East-West Carrot and Stick

Mixed signals from Gorbachev

On the eve of the resumption of dis- armament negotiations in Geneva last week, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev mixed some tough talk on the nuclear arms race with conciliatory noises about the need for East-West detente. During a meeting in Moscow with former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, Gorbachev dismissed the first round of the Geneva negotiations, completed in April, as "completely fruitless" and insisted that U.S. plans for space weapons, or Star Wars, research would "dramatically increase the threat of a truly global, all-destroying military conflict."

Two days later, in talks with another visitor, Italian Prime Minister Benedetto Craxi,...

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