The following is excerpted from the recently published “Reagan At Reykjavik” by Ken Adelman:
“At an October 4 meeting, [Communist Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev] said that should Reykjavik fail, ‘we will be pulled into an arms race beyond our power, and we will lose this race’ because ‘we are presently at the limit of our capabililties.’” …
“Here, remarkably, was Gorbachev saying what [President Ronald] Reagan had long been saying. In contrast, the foreign policy experts ‘knew’ that – as large as the Soviet defense effort was – it could grow much larger.” …
“The Soviets had stretched beyond anything the CIA imagined. At the time of Reykjavik, they were estimated to be devoting 12 to 14 percent of their gross national product (GNP) to defense. Soviet archives opened later revealed the real figure was more twice that, or around 30 percent of GNP – some four times America’s level of efforts for our military (slightly over 7 percent of GNP).” …
“Beyond the macroeconomic impetus for an arms accord – [Gorbachev’s ] country was gong broke and needed relief – there were security incentives. Gorbachev fretted over our missiles in German and our SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] in space. In both cases, he was wrong. Our intermediate missiles weren’t mobile in reality and SDI was little more than pie in the colorful sky of Ronald Reagan’s imagination. But Gorbachev didn’t know what he didn’t know and was determined to act on what he thought he did know.”
