Fencing at the Fireside Summit

By Evan Thomas

The President of the United States offered his vision of a safer world, and the General Secretary of the Soviet Union's Communist Party did not believe a word of it. As the two superpower leaders sat across from each other last week at the bargaining table in an elegant salon in Geneva, Ronald Reagan implored Mikhail Gorbachev to join him in his dream of "rendering nuclear weapons obsolete" with a space-based missile defense system. Coldly fixing Reagan in his gaze, Gorbachev would have none of it. "It's not convincing. It's emotional. It's a dream. Who can control it? Who can monitor it? It opens up an arms race in space."

In a purposely calm voice, Reagan responded, "As I said to you, I have a right to think you want to use your missiles against us. With mere words we cannot abolish the threat."

Frustrated, Gorbachev exclaimed, "Why don't you believe us when we say we will not use weapons against you?"

As Reagan tried to speak, Gorbachev interrupted, "Please answer me, Mr. President. What is your answer?" Again Reagan began to reply; again Gorbachev angrily insisted, "Answer my simple question!"

Finally, Reagan was able to utter a reply: "I cannot say to the American people that I could take you at your word if you don't believe us."

Rarely have the inexorable forces of history been so starkly revealed by an exchange between two world leaders. Despite all the public handshakes and smiles, and despite the apparent rapport that emerged between two confident and forceful men last week, they were caught by a stark axiom of the Soviet-American rivalry: neither side can afford to base the security of a nation on trust alone. For 40 years, ever since the earliest days of the cold war, each American President, each Kremlin leader, has felt compelled to counter every move by a countermove, every new weapon with a newer weapon, every show of strength with a greater show of strength. The two hands that control the planet's survival may clasp in a show of summit cordiality, but measurable progress to curtail their nuclear arsenals requires far, far more than ceremonial displays of goodwill.

And yet, as Reagan and Gorbachev met at the summit last week, the eleventh such meeting between the U.S. and Soviet leaders in the past three decades, they knew, and reminded each other, that there can be no winners in a nuclear war. For two days, as the world warily watched, the two men groped for some kind of human understanding, some way to master the nuclear riddle. Meeting face to face for the first time, Reagan and Gorbachev tried to set some rules to contain the arms race, some guidelines to rein in their rivalries.

That they failed in the brief time allowed was perhaps inevitable. That they tried, and agreed to keep on trying, was good news after six years of stonewalling and invective at long range. Equally important, the frank but earnest exchange between the two leaders may have served to shore up support back home, without which neither leader can deliver on any good intentions.

The "fireside summit," as Reagan described his meeting with Gorbachev, was not, in the lexicon of diplomacy, "precooked." The principles had no orchestrated script to follow, no important, let alone prearranged, accords to proclaim. For almost five of the eight hours allotted to the sessions, the two men surprised their aides by closeting themselves alone, each trying to probe the other's mind and test his will.

Reagan's advisers were delighted with the boss's performance. Said Donak Regan, the President's chief of staff, in reply to those who had doubted the President's ability to stand up to the Soviet "This movie actor, this President who had to have his staff prop him up, the man who couldn't do anything without a script was able to take on this dynamic personality . . . and hold his own, not give away the shop, not eat crow."

In terms of substance, Reagan and Gorbachev did not achieve much. A 4 1/2-page joint statement pledged to "accelerate" arms-control negotiations and called for a 50% reduction in nuclear arms by each side. But it offered no instructions on how to break the impasse over what to count in the 50%, which stymies the ongoing Geneva arms talks. Reagan refused to back off from his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), known as Star Wars, and Gorbachev refused to back away from his insistence that the arms race be barred from outer space. Though the summit served to give diplomacy between the two powers some much needed impetus, the fruits are unknowable. As Reagan candidly conceded at the end, "The real report card on Geneva will not come in for months or even years."

The most important accomplishment of the summit was the decision to hold two more. Reagan invited Gorbachev to meet with him in the U.S. as early as next June, and Gorbachev returned the favor by asking Reagan to the Soviet Union, perhaps in the winter of 1987. In those chilly half-dozen years since an American President last met his Soviet counterpart, suspicions and arsenals had multiplied apace; it was just possible that the resumption of regular summits would set in motion expectations that would force more substantial results next time and the time after.

