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CHAPTER 13Drawn to Summits

Political Cartoons on President Reagan and the Arms Race

“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing will begin in five minutes.” President Ronald Reagan was joking, of course. It was a Saturday morning in the late summer of 1984; he was vacationing at his ranch in Santa Barbara, California, and having a bit of fun while he tested the sound levels on the microphone set up to record his weekly radio message. The president was, in effect, drawing an oral cartoon of himself: his joke grossly exaggerated his critics’ view of him as a “commie hater” and warmonger, making the criticism so ridiculous that even the radio technicians in the room laughed. The only problem was that the microphone was on, and it was broadcasting. The whole world, including officials in the Soviet Union, heard the “joke,” and they took it as evidence of the president’s genuine feelings; his humor, they said, revealed his authentic hatred for the Russian people and his desire to destroy them. Some of Reagan’s critics in the United States agreed with that analysis; other critics viewed the gaffe as proof that the president was too clumsy and simpleminded to handle delicate diplomacy.
The irony in the story is that 1984, the year Reagan ran for reelection, marks a turning point in his relationship with the Soviet Union and the start of Reagan’s open dialogue with the Soviet leadership on the subject of nuclear arms limitation. In his first term, the president had reversed a twenty-year trend toward “détente” — the relaxing of tensions between the world’s two military superpowers — and had emphasized instead his ideological view of communism as a corrupt political and economic system bent on global domination. In that first term, Reagan had used aggressive rhetoric to describe the Soviet Union, calling it an “evil empire” and promising that the West would not simply contain communism, which had been its policy since the 1940s, but would “transcend communism” and relegate the Soviet system to the “ash heap of history.” Beyond the warlike language, Reagan’s first term in office was marked by the first complete breakdown of arms limitations talks in twenty years and was the first time since Harry Truman’s presidency that there was no “summit,” or top-level meeting between the two superpower leaders. Those who worried about this pattern in Reagan’s first term had trouble dismissing as a “joke” his accidental on-air remark about bombing the Russians.
Ronald Reagan brought to the presidency two long-standing convictions: that Soviet military power was a grave threat to the United States and to world peace and that the Soviet economic system was on the verge of collapse. Arguing that a buildup of U.S. military power either would scare the Soviets into arms control negotiations or would bankrupt their economy by forcing them to match U.S. spending, Reagan insisted on massive increases in the defense budget. In his first year in office, he won congressional approval for a 25 percent increase, producing the largest military authorization bill in U.S. history. By the end of Reagan’s two terms, his administration’s highly publicized weapons expenditures had expanded the defense budget by 40 percent. “We must keep the heat on these people,” he told one political ally in 1982. “What I want is to bring them to their knees so that they will disarm and let us disarm; but we have got to do it by keeping the heat on.”
The American people had mixed feelings about Reagan’s “heat on” strategy. The dramatic expansion in military spending, when coupled with Reagan’s tax cuts for upper-income earners, produced soaring federal budget deficits as well as a barrage of criticism for “Reaganomics.” Massive cuts in social spending for the poor, elderly, and children did not offset increases in military expenditures, and tax cuts intended to spur the economy failed to generate enough revenue to pay for all the new weapons. In 1981, Reagan’s first year in office, only 20 percent of Americans responding to one poll said that the United States spent “too much” on defense; by 1985, that figure had risen to 66 percent. By then, the federal deficit had grown 134 percent, from $907 billion to more than $2 trillion, and many feared that Reaganomics would bring the United States to its own economic knees.
