Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.10.2011, Page 23

23
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2011
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MR. GORBACHEV GOES TO
WASHINGTON
Gorbachev, meanwhile, was notoriously
f lexible. We turn again to Goldman’s de-
scription of the Soviet leader:
“His continued shifting between
anti-reform and reform measures might
be explained as the inevitable conse-
quence of the fact that he had no road
map. He knew where he wanted to end
up, with a more productive consumer-
oriented economy, but he did not know
how to get there…he tried one approach
for a while and, if that did not produce
results quickly, he then tried something
else or reversed himself, only to end up
in another dead end.”
Much the same seems to be true of
his foreign policy. The most dramatic
instance came with the opening of the
Berlin Wall in 1989, which Reagan had
asked for in a famous speech two years
earlier. No one was sure if the surging
crowds should be stopped or not, so they
surged through and communism came
to an end in Eastern Europe.
For all his contradictions, Reagan had a
clear vision of where he wanted to go and
a better idea of how to get there, whereas
Gorbachev muddled through from day
to day. This, as well as the fact that the
United States could run up bigger defi-
cits than the Russians, were probably
the two things that determined the out-
come of the Cold War in the 1980s.
Reagan’s supporters would later ar-
gue that the whole Star Wars program
was one masterful con to get the Rus-
sians to enter into another arms race
they could not possibly hope to win. In
this view, it was the very threat of Star
Wars that brought down the Soviet
Union.
A WAR OF APPEARANCES
Even if Reagan wilfully aimed at bank-
rupting the Soviets, one could question
the wisdom of a policy that meant run-
ning up a record deficit to construct a
weapons system that did not work and
missiles that would soon be abolished,
in the hope that it would cost the other
side even more. But such was, perhaps,
the logic of the Cold War. It certainly
fitted the logic of Ronald Reagan. For
someone who wanted to increase gov-
ernment revenue by cutting taxes, build-
ing more nuclear weapons in the hope
of abolishing them might seem like an
obvious step.
The Russians knew that Star Wars
was not going to work, but the Cold War
was largely a question of appearances.
Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962 did not
offer any real military advantages; they
could just as easily be fired from Rus-
sian soil with the same results. But they
appeared to give the Soviets the upper
hand, and hence the US could not allow
them. Similarly, if the US had an SDI
program and the USSR did not, the lat-
ter would look weak by comparison, and
if anyone ever found out it did not work,
it would be too late anyway.
Gorbachev gave up his opposition to
SDI and his missiles in Asia. The deal
made in Washington was not as compre-
hensive as the one discussed in Reykja-
vík, which might have abolished nuclear
weapons altogether. The United States
agreed to destroy 859 missiles and the
Soviet Union 1752. This was only about
4% of their total arsenals, but the sym-
bolism was significant. Nuclear weap-
ons would still exist, but the thought
that the world might end at the push of a
button has become more distant, even as
the possibility of limited nuclear war in
other a regions has become more likely.
Gorbachev’s dilemma was probably
unsolvable. In order to go ahead with his
reforms, he had to end the Cold War, but
by the rules of the Cold War, blinking
first was tantamount to full surrender,
and would eventually cost Gorbachev
his job and any chance at restructuring
the system.
END OF EMPIRE
Gorbachev would return to Iceland
on the 20th anniversary of the Höfði
summit in 2006. Ironically, it was the
same year that Bobby Fischer moved to
Iceland. It was also the year that the US
Naval Base in Keflavík was closed, the
American military hard pressed in the
Middle East recalling its troops much
like the Roman Empire withdrawing its
legions from Britain in its final days.
Both Reagan and Gorbachev tried to
breathe new life into their respective eco-
nomic systems with policies that were
seen as revolutionary at the time. Gor-
bachev failed, and oversaw the collapse
of communism. There is little doubt
that this came as a blessing for Eastern
Europe, where he remains popular, but
many in Russia itself feel worse off than
they did before he came to power.
Reagan emerged as the winner in
the short term, but in the long term
he may also have fatally wounded the
system he fought for. Deregulation and
deficits became the order of the day, and
are now costing the US dearly.
Reagan never came back to Iceland,
but with the advent of the long term of
Prime Ministership Davíð Oddsson in
1991 and his program of cutting the
state down to size, Iceland became ever
more Reaganesque. As then Vice-Pres-
ident George Bush said when Reagan
was in the hospital after an assassina-
tion attempt in 1981: “We will all act
as if he were still here.” This is more
or less what Iceland, and most of the
world, have been doing since the days of
the Reagan Presidency. For better, and
mostly, for worse, it is Reagan’s world we
live in now.
Continued from page 19 GHOSTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY
AT HöFðI
House Most press photographs of
Höfði House show it in splendid isola-
tion, with only distant mountains as a
backdrop. But much like confronting
the pyramids in Egypt, if one turns
the camera just a little, a city comes
into view.
Höfði is in fact located at a cross-
roads at Félagstún, close to the centre
of Reykjavík. It is an official reception
house for the Mayor of Reykjavík and
hence is not open to the public, but
can be viewed easily enough from the
outside.
Even if it is best known for the US-
Soviet summit, Höfði was in fact built
by the French. French fishing boats
came to Iceland in droves in the 19th
Century, and the French Navy even
used some isolated areas for target
practice. French hospitals were set up
in the country and the French Consul
built Höfði House in 1909 to live in
while he oversaw their affairs.
The consul went home to fight
for his country in World War I, and
the house was bought by the famous
Icelandic lawyer and poet Einar Bene-
diktsson. His first job after coming
home from studying in Copenhagen
was to prosecute a brother and sis-
ter who were suspected of killing a
child they had together. The brother
admitted guilt, but the sister commit-
ted suicide, and from then on Einar
claimed to be haunted by her ghost.
In World War II, the house became
the residence of the British Ambassa-
dor, and among notable guests there
were Marlene Dietrich and Winston
Churchill, fresh from signing the
Atlantic Charter with President Roo-
sevelt.
After the war, the Ambassador
claimed that the house was haunted
by a “White Lady” and requested to
be moved elsewhere. The house was
taken over by the City of Reykjavík,
which officially “neither confirms
nor denies” the presence of a ghost
there. Five years after the US-Soviet
summit, Prime Minister Davíð Odds-
son and Foreign Minister Jón Baldvin
Hannibalsson met with the Foreign
Ministers of the three Baltic Repub-
lics, and Iceland became the first
country to officially recognise their
independence from the Soviet Union.
In a double sense, therefore, one
could claim this is the house where
the Cold War ended.