The intense private discussions between the two superpower leaders, reconstructed here by TIME correspondents from interviews with top U.S. and Soviet advisers, revealed that considerable mistrust inevitably remains on both sides. Yet the two leaders, each a forceful personality in his own right, showed they could engage in forthright debate without succumbing to the hyperbole and table pounding that have marred U.S.-Soviet confrontations in the past. The vigorous exchanges that took place in a series of high-ceilinged drawing rooms and cozy nooks on the shores of Lake Geneva last week offer a fascinating glimpse of the competitive global arena, as seen through the prisms of East and West and through the minds of two formidable men.

As Reagan awaited Gorbachev for the first day of talks last Tuesday at Fleur d'Eau, the 19th century lakeside chateau borrowed by the U.S. as its working headquarters, he seemed jaunty and eager, almost impatient to get on with the main event. "Are you ready, Dad?" asked his son Ron, who had tagged along with a set of press credentials from Playboy magazine and an understandable desire to witness his father make history. "Absolutely," responded the President.

At 10 a.m., Gorbachev's heavily armored black ZIL limousine, airlifted from Moscow, swung into view. Reagan, shedding his overcoat, stepped out into the raw morning and stood stiffly at the top of the steps, as if at attention. Quickly striding from his car, Gorbachev theatrically swept off his black fedora. Reagan came down and grasped the hand of his rival with a firm handshake seen around the world. As both men smiled broadly, the American President, 20 years older and four inches taller than his Kremlin opposite, gently steered his guest inside.

The two were supposed to chat privately, alone with their interpreters, for just 15 minutes before joining their advisers, half a dozen on each side, for a formal discussion of relations between the two countries. Reagan, however, had a different idea. Right away he proposed to Gorbachev that the two of them do as much of their business as possible in private, away from their staffs. Gorbachev accepted with alacrity. "Here we are," said Reagan when the two men had settled into high-backed armchairs by the fire in a small sitting room. "Between us, we could come up with things that could bring peace for years to come."

The pattern for the summit was set: though each leader had brought with him a wide array of senior advisers who had labored for months to lay the groundwork, the essential work would be done one to one, face to face. "All that machinery, all those cars and buildings and communications and people, and then, by God, two personalities just took charge," a top Administration official later mused. "Everything was different once those two leaders shook hands."

Reagan had been well coached on what to expect from his Kremlin rival. Gorbachev had been forceful and unyielding at his presummit meeting in Moscow two weeks before with Secretary of State George Shultz, and Shultz had passed along to Reagan a vivid description of the Kremlin leader in action: assertive, dynamic, very opinionated and not easily swayed by eloquent rhetoric. Nonetheless, Shultz had counseled, Gorbachev was a good listener, and extremely curious to learn more about the mind-sets of his Western adversaries.

A week before the summit, Reagan had intimated that he wanted to take personal charge by demanding that he be shown no more briefing books, be given no more lectures. "That was when he started calling it his summit," recalled an aide. Shultz had even advised his counterpart, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, that "my guy likes to size up his opposite number and see what he's really like, and the way for them to do that is for them to spend some time alone."

Nonetheless, Reagan's decision to disappear with Gorbachev for nearly an hour at the very outset came as a surprise to his advisers. As the two leaders remained behind closed doors on that first morning and their aides began a reverse countdown, ticking off how long they were exceeding their schedules, one American official came up to Shultz, nervously pointing at his watch and fretting that the Big Two were not keeping to the program. Retorted Shultz: "If you're dumb enough to go in there and break it up, you don't deserve to be employed here."

While their aides fidgeted outside, Reagan and Gorbachev were educating each other on their divergent world views. Gorbachev charged that America was run by a military-industrial complex that tries to fatten defense spending by inducing U.S. paranoia about the Soviet Union. He told Reagan that the President was in the thrall of a cabal of archconservatives. He claimed that American think tanks, citing the Heritage Foundation in Washington and the Hoover Institution in California, were feeding Reagan plans "designed to break down the Soviet economy." Reagan replied with astonishment to Gorbachev's conspiracy theories. Indeed, he said, he had always operated on the belief that government fouls up anytime it tries to manipulate the economy. Gorbachev, the chief of a state-planned economy, did not seem either amused or persuaded.