Impervious to public opinion on foreign and military policy, Reagan continued to pursue his own agenda of peace through military strength. In early 1983, he announced that his Defense Department would pursue an expensive line of research and development on a strategic defense initiative (SDI) — quickly dubbed “Star Wars” — which the president envisioned as a space-based shield against nuclear attack. For Reagan, SDI was the ultimate expression of his desire to avoid nuclear war, but opponents of nuclear weapons did not perceive this hard-line, anticommunist, promilitary president as their ally and scoffed when he promised to share SDI with the Soviets. Many in the scientific community, meanwhile, regarded SDI as science fiction, a product of the president’s experience as a Hollywood actor.
Few were aware in 1983 that President Reagan was increasingly convinced of the need for arms control talks with the “evil empire.” The United States military buildup had, as intended, frightened the Soviets, not into submission but into greater certitude that the United States was about to attack. Events in late 1983 impressed upon Reagan the high stakes of his military gamble. In September, the Soviets accidentally shot down a civilian Korean airliner, causing temporary panic among U.S. leaders. Concerned that the president did not fully appreciate the risks involved in nuclear war, Pentagon officials forced Reagan to listen to briefings on possible nuclear war scenarios; the Soviets’ near-fatal overreaction to a large-scale U.S.-led military war game in November made those scenarios seem more plausible. Fear of nuclear annihilation also made its way into popular culture and into the screening room at the White House. In November 1983, Reagan viewed a television drama, The Day After, which imagined life in Lawrence, Kansas, following a nuclear war. In his diary, he said that the film was “very effective and left me greatly depressed.” He later claimed in his autobiography that the drama moved him to alter U.S. policy on a nuclear war.
In a major address favoring nuclear arms control in January 1984, Reagan signaled that his priorities were shifting away from defeating the Soviet Union and toward reducing nuclear weapons. Some questioned the sincerity of his call for talks to “begin now,” noting that it coincided with his run for reelection, but historians with access to internal memos and Reagan’s own diary find that Reagan was indeed re ing his priorities.
No U.S. president can single-handedly bend world events to his will. Reagan’s new priorities would not have mattered had there not been, simultaneously, a remarkable series of developments in the Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union since 1964, died in 1982 at age seventy-five. He was followed in quick succession by two equally elderly, equally conservative representatives of the communist regime: Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Then, in March 1985, the Soviet Politburo elected reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev to the government’s top post. Twenty years younger than Reagan, Gorbachev emphasized glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring), insisting that reduced military spending was vital to make the communist economic system more globally competitive with U.S. capitalism and calling for a negotiated end to the arms race. The American public responded positively to Gorbachev’s vision as well as to his winning personal style. The Soviet leader, whose broad smile and prominent forehead birthmark made him instantly recognizable, was affectionately nicknamed “Gorby,” and he became a real personality match for the famously charming U.S. president.
In November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland, Reagan and Gorbachev held their first summit meeting. The great achievement of that summit was that the two world leaders actually talked alone, with only two translators in the room, for more than two hours, engaging in the most honest exchange of ideas in U.S.-Soviet history. They spoke seriously of a 50 percent reduction in long-range missiles and of drastic reductions in “intermediate” weapons. Although the two leaders got along and believed that they could work together productively, Reagan’s commitment to pursuing the still-untested SDI was unacceptable to Gorbachev. Reagan viewed SDI as a guarantor of peace: both sides would have a shield rendering nuclear weapons useless. Gorbachev viewed it as a costly extension of the arms race, arguing that eliminating nuclear weapons would make SDI unnecessary. Still, they ended their first meeting with the remarkable joint statement that nuclear war “cannot be won and must never be fought” and with the promise that neither nation would “seek to achieve military superiority.”

