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In Washington, the first word of the Soviet walkout was greeted with relative aplomb. Prior to setting out for a four-day Thanksgiving vacation, President Reagan declared that "I don't think I'm surprised by what they did this morning, but I am disappointed. I can't believe that it's going to be permanent." The subsequent Andropov statement, however, may have been tougher than the White House bargained for. Along with cessation of the talks, the Soviet leader outlined in unusual detail his country's longstanding plans to up the nuclear ante by new deployments of atomic weapons. Among other things, the statement alluded to specific Soviet measures that would directly threaten the U.S. As for the NATO nations, said Andropov, "what will grow with the deployment of American missiles on European soil is not the security of Europe but the real danger that the United States will bring catastrophe upon the peoples of Europe."
The stormy response from the Kremlin seemed bound to strike an unjustifiably apocalyptic chord among Americans as they digested the fictional consequences of a nuclear holocaust in ABC-TV's The Day After (see NATION).* For his part, President Reagan replied from his Santa Barbara ranch on Thanksgiving Day that "we can only be dismayed," adding that the Andropov declaration was "at sharp variance with the stated wish of the Soviet Union that an [INF] agreement be negotiated."
The events that rattled much of the world last week had been building since December 1979. Largely at West European insistence, NATO unanimously agreed to start deploying 572 new Pershing II and cruise missiles by the end of 1983 if the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not reach an agreement that would reduce the number of Soviet SS-20 missiles trained on Western Europe. The "double-track" strategy, as it became known, ran into trouble almost from the start. The U.S. stance was weakened by indecision and infighting within the Reagan Administration, while the Soviets never budged from their initial refusal to accept a single new U.S. missile in Western Europe (see following story). Indeed, Moscow's bargaining strategy concentrated less on negotiating in Geneva than on stirring up Western Europe's growing peace movement, especially in West Germany. Said a senior Reagan Administration official: "They were betting heavily on fear created by the antideployment movement." Playing to that fear, Andropov issued a statement on Oct. 26 that explicitly threatened a walkout from the Geneva talks if deployment began on schedule.
Soviet negotiators had their first chance to walk out on Nov. 16, the day after the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced the arrival in Britain of the first shipment of Tomahawk cruise missiles. Instead, to put maximum pressure on the West Germans, another negotiating session was scheduled for Nov. 23, the day after the Bundestag vote. Meanwhile, one of the most curious episodes in the history of the two-year-old Geneva talks was unfolding.