By the time the two men finally emerged from their 64-min. tete-`a-tete, they had already begun to hash over regional issues, which, according to the summit agenda, were not supposed to be discussed until the next day. While Reagan found the large number of Soviet advisers in Nicaragua "intolerable," Gorbachev insisted that the U.S.S.R. was bound by its constitution to aid "wars of national liberation." Disavowing imperialist ambitions, he went on, "We have no commercial interests or desire for bases. We are just helping people achieve freedom." The Soviets, he added, in a dig at Reagan for supporting anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, "do not export counterrevolution." Moscow's sponsorship of regimes in Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Kampuchea was no different from Washington's support of governments in its own "areas of vital interest," like El Salvador. Reagan dryly retorted that, unlike the Soviets, the U.S. has not occupied those areas with troops or gone to war there.

Gorbachev did offer one slight ray of hope on Afghanistan. The Soviets did not want to keep their troops there indefinitely, he declared, hinting that the Kremlin was searching for some kind of political solution.

In the afternoon session at the American headquarters, the two leaders took on the most essential, and contentious, issue of the summit: arms control. The debate that ensued was intense and riveting.

Reagan spoke first, and clearly from the heart. He inveighed against the "uncivilized nature" of mutually assured destruction (MAD), the doctrine of deterrence that has governed the superpower rivalry for more than two decades. He could not condone the notion, he said, of keeping the peace by threatening to blow up the world. We must, he implored Gorbachev, "find a better way." To the President, that meant reducing offensive weapons while seeking a transition to defensive weapons. He was quite conscious, he allowed, that Gorbachev sees a space defense system as simply a cover for achieving the capacity to wipe out the Soviets with a first strike. He wanted to assure Gorbachev that this was not, and would never be, the aim of the U.S.

Gorbachev attempted to interrupt. "Please," Reagan said, "let me finish." The Soviet leader's concern, he said, was perfectly legitimate. But he had an answer: a promise of "open laboratories." Once the U.S. has developed the technology to build an effective shield against nuclear missiles, Reagan offered, "I intend fully to share this with you all."

Gorbachev sat back and looked intently at Reagan "with very fixed eye contact," recalls an official who was present. He did not speak for a few moments. No one did. Then, in a very sober and calm manner, he began a response that slowly swelled into an impassioned outburst.

Gorbachev began by stating that he understood exactly what his American opposite was saying, that he could see Reagan felt strongly about his Strategic Defense Initiative. But, Gorbachev insisted, a space system that rendered nuclear weapons obsolete was simply not believable. It was far more plausible that Reagan's true motives were sinister, that he planned to use a defense system as a shield to enable the U.S. to launch a first strike. "You can have dreams of peace," the Soviet leader exclaimed, "but we have to face reality." Flushing, Gorbachev began to gesture forcefully. "I'm not a bloodthirsty person," he insisted. "We must reduce all weapons, not start on new ones."

Reagan tried to interject: "But if we coupled it with our open lab, our scientists could look at what you're doing. You could look at what our side is doing."

But Gorbachev was beyond persuasion. "We should ban introduction of all space weapons. Ban them! Ban all space weapons!"

It was at this point that Gorbachev burst out with his question--"Why don't you believe us?"--revealing the essential conundrum that has faced both sides in the nuclear age and providing the most dramatic, and discouraging, moment of the summit. Finally, his emotions spent, Gorbachev glumly declared, "It looks as if we've reached an impasse."

As a gloomy silence settled over the gilded, cream-colored room, with its serene views of Lake Geneva, Reagan tried a different approach. Perhaps both men could use a break, a change in atmospherics. He proposed that they take a walk in the bracing Geneva air. "Ah," Gorbachev said quickly. "Fresh air may bring fresh ideas." Replied Reagan: "Maybe we'll find the two go together."