Figure 13.1. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev Meet in Geneva, 1985

 This photograph captures the mood at the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit, held in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 19, 1985. The two men met with only interpreters for an hour in the morning and then participated in more public discussions. In the late afternoon, they walked alone to a pool house on the shore of Lake Geneva and, with only interpreters present, held a genuine conversation about their mutual need for trust and a reduction in weapons. At the end of the day, Reagan told a diplomatic aide, “You’re right, I did like him.”

The Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, just one year later, brought the two nations to the brink of peace; the two leaders seriously negotiated a plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Private conversations between the two leaders and group meetings between arms negotiators were bold, innovative, and rather impetuous. It appeared that the euphoric momentum of the meeting was headed toward a 50 percent cut in strategic long-range weapons, an elimination of Soviet and U.S. intermediate weapons in Europe, and a commitment to more reductions in the future. Although the two-day meeting was scheduled to end at noon on the second day, Reagan and Gorbachev, and their negotiating teams, kept working until 7:30 p.m., believing a deal was imminent. In the end, however, the two leaders left Reykjavik with nothing to show for their labors. The whole package unraveled over SDI. Reagan insisted that the United States be allowed to continue research and development of this still-hypothetical system, both in laboratories and in space. Gorbachev, worried that the Soviet budget could not fund SDI research in space, insisted that research be limited to laboratories. Neither leader would budge on this point.
The collapse of the Reykjavik summit did not mean the end of U.S.-Soviet discussions over arms control or the end of Reagan-Gorbachev summits. The two leaders met again in Washington, D.C., in December 1987, at a time when both were in political trouble at home and in need of a foreign policy success. Reagan’s stature had been diminished by a political scandal involving illegal weapons deals with Iran and Nicaraguan “contra” fighters. Meanwhile, Gorbachev was becoming increasingly unpopular with antireformist Soviet politicians, and he faced a costly quagmire in Afghanistan, where the Soviet attempt to control that country was losing to U.S.-funded Islamic fundamentalists. The Washington summit produced an agreement to eliminate certain intermediate nuclear weapons, accounting for just 4 percent of each nation’s arsenals. It was a small step toward strategic arms reduction talks, or START, a step aided by the fact that Gorbachev now regarded SDI as a technical impossibility. He was quite willing to let the United States waste billions of dollars on a defense shield that could be breached for far less money.
Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, traveled to Moscow, Russia, in May 1988 for his fourth summit with Gorbachev. The U.S. president had eight months left in office. Dreams of eliminating all nuclear weapons had been replaced by modest arms control talks, and Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had agreed to shelve SDI and write off the $12 billion spent on exploring that failed idea. The Moscow summit was more a celebration of four years’ worth of good intentions than a true negotiating session. At a well-staged walkabout for photographers in Red Square, Reagan told reporters that he no longer thought of the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” that he had described just five years earlier. He had used such language, he said, when “talking about another time in another era.” Now, in 1988, Reagan joined Gorbachev in a Moscow toast to “the hope of holding out for a better way of settling things.”

The Source: Political Cartoons from the Reagan Era, 1981–1988
1“He’s got to eat to have the strength to start reducing”

by Jim Mazzotta, Fort Myers News Press, 1982

In February 1982, President Reagan submitted a federal budget that included $200 billion in defense spending alongside reductions of $63 billion in programs such as food stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid. The 1982 budget projected a federal deficit of $91.5 billion. Reagan argued that cuts in social spending would reduce waste and fraud in social programs, whereas increases in defense spending would bring victory in the Cold War and an end to the need for large defense budgets.

“Surely they’ll not be so stupid as to keep on coming!”

by Bob Artley, Worthington Daily Globe, 1982

The Reagan administration argued that a large defense buildup was a spending strategy to defeat the Soviet Union, either economically or militarily. Critics argued that the strategy fueled a risky arms competition in which neither country could back down.

3“I’m surprised at how the president dealt with the Russians … ”

by Walt Handelsman, Catonsville Times, 1983

On September 1, 1983, a Soviet fighter shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when the civilian plane mistakenly flew 500 kilometers off course into Soviet airspace. All 269 passengers and crew were killed, including Congressman Lawrence McDonald (D-Georgia). Four days later, President Reagan denounced the shooting as “an act of barbarism” and revoked the license of Aeroflot Soviet Airlines to operate in and out of the United States but ed no further retaliation. Cartoonists had lampooned Reagan’s tough stance toward the Soviet Union during his first three years in office, but this incident offered a chance to mock anti-Soviet conservatives who were disappointed in the president.

