By the current moment, the so-called Nuclear Club, made up of eight countries that have nuclear weapons, has managed to form in the world. Such countries, in addition to Russia and the United States of America, include France, Great Britain, China, North Korea, Pakistan and India. Many experts say that Israel can also be safely called a member of the Nuclear Club, since Tel Aviv has weapons of mass destruction at its disposal, but the Israeli authorities are trying to hide it with all their might.
Today, speaking about the Nuclear Club, few people remember that at least one of its representatives, at one time proposed to abolish not only this organization, but also to abandon both testing and storage of nuclear weapons altogether. any country in the world. The initiator of such an idea in January 1986 was the Soviet Union, or rather, its then leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The idea of Gorbachev and his closest entourage was that on the basis of a phased program by the year 2000 there would be no nuclear power left on the planet, the USSR and the USA would stop the arms race and go over to an economically profitable partnership.
Today, every sane person understands perfectly well that such a proposal is a classic example of populism, which balances on the extreme border of common sense, because the opponents of the USSR will clearly not give up their military power. But then it seemed to many that Gorbachev was really capable of leading the two countries, which had been opposing each other for decades, on the path of rapprochement and universal fraternization. At least the people very actively welcomed Gorbachev's statements.
It is obvious that the plan for the phased disbandment of the nuclear club, which at that time included 7 states (the same, but without the DPRK), could not have been born in the head of the then Secretary General by accident.
At the end of July 1985, Gorbachev introduces a moratorium on nuclear tests until the beginning of the next 1986 (introduces, which is remarkable, without any agreements with the United States - unilaterally). At the same time, the document contains words that the Soviet Union is ready to extend the moratorium if the United States supports the USSR in its endeavors and also announces a temporary ban on nuclear weapons tests.
Obviously, having heard that the new leader of the Land of Soviets unexpectedly announced some kind of moratorium after several years of mutual sharp political pricks, withdrawals from agreements, boycotts of the Olympics in Moscow and Los Angeles, American President Reagan, who by that time had already during the second term he held a chair in the White House, decided that the Soviets were preparing another provocation, throwing bait to the Americans. For obvious reasons, the Americans only chuckled in response to the proposals of General Secretary Gorbachev and publicly declared that they would not support any moratorium. It would seem that the situation should again follow the path of the classic Soviet-American confrontation, but Mikhail Gorbachev decided that the Americans needed to "help" understand his exceptionally good intentions … Since then, the Soviet Union has virtually unilaterally decided to take the path of self-disarmament, expecting that the idea will be picked up by "partners" from overseas. This was an amazing precedent in world practice, because the usually rejected initiative of one of the opponents in terms of military cooperation and concessions to the other immediately led to a new confrontation and a sharp exacerbation of relations between these opponents. But Mikhail Gorbachev, apparently, decided to do everything to please the overseas "friends", and therefore, after the proposal to support the moratorium on nuclear tests rejected by those, not only did not give the order to abandon the Soviet moratorium, but also continued his steps along the path of unilateral concessions.
In November 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev's famous Geneva meeting with Ronald Reagan took place, which presented a sufficient number of surprises, primarily for the Americans. Leaving for this meeting, Reagan, obviously, believed that some ultimatum phrases would come from the Soviet Union that, they say, if you do not support our initiative on a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing, then we will curtail our program, and then completely for ourselves we will stop answering. It was for such statements by Gorbachev that the American side was preparing in Geneva. But events followed a completely different scenario. In particular, the Soviet delegation continued to surprise the Americans with generous gifts, the main of which was that the USSR promised the United States, even after January 1, 1986, not to lift the unilateral moratorium on test explosions of nuclear weapons …
After such a truly royal gift, Reagan began to look more closely at the new Soviet leadership, and, apparently, concluded for himself that Gorbachev was the “guy” who himself is a great gift for the United States. The pacifist slogans of Gorbachev, who, after the announcement of the extension of the moratorium, unilaterally declared his desire to see a world without nuclear weapons, which initially caused only an incredulous grin on the American side, later she (the American side) decided to take bilateral relations between the States and the Union as a basis. After playing around with variations on the potential benefit that Gorbachev's striking desire to make a positive impression on the West could bring to the United States, the American authorities decided to "give the Soviet leader a chance" to realize his plans. What else? The main world adversary of the United States, with which women and children were frightened, - the Soviet Union - itself says that it is ready to disarm in full, and it would be a sin not to take advantage of it. Moreover, Moscow did not set any special conditions for Washington: they say, we are disarming, and if you support us in this, then this fact will be simply blissful.