Bundled against the cold, the two strolled down the gently sloping lawn toward a small pool house close to the lake-shore. In his genial manner, Reagan tried to disarm Gorbachev with some self-deprecating humor. "By the way," the President chuckled, "I'd appreciate it if you would tell Mr. Arbatov that I did some good movies and not just grade-B movies." Reagan was referring to Kremlin Americanologist Georgi Arbatov's gibe at Reagan's acting career during a press conference. "I know," Gorbachev responded. "I saw you in one where you played the man without legs." "King's Row," volunteered the President. "Yes! That's it!" exclaimed the Kremlin chief, and both men laughed away some of the tension.

Alone again with only their interpreters, the two men settled into overstuffed tan chairs in the wood-beamed pool house before a roaring fire and resumed their arduous search for common ground.

The change of scenery was not exactly a spontaneous notion by Reagan. The site had been scouted in advance, the fire lit and glowing for their arrival. All along, Reagan had been waiting for the proper moment to steal away with his Soviet counterpart. He had tucked under his arm a manila envelope containing a written set of guidelines for arms control that had been drafted in Washington after much internal debate.

A test of our success, Reagan began, is what happens next in the arms-control negotiations. Shouldn't we, he asked, give our people some constructive guidance? Reaching into the envelope, he produced a thin sheaf of papers. The Soviet leader leaned back in his chair, put on his glasses and quietly digested the material Reagan handed him.

Translated into Russian were nine separate points, spelled out in short paragraphs. One called for a 50% reduction in nuclear arms, as both sides had already suggested in differing forms in their proposals tabled at the Geneva arms talks earlier this year. Another called for a separate interim agreement on intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe, again an idea both sides had already suggested. A third proposed that the two sides formally explore the U.S. concept of a transition from offensive to defensive weapons, with the understanding that each could continue its strategic ballistic-missile defense program "as permitted by, and in accordance with, the ABM treaty" of 1972. Other points called for verification measures to promote confidence in compliance, and such other peacekeeping steps as a global ban on chemical weapons, a strengthened agreement to limit nuclear proliferation, and the establishment of "risk-reduction centers" with an improved hot line to guard against apocalyptic accidents.

The offer, asserted Reagan, was all or nothing. The Soviets could agree to all of the guidelines, but they could not pick and choose, accepting some items while rejecting others.

Gorbachev flatly rejected the package. When he finished reading, he noted simply that the proposal would allow the U.S. to forge ahead with SDI Yes, responded Reagan, work on SDI must go on. Then we just disagree, Gorbachev declared evenly. The Soviets have consistently denied that they have a strategic defense system of their own, and they have emphatically rejected the U.S. argument that the ABM treaty permits research into a space-based defense system. To accept Reagan's offer, Gorbachev would abruptly have had to reverse well-established Kremlin policy. This he was not about to do.

And yet, significantly, Gorbachev did not want discussions to break down over the unresolved issue of Star Wars. We must continue to talk, he declared.

As the tete-`a-tete between the two global chieftains ranged on into the twilight hours, their lieutenants waiting anxiously back at the villa ran out of things to say to each other. Like shy boys and girls waiting for the music to resume at dancing school, they segregated, the Soviets into one cluster, the Americans into another. Some U.S. advisers began to fret about Reagan's enthusiasm for private discourse. The President is known to be somewhat vague on detail, and a few of his aides feared that their leader might say something misleading to his opposite number or fail to understand something important said to him. They were equally nervous that Reagan would fail to report the private exchanges precisely to his aides, even though the two interpreters were keeping notes. The apprehension was not uniform. "The President knows what he doesn't know," observed one official, who reckoned that Reagan would stick to the script he had earlier discussed with aides or offer only generalities.

Having failed to remove the overwhelming obstacle presented by Star Wars, the two superpower leaders donned their coats and climbed back up the hill to rejoin their retinues. The mood of the two men had become as dark as the chilled evening, but Reagan was determined to end the day on an upbeat note. "I think we agree," he said as they came to the parking lot, "that this meeting is useful." Yes, replied Gorbachev. Then we must meet again, Reagan went on. It was then that he invited the Kremlin leader to come to the U.S. "And I invite you to come to the Soviet Union," responded Gorbachev. "I accept," stated Reagan. "I accept," echoed Gorbachev. The gloom lifted. At Gorbachev's limousine (inside of which a submachine gun rested on the rear seat), the two men parted company.

