Office of the Historian

192. Memorandum From Arnold Kanter of the National Security Council Staff to Florence Gantt of the National Security Council Staff1

Washington, January 22, 1991, 7:24 a.m.

SUBJECT

  • Meeting with the Soviets on START

Florence:

Please give the following message to Brent and Bob. Thanks.

—Arnie2

Brent:

We met with the Soviets for about four hours yesterday afternoon.3 The Soviet tone was businesslike, almost conciliatory. The content, however, was a nothing-burger or worse.

Obukov and his buddies pretty much took the walk-back-Houston line that the Soviet delegation has been pursuing in Geneva, rather than making any moves to put the Houston package back on track. In particular, they continued to seek additional constraints to make the B–1 “technically incapable” of carrying ALCMs, and sought a “political commitment” not to test or equip the B–2 with non-nuclear (or nuclear) ALCMs.

While this is hardly good news, is is difficult to know what to make of all this.

—
An optimist would say that the recitation of the Soviet hard line is SOP for the first day of these “working group” talks, and that Obukov had to make a good college try at sustaining the Soviet position. (Obukov implied as much in a private conversation with Reg, noting that his Soviet colleagues needed to hear for themselves the flat U.S. rejection of the Soviet “clarifications” of the Houston package.) The optimist would hope for signs of Soviet seriousness and flexibility, beginning in today’s sessions.
—
A pessimist would say that Obukov’s talking points were written by the General Staff and the Ministry of Medium Machine Building [Page 972] where no START treaty is preferred to a START treaty that is responsive to U.S. concerns. He would observe that the vast majority of the members of Obukov’s delegation came not from the Foreign Ministry, but were active or retired generals drawn from the various hardline ministries around Moscow. He would conclude that things will not improve as we continue to meet with the Soviets.
—
A skeptic would adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

Since I am sentenced to more long sessions with these guys in any event, I guess I may as well be a skeptic.

Stay tuned.

—Arnie4
  1. Source: George H.W. Bush Library, Bush Presidential Records, National Security Council, John A. Gordon Files, Subject Files, OA/ID CF01034–007, START—January 1991 [4]. Secret. Copied to Hall, Uhl, Gordon, Davis, Kuehne, Gompert, and Rice. Scowcroft initialed the top of the memorandum.↩
  2. Printed from a copy bearing Kanter’s typed signature.↩
  3. No memorandum of conversation was found.↩
  4. Printed from a copy bearing Kanter’s typed signature.↩