Volume 32, Number 21 & 22 · January 16, 1986
Fog Over the Summit
By Stanley Hoffmann
Three questions can be raised about the meeting between President Reagan and Secretary-General Gorbachev in Geneva between November 19 and 21, 1985. How did the superpowers move from the deep freeze of their relations in 1980–1983 to the brief but intense encounter of their leaders? What did it accomplish? What is likely to happen next? Only the first question can be answered with any degree of certainty. The reason why the second and above all the third are so troublesome is that we are in the middle of a drama with three characters who are highly complex for quite different reasons: a new Soviet leader with a thoroughly original style who faces difficult choices; an aging American leader whose mind and direction are—after all these years—still stakes in a battle fought by advisers with discordant policies; and a Frankenstein monster, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), that holds the key to the future but seems, at present, not only beyond anyone's control but even beyond definition.
Feature, 4955 words
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