The spirit was cordial at a small dinner for the Reagans that night given by the Gorbachevs at the Soviets' squat, three-story, modern-style mission in Geneva. In keeping with the Kremlin's temperance campaign, the customary vodka toasts were dispensed with, and the guests sipped white and red wines from Soviet Georgia. Gorbachev and his wife Raisa recounted how they had met at Moscow University, and she lamented that her husband's new job gave her little time to pursue her academic career. The Reagans extolled the charms of California, and Gorbachev boasted about his grandchild, whom he professed to spoil.

During that first day Reagan was struck by Gorbachev's willingness to listen. "I'm some judge of acting," he later remarked to reporters, "so I don't think he was acting." Gorbachev looked so intently at Reagan that the President momentarily forgot that the Soviet leader does not speak English, and he kept talking without giving the interpreter a chance to catch up. Gorbachev had to hold up his hand to get Reagan to pause for translation. Reagan later recalled that he had told a couple of jokes and wondered why he did not get a laugh.

The next morning, as soon as the American delegation arrived at the Soviet mission for Wednesday's round of talks, Reagan once again asked his host if he would like to have a private chat. The touchy subject of human rights was on the President's mind. He did not want to belabor the issue for fear of stiffening Soviet resistance. But in the privacy of a small sitting room in the Soviet mission, he told Gorbachev that if the Soviets truly want to improve relations with the U.S., they must repair their record on individual freedom. It is morally repugnant to the U.S., "a nation of immigrants," to see Soviets unable to leave their own country, Reagan said. And it is politically untenable for American leaders to make deals with the Soviet Union as long as Jews and dissidents are imprisoned.

Gorbachev did not filibuster with the usual Kremlin excuse that human rights are an internal matter for the Soviet Union and not the business of the U.S. Rather, he discoursed at length about Soviet notions of individual freedom: freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom to secure health care--freedoms, he implied, that were not universally enjoyed by Americans. He was not sparing in his criticism of America's abuse of its own racial minorities.

When they rejoined their advisers after an hour, the two sides were once again bedeviled by Star Wars. Hoping that he might use the enticement of large cuts in offensive weapons to extract a concession from Reagan on Star Wars, Gorbachev declared, "Something has to be done about SDI before we can get to the subject of reductions." Reagan was not buying. "SDI," he countered, "is long term enough that it ought not to be the thing to make strategic-missile reductions impossible now. Can we afford to let this moment go by when both of us are talking about 50% reductions?"

By midday on Wednesday it was perfectly clear that the two men were not going to agree on the issue of strategic defense. Increasingly, the question became whether they could find any common ground on other issues, or at least enough to enable them to produce a joint statement that would provide the world with some tangible sign of progress.

Gloom hung over the American team's working lunch that day. White House Spokesman Larry Speakes raised the prospect of facing headlines that read SUMMIT BREAKS UP OVER SDI. He wondered anxiously how it would play back home. Badly, suggested Arms Control Adviser Paul Nitze, who noted that SDI does not enjoy overwhelming public support in the U.S. Speakes took the precaution of ordering press aides to prepare experts who could fan out over Geneva that night to put the right spin on news of a breakup.

At 3:30 p.m. the two leaders decided to have their Foreign Ministers break away and assess the prospects for reaching any kind of joint agreement. While Reagan and Gorbachev whiled away the next hour and a half in a sitting room at the Soviet mission, where they sipped tea and Reagan cracked a few jokes,[*] Shultz and Shevardnadze sorted through the unresolved issues. At 5 p.m. they returned to their bosses. Determined to salvage an agreement, Gorbachev rattled off some rapid-fire instructions to his underlings and told them to go back to work and report later that evening. "That's what their job is," he shrugged to Reagan. "We will be in a good mood after dinner."

