Exceptional by Dick Cheney Page B

of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
    President Reagan matched his words with actions. He restored the B-1 bomber President Carter had canceled, significantly increased U.S. defense spending, deployed Pershing missiles to Europe in response to Soviet deployment of SS-20s, and authorized the Strategic Defense Initiative, to develop missile defense technology to defendthe nation from attack. The Soviets complained that SDI was destabilizing since it would make the doctrine of mutual assured destruction obsolete, and that Reagan’s increases in defense spending “disrupted the parity” in arms created over many years. His expenditures forced the Soviets to keep spending.
    In a speech to the nation on March 23, 1983, Reagan explained why SDI was needed and provided a tutorial in defense budgeting. It shouldn’t be done, he explained, by “deciding to spend a certain number of dollars.” Rather, it had to be based on necessity, on a determination of what was needed to defend against all threats to the nation. Then, once a strategy to meet those threats was developed, a cost could be determined for carrying out the strategy. He explained how America’s spending on many of its critical defense programs had stalled or been cut over the years, while the Soviets had maintained a constant increase.
    It was critical to America’s security that we not return to the days of slashed defense budgets. “It is up to us, in our time,” he said, “to choose and choose wisely between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow strongerday by day.”
    Then he turned to SDI. “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?” Even though it was a formidable task, he explained, it was necessary, and he had instructed his administration to pursue the possibility offered by “defensive technologies.”
    In 1985, a new Soviet leader came to power. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Geneva in November that year. Reagan believed so strongly in the necessity of developing a defensive systemthat he told Gorbachev the United States wouldshare the technology with the Soviets once it had been developed. Breaking with convention, Reagan and Gorbachev met alone for several hours without their advisors, and although they continued to disagree about SDI, they agreed to worktoward significant arms reductions.
    The two leaders met again in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986. Proposals for sweeping arms control reductions, including the elimination of all ballistic missiles and a 50 percent reduction in each side’s strategic arsenal,were on the table. Gorbachev continued to demand, however, that Reagan essentially give up SDI by confining it tolaboratory testing.Reagan would not agree. In an exercise of diplomacy that should be studied by all future policy makers, Reagan knew what lines he would not cross. He was never desperate for an agreement, and he was unwilling to give up America’s right to missile defense in order to appease the Soviets.
    One year later Gorbachev visited the United States. He had by this time dropped his demand that Reagan abandon missile defense. On December 8, 1987, the two leaders signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, Treaty agreeing to eliminate their intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles.
    Inside the Soviet Union, Gorbachev had undertaken new policies to restructure and reform the government and economic system ( perestroika ) and to allow greater public discussion