U.S.-Soviet Summitry

Report Outline
Preparations for Meeting
Impact of Past Summits
Issues for Geneva
Special Focus

Preparations for Meeting

Geneva Encounter First in Six Years

The Glacial Silence that has characterized relations between the leaders of the world's two superpowers in the 1980s will be broken later this month when President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev meet in Geneva “at the summit.” Rarely has the prospect of a summit meeting engendered such widespread attention and concern. Hardly a day has passed since Reagan issued his invitation to meet with the new Soviet leader that some new development has not led political figures, academics and commentators to speculate on the chances for success in Geneva.

The Nov. 19–20 encounter will be the first direct dialogue between the leaders of the superpowers since June 1979, when President Jimmy Carter met Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev in Vienna to sign the SALT II treaty setting limits on both countries' strategic arsenals. The Geneva summit will last about 12 hours, eight of them dedicated to substantive dialogue. Despite Reagan's last-minute attempt to give high priority to regional conflicts in which the Soviet Union is involved, arms control will dominate the meeting.

The flurry of diplomatic activity that has preceded this summit reflects the importance attributed to it by both leaders, neither of whom has ever participated in such a high-level U.S.-Soviet meeting. Despite his efforts to play down the significance of the encounter—the White House still refers to the summit as a mere “meeting”—Reagan has made an about-face in going to Geneva. During his first term, he adopted a confrontational tone toward the Soviet Union and dismissed summitry, saying that the Soviets had used past meetings to extract arms control agreements that put the United States at a disadvantage. In any case, said Raymond Garthoff, a former ambassador to Bulgaria and an expert on the Soviet Union, “the Reagan administration's rhetorically confrontational stance has meant that much attention is focused on this summit, in addition to the fact that it is the first in six years.”