The Foreign Service Journal, June 2012

case they should conclude the treaty could not be worked out. There were no delegation “doves,” just variations of hawkish plumage. Eventually, though, the treaty was completed. A midnight, champagne- soaked initializing ceremony on Dec. 6-7, 1987, was mixed with tears of re- lief and exhaustion as Glitman signed each page. The flight to Washington in an Air Force C-130 also carried the Soviet delegation leaders, along with their copy of the treaty text in a re- frigerator-size computer and the sec- retary who reportedly typed every word. Our own copies were on “high-tech” floppy disks of the era (with extra U.S. copies FedEx-ed to Washington in case the C-130 didn’t make it). The Dec. 8, 1987, signing cere- mony was heavy on Washington big- shots and light on delegation action officers. Still, we counted it as a suc- cess that we had been able to move the signing ceremony from Dec. 7 to Dec. 8, despite the objections of those so bereft of historical perspective that they would have signed the agree- ment on Pearl Harbor Day. We must give Gorbachev credit for jump-starting the negotiations into a three-headed INF, START and de- fense/space process. It took consid- erable effort by the Soviets to convince the West that they were se- rious about seeking an obtainable agreement. Ensuring that was the case would be epitomized by the “trust but verify” theme of President Ronald Reagan’s signing speech. On to the Senate We were painfully aware of treaties that had hit the shoals of the U.S. Sen- ate and sunk without a trace. So throughout the negotiations, we en- gaged a core group of INF-cognizant senators to facilitate the prospective ratification. Unfortunately, the process didn’t lend itself to casual congressional engagement, so until the endgame in Geneva the negotia- tions often appeared to be on a slow road to nowhere. But now interest on Capitol Hill ramped up, particularly because 1988 was an election year. Republicans wanted a successful arms control treaty to illustrate the theme of “peace through strength” (and military spending) that characterized the Rea- gan presidency. The Democrats also wanted the treaty, but also wished to deny the GOP credit for securing it. How to square the circle? How to prevent axiomatic opponents to any deal with the devil (Moscow) — e.g., political Neanderthals such as Sena- tor Jesse Helms, R-N.C. — from scut- tling the treaty without giving Vice President George H.W. Bush a leg up in the presidential campaign? The answer was twofold. First, Senate Democrats claimed that the treaty was flawed — not fatally so, but sufficiently to require their support to fix it. Simultaneously, they sought to extract commitments from the Rea- gan administration on other matters in return for letting the treaty proceed to a floor vote. The “fix it” element was led by Senator Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who in- sisted that linguistic inadequacies (such as a double-negative in one clause) would leave the Soviets free to produce a key element of the SS-20. Despite extensive rebuttals of such claims, ultimately the INF negotiators returned to Geneva for a marathon session with puzzled but intensely ir- ritated Soviets that “fixed” the point, garnering Nunn’s vote. The “pound of flesh” approach bombarded the administration with hundreds of questions in dozens of “packages,” many of them of mind- numbing complexity. One key issue was the “Sofaer Doctrine,” under which the administration claimed it could interpret a treaty (notably the Antiballistic Missile Treaty) based on material in the negotiating record, but not released to the Senate. In re- sponse, the Senate demanded the en- tire INF negotiating record — a massive and tediously time-consum- ing compilation that one doubts any senator ever reviewed. Meanwhile, the ratification process dragged on. Amb. Glitman repeat- edly testified before the Senate and House, and the packages of congres- sional questions floundered in a slough of clearances. Fears began to mount that election politics would push the agreement into the “too hard” box, which meant action would be deferred until 1989. Fortunately, the forcing event of a Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Mos- cow at the end of May 1988 stopped the Senate’s reindeer games. Taking a deep breath, the Senate dashed through scripted floor speeches and voted 93-5 to ratify the INF Treaty. Reagan and Gorbachev exchanged rat- ified texts in Moscow, and the agree- ment entered into force on June 1, 1988. There was much work ahead to structure the manner of inspection and destruction, but by 1991 the last INF missile had been decommis- sioned. And that achievement cleared the road for serious arms control agreements embracing both strategic and conventional weaponry. J U N E 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 Substantial elements within the Reagan administration clearly wanted no obtainable agreement to be reached.