Dealing with Difficult People? Lessons from Ronald Reagan
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In recent months, U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders have struggled to find a winning strategy to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to back away from his aggressions toward Ukraine. In a Wall Street Journal editorial, Ken Adelman, U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations and arms-control director, writes that recently declassified accounts of negotiations between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev offer lessons that could help Western leaders approach their Russian counterpart more effectively.
According to Adelman, on his way to accept the 1980 Republican nomination, Reagan told an adviser that the primary reason he wanted to be president was “To win the Cold War.” Having set this overarching goal, Reagan tenaciously pursued it throughout his two terms in the White House.
Reagan reportedly took a “We win, they lose” approach to negotiations with the Russians. During the key nuclear-arms summit in Reykjavik, Iceland in October 1986, Gorbachev complained to Reagan at least 10 times that the Russians were making all the concessions and the Americans were making none. The observation was accurate, according to Adelman.
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