Richard Nixon Exhibits Distrust of Mikhail Gorbachev, Advocating a Hard Line With the Soviets in a Letter to Reagan Foreign Policy Advisor Jeane Kirkpatrick

We obtained this letter from the Kirkpatrick family, and it has never before been offered for sale

The Washington Summit of 1987 was meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that took place on December 8–10. Reagan and Gorbachev discussed regional conflicts in Afghanistan, Central America, and Southern Africa, arms control issues for chemical weapons as well as conventional weapons, the status of START (limitation on strategy weapons) negotiations, and human rights. Some progress was made in these areas. The notable accomplishment of the Washington Summit was the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which banned all of the two nations’ land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers. By 1991, almost 2,700 missiles had been eliminated. Needless to say, the collegial atmosphere of the talks, and the feeling that Gorbachev was a man you could work with, caused great excitement in the United States after half a century of Cold War.

In 1988, former President Nixon wrote a book, 1999: Victory Without War, which offered his comprehensive strategy for the West—a vital plan of action that would help ensure peace, prosperity, and freedom in the next century. In it, he provided commentary and suggestions in the area of his great expertise, foreign policy. He began by arguing that the United States should continue to play a central international role. He contended that world peace is inseparable from world power and that real peace is not absence of conflict but living with unending conflict the natural state of world affairs. He sought to tamp down the popularity of Gorbachev, whom he saw as seeking change that would permit the Soviet Union to find hegemony. Still, he cogently argued for a realistic policy toward the Soviets, involving a mix of deterrence, competition, and negotiation. His hard-line views are on display in other areas. On nuclear armaments, he endorsed Reagan’s plan for laser-based weapons in space (“Star Wars”) and urged “no first-strike vulnerability.” He advocated continued support of Nicaragua’s contras, covert CIA actions overseas, build-up of nuclear power, more U.S. cruise missiles in Europe, the establishment of U.S. air bases in Saudi Arabia. He blamed Africa’s poverty on the terrible governments there. He strongly opposed the adoption of protectionist trade measures against Japan.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was a lifelong Democrat, working in both state and national campaigns including Hubert Humphrey’s 1972 presidential campaign. She grew increasingly dissatisfied, however, with the Democratic Party’s liberal faction and in 1972 cofounded the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. Her conservative writings regarding U.S. foreign policy impressed Ronald Reagan, and during his 1980 presidential campaign she was selected as his foreign policy advisor. Under President Reagan, she became the first woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 1981 to 1985. She was also given cabinet rank and was also a member of Reagan’s national security team. She remained active in politics, but as a Republican.

Nixon sent Kirkpatrick an advance copy of his book. Typed letter signed, on his letterhead, New York, March 8, 1988, to Kirkpatrick, in which he makes it clear that he does not share the excitement about Gorbachev and still distrusts the Soviets. “The enclosed proofs of 1999: Victory Without War represent my reflections after forty years of observing and participating in U.S. foreign policy. Some of our mutual friends will consider it to be too tough on the Soviets, but I thought it was essential to provide an antidote for the wave of euphoria that seems to have engulfed the West since the Washington summit. I think you may find the last chapter, in which I try to look into the future past the 1988 election, of particular interest.”

Nixon’s distrust of Gorbachev, though hardly unexpected, proved baseless. Under Gorbachev’s leadership, the next year the Berlin Wall came down, in 1990 six republics left the Soviet Union, and in 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved altogether.