Through the evening and into the night, the Soviet and American teams worked feverishly to craft mutually acceptable language while Reagan and Gorbachev socialized at a reception thrown by the Swiss government and at a dinner given by the Reagans at their residence, Maison de Saussure. At 10 p.m. the party repaired to the library for coffee, and Reagan and Gorbachev settled on a red sofa, an embroidered cushion between them and their aides huddled around. Shultz quietly advised that negotiations at the staff level were not going well. Then Shultz, so seemingly bland in his public utterances, took a bold step. He dramatically pointed across the room to a Soviet official, Georgi Korniyenko, and declared, "You, Mr. Korniyenko, are responsible for this. Mr. General Secretary, this man is not doing what you want. He is not working in your best interests."

Reagan, drawn into playing good cop to Shultz's bad, turned to Gorbachev. "This is a first for us," he said. "Our predecessors have not accomplished a helluva lot. Let's you and I work together" at solving the remaining obstacles. The two leaders should not let themselves get bogged down by squabbling aides. "To hell with the rest of them," he snapped. Gorbachev agreed. The two men shook on it.

Late into the night, exhausted aides (one presidential adviser had slept two out of 60 hours) found the detail work to be hard going. The U.S. wanted to call for a 50% reduction in "comparable nuclear systems." The Soviets, whose earlier arms offers had counted nuclear weapons quite differently from the U.S., continued to balk. Finally, at 4:45 a.m., nebulous compromise language was reached: a 50% reduction to nuclear arms "appropriately applied."

The two sides at last had a deal that left the U.S. delegation wearily satisfied. The Soviets had wanted to make Geneva an "arms-control summit" to focus attention on Star Wars. The fact that the statement addressed other issues as well, however fleetingly and blandly, was regarded as something of a victory for Reagan. For the first time, the Soviets had agreed to call for substantial cuts in offensive weapons without simultaneously insisting on a ban on Star Wars. Indeed, SDI was barely alluded to in the joint statement. The aim of the arms-control negotiations, it declared, should be "to prevent an arms race in space and to terminate it on earth." The words were the exact ones first used last January by Shultz and former Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (who was left back home in Moscow) to paper over the sharp differences between the U.S. and Soviet positions on space weapons and get arms negotiations under way.

Finally, as fine flakes of snow powdered the gray morning sky on Thursday, Reagan and Gorbachev broke their public silence and converged on the drab concrete bunker in Geneva that serves as an international conference center to tell the world what their private fireside summit had produced. Their report was modest. As Gorbachev put it in a brief, formal statement, the talks had failed at "solving of the most important problems concerning the arms race." He cautioned, "If we really want to succeed in something, then both sides are going to have to do an awful lot of work." Nonetheless, Reagan declared, U.S.-Soviet relationships had been given "a fresh start." Indeed, the two men, while avoiding false optimism, managed to project sincere goodwill as they smiled and grasped hands.

Each man put his own gloss on the joint statement. To Reagan the issue was "Will we join together in sharply reducing offensive nuclear arms and moving to nonnuclear defensive strengths for systems to make this a safer world?" Countered Gorbachev: "We must not let the arms race move off into space, and we must cut it down on earth."

The two leaders broke little new ground on other issues facing them (see chart). While reaffirming their long-standing commitment to halt nuclear proliferation, and pledging to make progress on ongoing talks aimed at reducing conventional forces in Europe and outlawing chemical weapons, they offered no guidance on how these goals would be achieved. Despite the Soviet practice of avoiding the topic of human rights, the statement offered some bland language that "the two leaders agreed on the importance of resolving humanitarian cases in the spirit of cooperation." The summiteers announced they would carry out an agreement, signed earlier, that was aimed at improving air safety in the North Pacific, and thus avoiding a repetition of the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983. Negotiations to resume direct air service between New York City and Moscow got hung up on technicalities like establishing proper ticketing procedures between Aeroflot and Pan Am, which were finally resolved later in the week. There was also an agreement to set up new consulates in New York and Kiev. More vaguely still, the two leaders expressed plans to "consult" on specific programs for cooperation on environmental preservation and nuclear fusion research.