The United States, naturally, decided to play world pacifism in a manner characteristic of them, which Gorbachev either did not know about, or pretended not to. In signing military and space technology partnerships, Reagan is taking a very original path. Already in February 1986, the American president announced that the USSR and the United States had embarked on a course of disarmament, but at the same time he eloquently added that he was not going to stop projects on the Strategic Defense Initiative, which are primarily aimed at creating new types of weapons (in including space). This was a kind of message to American citizens, who still could not understand why Reagan decided to go for rapprochement with Gorbachev. This message can be paraphrased roughly as follows: friends, we shook hands with Gorbachev; he went to disarm, and we will go our own way, because for us (the Americans) our own defense is first of all.
However, Moscow also missed these words about the continuation of the US military build-up policy, and more and more fell into a "friendly quagmire."With further agreements, the Americans managed to remove the issue of forward-based weapons, but they readily agreed to reduce ICBMs, which the USSR should have had less than 20% of the initial number by 1996. In addition, the USA and the USSR decided to take the path of destroying missiles on European territory. Mikhail Gorbachev actively supported this idea, practically not paying attention to the fact that it was about the destruction of American and Soviet missiles, but nothing is said in the document about French and British missiles, and these countries were and continue to be American allies (in including the NATO bloc). In other words, the USSR was clearly at a disadvantage, because European nuclear parity would be violated more than clearly.
The most surprising thing is that Washington did not support even such favorable conditions for the Americans at the last moment, since it wanted to be able to retain the right to conduct nuclear tests both on the ground and in outer space, implementing the concept of missile defense (SDI).
As a result, an agreement on disarmament between the USSR and the United States was reached in December 1987. As you can see, the Americans “probed” Gorbachev for loyalty for more than 2 years, and after a control “probing” they decided that it was time to make an apparent breakthrough step. As a result, on December 8, 1987, the so-called Washington Agreements were signed, according to which the USSR pledged to destroy the RSD-10, R-12 and R-14 missiles, the USA - Pershing-2, BGM-109G. These are short-range missiles. If we talk about medium-range missiles, then the Soviet Union started sawing the OTR-22 and OTR-23 missiles, and the USA - the Pershing-1A. When in 1991 they counted how many missile systems were destroyed by both of them, the result was very interesting: the Americans reported on the destruction of 846 missile systems, and the USSR announced a "record" - 1846 units!..
However, in the USSR, the time was such that at that time very few people thought about nuclear parity. Mikhail Gorbachev by that time had already managed to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, having done his job …
It would seem that the leadership of the United States could only applaud the initiatives of Mikhail Gorbachev (which this leadership, in principle, did), but Washington, feeling the taste of blood torn to pieces of the country, yearned for more. His new wishes were how to continue the implementation of Gorbachev's idea of renouncing nuclear weapons in a single country. Recall that Gorbachev's idea was to abandon nuclear weapons on a planetary scale, but the White House still liked the idea of abandoning weapons of mass destruction within a single state, namely the USSR (Russia).
After Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian President Boris Yeltsin took over the baton of pacifism for 1/6 of the land after Mikhail Gorbachev. Guided by the difficult economic situation and the absence of not only real, but even potential enemies abroad, Yeltsin sells weapons-grade uranium to the United States simply at bargain prices. About 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium were sold to Washington as part of a deal between the Russian Federation and the United States, which bypassed the parliamentary discussion in Russia. After another gift from the domestic authorities to their Western partners, the Americans realized that Russia can be manipulated as they please. In particular, the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the ABM Treaty was finally attested, because no significant threats could be expected from Russia, which had been drained of blood by the mid-90s, and the Russian Federation, after the sale of military uranium, actually lost the ability to reproduce nuclear weapons in quantities sufficient to maintain parity. … The then Minister for Atomic Energy Viktor Mikhailov put his signature on the sale of 235 uranium to the United States by Russia, the then-Minister of Atomic Energy Viktor Mikhailov, de jure senior officials had nothing to do with the deal, but it would be foolish to assume that it was Mikhailov who initiated the continuation of the unilateral disarmament of Russia.
But even the export of 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium from Russia did not temper the US appetites, since at about the same time Moscow was “friendly” obliged to turn the remaining reserves of uranium-235 into a 4% concentrate that cannot be used for the production of nuclear weapons. The United States itself was able to use not only its stocks of weapons-grade uranium, but also uranium delivered from Russia.
It turns out that Gorbachev's words that the planet could become nuclear-free by 2000 became reality in just 10 years (since 1985). True, the catch is that by 2000, not the entire planet Earth had become nuclear-free, but only a separate country located on this planet. And the saddest thing is that this country is Russia - the country in which you and I live …
