Playing to the Galleries

In the 30-year history of Soviet-American summitry there has never been so little agreement over what those due to meet would discuss. Ronald Reagan's speech at the United Nations may have succeeded in achieving his principal objective, which is to steal a march on Mikhail Gorbachev by publicly trying to set the agenda for the summit. But the President chose to define that agenda in a way that is clearly unacceptable to the Soviets. Reagan has put the world on notice that he does not want to give priority to arms control, despite (and in some ways because of) Gorbachev's public...

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