The one agreement actually signed by the two superpowers at the concluding ceremony on Thursday will re-establish educational, scientific, cultural and athletic exchanges that were dropped by President Carter when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Reagan has expressed the hope that such "people-to-people" communication will lead to better understanding between East and West.

For all the lack of specifics, both sides pronounced themselves satisfied with the summit, and Reagan and Gorbachev toasted peace, their staffs and each other farewell with a glass of champagne. Before heading off to brief the heads of the Soviets' East bloc satellites, assembled in Prague, Gorbachev managed to get in a few parting propaganda points at an unusual 1 1/2-hour press conference. He sternly warned that "all restraint will be blown to the winds" in nuclear competition unless the U.S. pulls back from its antimissile defense efforts.

Reagan, meanwhile, headed to NATO headquarters in Brussels, where he met with 13 leaders of the Western alliance to report on his talks with Gorbachev. The West Europeans evinced considerable relief that the summit had gone as well as it did. Caught in the middle, they had grown apprehensive about the deep superpower chill during Reagan's first term. "Now, after Geneva, there is no need for pessimism," proclaimed West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "I am an optimist."

Reagan's last stop in a 21-hour day was on Capitol Hill. Still buoyant, he arrived by helicopter from Andrews Air Force Base to a cheering, stomping joint session of Congress. "I can't claim we had a meeting of the minds on such fundamentals as ideology or national purpose, but we understand each other better," Reagan declared. "That's key to peace."

Most legislators enthusiastically agreed. But a few cautioned that the hard work is still to be done. "He's setting himself up for having to produce," noted Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "That looks like a tall order." Scoffed Jimmy Carter's arms-control adviser, Paul Warnke, "The music was much better than the lyrics. There wasn't much substance to the words."

Reagan and Gorbachev had a shared interest in putting the best face on their meeting. When American and Soviet leaders go to a summit, they are loath to come back with nothing to show after months of mounting expectation. Failure risks disappointing, and perhaps losing, domestic and international constituencies. "The pressure to succeed is enormous," says William Hyland, the editor of Foreign Affairs and, as a former aide to Henry Kissinger, the veteran of numerous summits. "These guys don't want to go into a session like this and then have to explain why it was a mistake." Gorbachev, although he appears to have consolidated his power and changed the nature of the way the plodding Kremlin bureaucracy operates, needed to impress the surviving gerontocrats back in Moscow, like Gromyko. "Those guys went to summits with Americans and managed to come home with treaties and agreements--at least with communiques," says one Moscow-based observer of the Kremlin. "Gorbachev had to show he could do it too. He didn't want to go to the next Politburo meeting and look Gromyko in the eye and explain why the summit was a downer and why he'd come home empty-handed."

Few leaders have been able to communicate their confidence and essential optimism more infectiously than Ronald Reagan. But his power of positive thinking, while it lifts national morale, has not served to cure every problem. Faith in supply-side growth, for example, has done nothing to slow the runaway federal deficit. By insisting that he can at once proceed with SDI while persuading the Soviets to make deep reductions in strategic weapons, Reagan may be engaging in even more wishful thinking.

The U.S. has come to a critical juncture in its rivalry with the Soviet Union. With Reagan's firm advocacy of SDI, the U.S. stands poised to embark on the most extravagant military project ever conceived, perhaps the most far-reaching since the Bomb was born in the desert near Los Alamos 40 years ago. It could change forever the nature of the nuclear threat; it could force the Soviets into serious bargaining. It also has the potential, at least for the foreseeable future, to cripple any efforts at arms control.

At the next summit meeting, little more than eight months away, it will not suffice for Reagan and Gorbachev to declare that they have achieved a better understanding of each other. The pressure will be on them to produce results, or risk letting the hope of arms control forever slip away. At the very least, the fact that they will soon be meeting again, with the whole world watching once more and by then hoping for more than just smiles and handshakes, will help concentrate the minds of Reagan and Gorbachev and their advisers, and force them to face some hard and historic choices. --By Evan Thomas. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett, Johanna McGeary and James O. Jackson/Geneva

With reporting by Reported by Laurence I. Barrett, Johanna McGeary, James O. Jackson/Geneva