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In retrospect, one of the most vexing realizations is that there was a brief time recently when the U.S.-Soviet relationship stood a chance of improvement. Early in 1983 Reagan informed Andropov in a personal letter that the U.S. was interested in responding to Soviet calls for better ties. Some tentative signs emerged in the summer of 1983, when the two nations signed an agreement under which the U.S. would sell a minimum of 9 million tons of grain to the Soviet Union over a five-year period. Talks were under way to upgrade the Moscow-Washington hotline and to open consular offices in New York and Kiev. But then, on Sept. 1,1983, a Soviet interceptor jet shot down a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 that had strayed over Soviet territory on Sakhalin Island, killing all 269 aboard. Reagan responded with particular fury, accusing the Soviets of committing "a terrorist act to sacrifice the lives of innocent human beings."
The Kremlin stonewalled, charging that the civilian airliner had been on a U.S.-inspired spy mission. Responding to popular anger in the U.S., the Governors of New York and New Jersey barred Gromyko's aircraft from landing at Kennedy and Newark international airports when he was scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly. Deeply stung by the decision, Gromyko decided not to come at all, even though the U.S. offered the use of a military airfield near New York if the Soviet diplomat would arrive in a military aircraft. Finally, when NATO went ahead with its plan to deploy the first of 108 Pershing II and 464 cruise missiles in Western Europe, the Soviets walked out of the intermediate-range missile talks, later vowing not to return unless the missiles were withdrawn. They also suspended strategic-arms negotiations.
Since Chernenko's assumption of power, the Kremlin has heaped scorn on every initiative advanced by the Reagan Administration. It rejected a U.S. proposal presented by Vice President George Bush in Geneva last April to outlaw production of nerve gases and other chemical weapons as "deliberately unacceptable for the Soviet Union and many other states." When Reagan responded two weeks ago to a longstanding Soviet initiative by offering to negotiate a pact barring the first use force, Moscow said the idea was "hypocritical."
Meanwhile, the Soviets have conspicuously flexed their military muscles. In April the Soviet navy held its largest maneuvers ever in the North Atlantic. About the same time, Soviet forces in Afghanistan launched their fiercest offensive against guerrillas since invading the country. In May, Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov outlined the deployment of additional tactical nuclear weapons in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, and announced that two Delta-class submarines, carrying longer-range missiles, had joined the Soviet subs already cruising off the U.S. coasts.