Was It All a Soviet Sting?

By Richard Stengel

Did Ronald Reagan walk into a sting? Did Mikhail Gorbachev go to Reykjavik with a well-wrought plan designed to put the Soviets in a no-lose situation and the Americans in a no-win one? Or, perhaps, did Gorbachev get so caught up in the breakneck pace of the negotiations that he went further than he had planned?

Amid the mysteries of Soviet motivations, one thing appears certain: Gorbachev arrived in Iceland with a detailed game plan, approved in advance by the Politburo after consultations with Warsaw Pact leaders, that would shape the events of the weekend. The concept was apparently simple. Moscow would % propose such an attractive package of offensive-arms reductions that Reagan would be tempted to pursue the dream of a grand compromise that included some resolution on the Strategic Defense Initiative, rather than stick to the original U.S. goal of a medium-range-missile deal not linked to SDI. If Reagan accepted the bait, as he initially did, the Soviets would be in the catbird seat. Either Reagan would end up curtailing Star Wars, or he would emerge as the Grinch who stole Christmas, the man who dashed hopes for a radical breakthrough in arms control.

Midway through the talks, the Soviets broke the news blackout with calculated leaks that a major deal was in the works. By doing so, they were putting pressure on the U.S. to make or break the deal. Either way Gorbachev could not lose. Some experts even say Gorbachev was counting on the talks collapsing over Reagan's insistence on Star Wars. "They banked on Reagan's theological commitment to SDI," says one Western diplomat in Moscow. "Now they are behaving as if to say to the Americans, 'We got you!' "

Whether it was all part of a calculated plan to trap the U.S., Gorbachev's opening gambit achieved an intermediate goal: relinking the issue of medium- range missiles to SDI for the time being. Before Reykjavik, the Soviets had indicated that they would be willing to make an interim deal on INF divorced of strategic and defensive issues. The American game plan had been to decouple as many issues as possible from the prickly SDI dispute. But Gorbachev enticed the Americans into a whirligig of negotiations with his sweeping proposals. Only toward the end, when U.S. and Soviet positions overlapped on nearly all non-SDI issues, did it become clear just how adamant the Soviets were on linking the entire package to the scuttling of Star Wars. "Before Reykjavik, the Soviets were in a position in which SDI had become delinked," said one diplomat. "Now it is relinked, and in such a way as to make it appear that the Americans okayed it."

In his postsummit press conference, Gorbachev's performance did not seem like a spontaneous reaction to a failed summit. "He had probably cleared that speech with the Politburo before he left," said one diplomat. Some observers, however, think the Soviet performance was more impulsive than premeditated. "What happened to the Soviets was contrary to their expectations," says Dimitri Simes, a Sovietologist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Both sides were upping the ante beyond what was realistic for the two delegations. Gorbachev intended to trap the President, but then he became involved himself in the dialogue and allowed the attraction of the grand compromise to divert him from his main ambitions . . . My impression is that Gorbachev is a gambler."

But if it was a gamble, it appeared to pay off in Moscow. When Gorbachev stepped off his jet Monday night, he was treated like a conquering hero by the Politburo. They shook his hand in vigorous congratulations in a scene viewed by millions on Soviet TV. Even Andrei Gromyko, the granite-faced grand old man of Soviet foreign policy, was smiling.

With reporting by David Aikman/ Washington and James O. Jackson/Moscow