The game changer: Reassessing the impact of SDI on Gorbachev's foreign policy, arms control, and US-Soviet relations

In February 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev decoupled the Soviet arms control package, withdrawing Soviet conditions connecting an agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) to strategic offensive nuclear missile reductions (START), Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). Gorbachev untied the arms control package in order to pursue a separate treaty to eliminate US and Soviet INF missiles, and in doing so, Gorbachev changed the game. This decision led to the historic December 1987 INF Treaty, the only US-Soviet treaty to completely eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. Through an analysis of the processes, events, policies, and people that influenced Gorbachev's decision making and foreign policy, this dissertation examines how, by February 1987, he was able to free himself from the old Soviet mind-set and pursue more realistic and rational policies in arms control, regardless of the potential threat posed to Soviet security by SDI.;While many historians mention this delinking in the context of the INF Treaty, no one has undertaken a serious and thorough analysis of the decision to untie the arms control package, nor have scholars examined why this dramatic shift in the Soviet negotiating position occurred at this time. Using newly available archival materials from the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California; the National Security Archive in Washington, DC; and the Katayev Collection at the Hoover Archives at Stanford University, this dissertation reassesses the impact of Reagan's policies and SDI on Gorbachev's foreign policy and internal reform efforts, on arms control, and on US-Soviet relations.