Word: cheneys
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...critical moment in the transformation of U.S.-Soviet relations came on Nov. 16, just over two weeks before the meeting in the Med. That was the day Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney announced that because the Warsaw Pact was becoming "a very different animal," the U.S. could reduce its defense spending. For the Kremlin, it was the best news out of Washington in years, and not just for the obvious reason that less is better where the other superpower's arsenal is concerned. As seen from Moscow, the eventual military consequences of the Pentagon cuts are less important than...
...Cheney's announcement was greeted by much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment with cynicism. The Defense Secretary, it was said, had not really had a change of heart; the cuts had more to do with the requirements of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction law than with the opportunities posed by Gorbachev. True, but beside the point. What mattered to the Soviets was that the U.S. body politic as a whole now accepted the proposition that Kremlin policy had changed in ways that justified American reciprocation...
More striking than the size of the Pentagon's proposed cutback was the timing of its announcement. Bush has become adept at letting the most conservative Cabinet members announce liberal-sounding policy changes that could anger the Republican right. It thus fell to Cheney to disclose that the Pentagon is examining conventional-weapons cuts that would go beyond Bush's plan, unveiled at last May's NATO summit, to reduce U.S. and Soviet forces to 275,000 each. Some Pentagon officials are worried that the talk about reducing defense spending could, in the words of one, give some allies...
...heels of Cheney's announcement, word reached Washington that West German Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg has drawn plans for a 15% reduction in the Bundeswehr by 1991. Almost simultaneously, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the West German Foreign Minister, arrived in Washington and let it be known that any U.S. plans to modernize short-range nuclear weapons in Europe are out of the question now that the two Germanys are groping toward reconciliation. "No German government will discuss any weapons system that might result in nuclear weapons being targeted at Dresden and Leipzig," said a Genscher aide...
Such talk has angered British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who spent the day after Thanksgiving with the President at Camp David tutoring him on how to handle the Soviet leader, with whom she has met five times. Concerned that Cheney's announcement will weaken America's hand if the Malta talks take a substantive turn on arms control, Thatcher advised Bush, "Any surprise that you're presented with, you take it away and you consider it very, very carefully...