ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

PERINA: Yes, they did. Jumping ahead a little, toward the end of my tour in the NSC, I
accompanied Reagan to Moscow, to the 1988 Moscow summit which was Reagan’s only
visit to Moscow as president. I in fact was one of the two note takers in the one-on-one
sessions between Reagan and Gorbachev in Moscow. They call them one-on-one sessions
but in reality they are four on four sessions because every president has an interpreter and
two note takers so there are three people on each side plus the president. I was one of the
note takers together with Tom Simons who was Deputy Assistant Secretary in the
European Bureau. I raise these meetings because they were the direct opportunity I had to
see Reagan and Gorbachev interact. Even at the Moscow summit, which was late in
Reagan’s presidency, there was a lot of tension between the two men. Gorbachev did play
games and he did try to trick Reagan in certain ways. One was the old Soviet trick of
trying to get agreement on broad and vague declarations that sounded very innocent and
innocuous, all motherhood and apple pie, and when you read them you would say, how
could anyone oppose something like this? But then you could see that if you signed them
the Soviets would find interpretations for the various declaratory statements and come
back and try to circumscribe and limit specific policy options on the grounds that they
went counter to the broad principles. Basically, this related to the different negotiating
styles of the Soviets and the US. The Soviets had a deductive style of negotiation. They
would want to agree on a broad principle and then go down and see how it applied to
concrete action. The U.S. generally had an inductive style of negotiation. We would look
at specific problems and practical things and say what broad agreement does this require
or what principle do we need to regulate this? You could see this difference in
negotiating patterns in Moscow because Gorbachev in the one-on-one sessions did try to
get Reagan to agree to such broad declaratory language. In the first session, he pulled a
piece of paper out of his pocket and tried to get Reagan’s concurrence on the spot. The
paper was essentially a set of broad declarations that appeared innocent. But it was all
based on this tactic that you try to get agreement on principles, and then you use those
principles to limit your opponent, limit the scope of action of what your opponent can do.
Gorbachev tried this in Moscow, and he clearly felt intellectually superior to Reagan. He
would sometimes look at us, the note takers, after making a point with this expression
that seemed to say: Wasn’t that a good point? See how smart I am! But by the time of the
Moscow summit Reagan had learned that Gorbachev tried to do these kinds of things,
and he would not agree to any of these declarations without his advisors present. He
would politely resist, even though it was difficult for him. Reagan was actually a real
gentleman who felt very uneasy in becoming adversarial or saying no to someone. He
was very polite. But by the time of the Moscow summit, when his relationship with
Gorbachev was much better than in the early years, he still did not trust the man and he
knew his own limits—that he should not agree to any document without the advice of his
staff.
Q: Did you sense concern on the part of the staff that Reagan would agree to things he
should not? Did they give him warnings before he went into meetings and so on?
PERINA: There was an incident earlier in Reagan’s presidency when he was tricked like
this by Gorbachev, and by the time of the Moscow summit he had learned to be wary of
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