuklearen Abrüstungsverhandlungen zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika und der Sowjetunion dar. Im Jahr 2019 wurde er von Russland und den USA gekündigt. Der englischsprachige Band untersucht die Vorgeschichte des Abkommens, dessen Implementierung und Folgen sowohl in den beiden Supermächten als auch in den mit ihnen verbündeten Staaten. Er ist damit die erste umfassende Darstellung eines der wichtigsten Abrüstungsabkommen der jüngsten Zeit

The Last Superpower Summits

This book publishes for the first time in print every word the American and Soviet leaders – Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George H.W. Bush – said to each other in their superpower summits from 1985 to 1991. Obtained by the authors through the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S., from the Gorbachev Foundation and the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, and from the personal donation of Anatoly Chernyaev, these previously Top Secret verbatim transcripts combine with key declassified preparatory and after-action documents from both sides to create a unique interactive documentary record of these historic highest-level talks – the conversations that ended the Cold War

The Logic of 1989: The Soviet Peaceful Withdrawal from Eastern Europe

The Cold War came to an end in the exact geographical region where it began. In 1989, Eastern Europe became the epicenter of breathtaking changes that went beyond all Western expectations, Soviet fears, and the hopes of the East Europeans themselves. The non-violent and even harmonious nature of the change was naturally welcome but it was also puzzling to contemporaries, just as it still is to students of international politics today, who see it as a kind of beautiful aberration from the real..

Chapter 7. The Washington and Camp David summit, 1990

The Washington summit at the end of May and early June 1990 showcased the American president, George H.W. Bush, at his most statesmanlike, and the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, on the downward slope of what would be, for him and for hopes of reform in the Soviet Union, a “truly tragic” year. Gorbachev for the first time appeared at a superpower summit as supplicant rather than equal, implicitly seeking American economic help (his aides would do so explicitly), and practically begging B..

Chapter 8. The Helsinki summit, Paris CSCE summit, and the war in the Gulf, 1990

When Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the new post-Cold War relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union encountered its first real test. It was especially crucial for the Soviet side, confronting Mikhail Gorbachev with a difficult challenge to his foreign policy of new thinking. Would he abandon a traditional Soviet ally in the Middle East and side with his Cold War opponents—the United States and the U.N. coalition—or would he play the traditional superpower game, tryin..

Chapter 5. The Governors Island summit, 1988

The last official meeting between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev—after four spectacular summits that commanded world attention at Geneva 1985, Reykjavik 1986, Washington 1987 and Moscow 1988—took place on an island in New York harbor on December 7, 1988, during the Soviet leader’s trip to deliver his now-famous United Nations speech announcing unilateral arms and troops cuts and—to many observers—declaring the ideological end of the Cold War. This Reagan-Gorbachev finale als..

Chapter 1. The Geneva summit, 1985

The most striking aspect of the Geneva summit in November 1985 was that it occurred at all. More than six years had passed since the last time the leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union had met—in Vienna in 1979—and since then the détente of the 1970s had come completely apart; with crises in Nicaragua, Iran, and the Horn of Africa; the demise of the SALT II arms control treaty; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; grain and Olympic boycotts in 1980; and dramatic U.S. defense spending increa..

Chapter 3. The Washington summit, 1987

The Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington in December 1987 produced the substantive high point of all their meetings—the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty eliminating a whole class of nuclear weapons. The ceremony took place at the exact time determined by Nancy Reagan’s astrologer, and the senior diplomatic correspondent Don Oberdorfer described the signing as “a spectacular public performance broadcast live around the world.” Yet the declassified documents behind..