44 JULY-AUGUST 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL It’s wonderful to hear a diplomat say ... “I used FRUS in college, and it opened up a new world to me.” he was not happy that I had not included all the thousands of pages that he and others on the delegation had sent via front channels, and back channels, from Geneva to Washington. How could I leave all that out? Well, it’s not easy. LET: What’s the most rewarding part of the job? JGW: It’s wonderful to hear a diplomat say some variant of “I used FRUS in college, and it opened up a new world to me.” As we inch closer to the present with these volumes, more of the participants in them are still alive—and in even more instances the work of their mentors appears in the volumes. Let me be completely honest though: Seeing a volume appear in print and online is the single most rewarding part. It is deeply satisfying. We have more than 40 volumes in the interagency declassification pipeline. That means my colleagues and I have selected and annotated all the documents, the volumes have gone through multiple internal peer reviews, and in many instances, the volume is 99 percent declassified. And it’s that final 1 percent that can take a decade. LET: Do you have a favorite “hidden gem” from the START I research? JGW: Even though the latest volume formally covers 1989–1991, I found a really interesting document from September 1988, where Vice President George H.W. Bush meets with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze— during the height of the U.S. presidential campaign—and tells him that should he win, he would have to work very hard to win the support of conservative Republicans to ratify a START agreement. It’s a gem that shows Bush’s private candor—what he said to Shevardnadze is not quite how he would have phrased things publicly. LET: How did you find your way into this career? JGW: I trace my interest in the Cold War back to watching the CNN documentary series about it in high school in the mid-1990s. I was in the Vassar College Main Library on the morning of September 11, 2001—everyone alive then remembers where they were. In subsequent years, I became moderately obsessed with the ideas, events, and people that brought about the end of the Cold War. From 2005 to 2011, I was fortunate to be writing a dissertation at the University of Virginia, with a wonderful adviser, Melvyn P. Leffler, on the latter years of the Cold War just as the transcripts of the summits of the Reagan-Gorbachev encounters were being declassified. In 2011 the Office of the Historian was looking for folks with a background in the Reagan archives to keep digging into the documents and produce the FRUS volumes for the Reagan administration. They hired both me and Elizabeth Charles, who has been a dear friend and colleague. So, my career has featured cascading good fortune. LET: What’s one FRUS volume you think every American should read, and why? JGW: My longtime colleague Kristin Ahlberg’s Foundations of Foreign Policy, which is Volume I in the FRUS set on the Reagan administration [1981–1988]. Kristin reviewed several dozen Reagan volumes while also preparing that one; it covers the foundational documents of not only 1981–1988, but also important moments in Reagan’s campaign for the presidency [1975–1980]. Kristin has played some role in virtually every FRUS volume the office has released this century. She’s a national treasure. LET: Is there a particular period or policy area you find especially fascinating to work on? Why? JGW: I have spent much of the past 20 years focused on the end of the Cold War. I conceive of that period as roughly 1979–1991. What’s fascinating to me is to discover the origins of a story that becomes really important and also the fact that there is always another angle to consider. With respect to START I, 1989–1991, one such story is how the United States and Russia—after the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991—sketched out the follow-on negotiations that led to START II, which President George H.W. Bush and President Boris Yeltsin signed in January 1993. START II was supposed to eliminate multiple independent reentry vehicles [MIRVs] on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles [ICBMs]. While it never entered into force, it was a landmark achievement I think policymakers ought to consider when they are thinking about the long-term goals of any potential negotiations.
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