Taking Gromyko's Measure

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

Ronald Reagan studied the man in front of him and decided Andrei Gromyko was old, far older in some ways than he looked, older than his 75 years. And more important, Gromyko was talking for a group back in the Kremlin that was even more ancient, and perhaps frozen, in their distrust and loathing of the U.S.

The aging men of the Politburo may have seen Reagan, robust both physically and politically right now, as some kind of threat. Reagan listened and watched Gromyko as he had rarely scrutinized a man before; looking for clues from words, from eyes, from a touch or handclasp.

Almost from the start of their talk, one signal came through to Reagan loud and clear. It was that Gromyko had no signal to send at all. No message in his eyes. No meaning in his grip. No words that held promise for any kind of agreement. Gromyko's presence in the White House was the only hint that Soviet-U.S. relations might be changing.

Gromyko was like a seismograph inserted into the very heart of America's Government, absorbing all the tremors but sending absolutely nothing back. Gromyko talked, but what Reagan heard was right out of the briefing book, a recitation of prejudices, perceived insults and the history of the world acl cording to the U.S.S.R.

Reagan waited nearly four hours for a nicker of flexibility, any tiny gesture of accommodation. None came. Once Gromyko was recalling how it was back in 1946.

The Soviet Union had wanted to ban all atomic weapons, and the U.S. had refused. Right, answered Reagan; that was when the Soviets did not have the bomb. But when Bernard Baruch proposed an international tribunal to govern nuclear weapons, it was the Soviets who balked.

Reagan concluded that Gromyko could not talk or act on his own in any way.

He had to go back to the Kremlin for orders. And what is the view back there? Reagan was as baffled as ever. There is no "there" there. No clue about power cliques, or rising personalities, or how authority is exercised. Reagan's frustration increased a bit. He wondered fleetingly if the Kremlin was like an old-age home.

But maybe, Reagan thought, they do have problems that nobody here can imagine. Maybe, Reagan told Gromyko, there were reasons for the Soviets to distrust and fear the U.S., though this country had never proclaimed its desire to export its system around the globe. The fact was, said Reagan, the superpowers now just had to set aside all their accumulated suspicions and prevent nuclear war.

Still nothing from Gromyko. No thaw. No acknowledgment of shared humanity. Gromyko plainly could say nothing, and he did it very well.

Reagan had been initiated into the club. In 1961 John Kennedy encountered the same cold void when he talked to Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. "I never met a man like that before," marveled Kennedy when he got back home.

Lyndon Johnson used his eyeball-to-eyeball technique on Alexei Kosygin at Glassboro in 1967. He locked eyes with Kosygin and vowed he would not look away. Minutes passed with neither man bunking. Johnson got a terrible urge for coffee. He walked his fingers across the table until they collided with his cup. He picked it up. Eyes locked. He drank. Eyes locked. He put the cup down. Kosygin looked away. Aha, thought Johnson. He had won. But later that night he confessed to friends, "I don't understand it. I could make any decision I wanted, but he had to call Moscow every time he wanted to go to the men's room."

Things were different when Richard Nixon met with Leonid Brezhnev.

Those two tough fellows got together in a dacha outside Moscow in 1972. Brezhnev talked about his boyhood, his father and peace. Brezhnev had mastered Kremlin politics as Nixon had mastered U.S. politics. Secure in their power, they could go beyond the set agenda. After taking on a little vodka, they made a deal: SALT I. For Gromyko and Reagan, there may not have been enough vodka, because there was no deal.