“Go on, Yuri, make my day … ”

by Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News, 1984

Sudden Impact, the fourth of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies, was a big hit in early 1984. In the film, Detective Harry Callahan aims his gun at the head of a thief who is holding a gun at a hostage’s head and growls, “Go ahead, make my day.” By referencing that quote, cartoonist Mike Peters was playing on some Americans’ perception of President Reagan as a tough leader and on others’ perception of Reagan as someone who would relish a military confrontation with Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. At the same time, Peters was invoking the president’s own Hollywood career as an actor who had made fifty-three movies between 1937 and 1964.

“The U.S. bargaining chip! The Soviet bargaining chip, chip, chip, chip!”

by Chuck Asay, Colorado Springs Sun, 1985

This cartoon, which appeared just a few days after Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, indicates that the press was immediately expecting some attempt at arms negotiations between President Reagan and this new, young Soviet leader. Chuck Asay, who drew this cartoon, was a supporter of Reagan’s SDI. He believed that because Gorbachev lacked any new weapons system he could trade away to eliminate SDI, he would simply try to prevent the United States from developing a defense system.

“Gentlemen, start your engines!”

by Jeff MacNelly, Chicago Tribune, 1985

The media’s use of the term arms race to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union lent itself naturally to visual depictions such as this one based on Americans’ enthusiasm for auto-racing. Notice how Jeff MacNelly has incorporated the practice of decorating the racers’ cars with the logos of their sponsors into this cartoon’s visual humor.

“The Soviets are a bunch of rabid, murdering … ”

by Mike Graston, Windsor Star, 1985

In July 1985, just four months after Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, he and President Reagan announced that they would hold a summit in Geneva, Switzerland, in November of that year. This summit would be Reagan’s first meeting with a Soviet leader since taking office, and his four years as president had been marked by angry rhetoric from both sides of the Cold War. As a result, there was considerable skepticism about whether the summit was a serious meeting or merely a diplomatic performance by both politicians in response to public pressure to meet.

“Hey, maybe we should do this more often”

by Hy Rosen, Albany Times-Union, 1985

Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign theme, “It’s morning in America,” suggested a new start for an incumbent president. Hy Rosen may have been invoking that theme in this cartoon, which appeared immediately after the Geneva summit, amid optimistic reports of genuine discussions between Reagan and Gorbachev.

Reykjavik summit destroyed by Star Wars

by Jerry Fearing, St. Paul Dispatch-Pioneer Press, 1986

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held their second summit in October 1986. The news coming out of the first day of meetings on October 11 raised high hopes for dramatic reductions in the number of intermediate-range missiles in Europe and the intercontinental ballistic missiles in the United States and Soviet Union, but these hopes were dashed on October 12 when the two leaders could not agree on a plan for research and deployment of Reagan’s strategic defense initiative, which skeptics of the hypothetical system had dubbed “Star Wars.”

10“Little Ronnie Reagan and his imaginary friend”

by Mike Keefe, Denver Post, 1987

In the aftermath of the Reykjavik summit, commentators continued to fear that Reagan’s commitment to SDI and Gorbachev’s resistance to it would ruin the potential for arms limitation that the two leaders’ relationship seemed to promise. Only in retrospect, with the aid of documents and recollections, is it clear that in 1987 Gorbachev came to the conclusion that SDI would never be a viable defense shield and that he did not need to link arms limitation to controls on SDI development.

The text beside the cartoon reads, Little Ronnie Reagan and his imaginary friend (ellipsis). A speech bubble over the second child reads, He’s not imaginary! I can see him! (ellipsis) and I’m not playing until he goes away.
11Evolution

by Joe Majeski, Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, 1988

By the time of the fourth Reagan-Gorbachev summit, this time in Moscow in May 1988, even Reagan’s critics were admitting that he had made great strides in mending the relationship with the Soviet Union. The president who had called the Soviet Union the “evil empire” and had revived production of the neutron bomb now referred to the Soviets as “allies” and sought to eliminate all nuclear weapons.