Reagan Roundtable: The Art of the Deal
The Soviet politburo fared no better with arms control with Reagan than did the leaders of the Democratic party on tax cuts and tax reform. That Reagan was disinclined to make the sort of breezy, one-sided, concessions that had been the hallmark of Kissinger’s approach to SALT was made dramatically clear by Reagan’s appointment of Paul Nitze, the father of NSC-68 and co-founder of Team B, as his adviser on arms control and chief negotiator foe the INF treaty talks. Reagan’s propensity to treat the Soviets in his public speeches as if their Communist ideology were illegitimate and dangerous gave the Soviet leaders fits.
Longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin remained a dedicated Communist apparatchik and a skillful advocate of the Soviet position even after the demise of the USSR, but his comments about Reagan in his memoir In Confidence, while laden with frustration and incomprehension, are not the picture often seen of Reagan in the MSM:
-
- Brezhnev and his colleagus found themselves dealing with something truly new, a deeply disturbing figure who tenaciously advanced a course that profoundly offended and alarmed them.
- To me, the directness and insouciance of his remarks confirms once again my belief that personal conviction underwrote Reagan’s approach to the Soviets and everything associated with us, and not just some political pose.
- It was evident from Shultz’s Behavior during our White House conversation and long afterward that Reagan was the real boss, and that the secretary of state carried out his instructions. Shultz hardly intervened in the conversation and ostensibly agreed with Reagan throughout. I even had the impression, perhaps an erroneous one, that the secretary of state was somewhat afraid of the president.
As Dobrynin’s memois meander slowly, as diplomatic tomes are wont to do, the Soviets ultimately, by stubborn, painful inches born of endless meetings, bent to many of Reagan’s positions, orginally regarded by them as absolutely intolerable: the zero option, exit visas for Pentacostal dissidents, SDI research and most dramatic of all, consenting to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, occurring the year Reagan left office.
Ronald Reagan, not Mikhail Gorbachev, understood the art of the deal.
Page 2 of 2 | Previous page
J. Scott:
February 18th, 2011 at 1:30 am
Great post, Zen. By the time Reagan became president, he knew himself and he viscerally knew his positions on the issues. Negotiating from a position of intellectual comfort allowed Reagan to get inside the OODA of his political adversaries; he knew the game, changed the rules, and thankfully prevailed. He is the last adult we’ve had occupying the White House; his successors are, by comparison, clueless poll-driven stewards at best.
M. Frese:
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:36 pm
The Reagan victories you describe are not classic win-win negotiation results. They are full-on unconditional surrender by his opponents in the face of his implacable resolve not to yield an inch on his principles.
With Reagan, they dealt with a chain mail fist in a velvet glove. It was never a deal. It was always war.
zen:
February 22nd, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Hi M. Frese,
.
I think that description fits Reagan and the Soviets far better than Reagan and the Democrats, where, for example, 1986 Tax Reform, Reagan had to give Bradley and Rostenkowski a large say in the details. Some of Tip O’Neill’s horror came from his having regarded the ability of House Democrats to totally dominate the domestic agenda of presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon as "normal" which made actual legislative compromises with Reagan appear as crushing Reagan victories in contrast. Even with the first tax cuts and budget bills, the House Dems still forced modifications on the administration but not being able to flatly say "no" or override a veto anymore came as a shock to the House leadership.