The Washington/Camp David Summit 1990

The Washington summit 20 years ago this month between Presidents George H.W. Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev brought dramatic realization on the American side of the severe domestic political pressures facing the Soviet leader, produced an agreement in principle on trade but no breakthrough on Germany, and only slow progress towards the arms race in reverse which Gorbachev had offered, according to previously secret Soviet and U.S. documents posted by the National Security Archive. The documents posted include Soviet memcons of the Washington summit itself (the American memcons remain classified today, in a surreal testimony to the decrepitude of the U.S. secrecy system), the preparatory documents from both Soviet and U.S. files for the preceding ministerial meeting in Moscow between Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze (and Gorbachev), the National Security Directive signed by George H.W. Bush defining the American arms control goals and limits, the transcript of Kohl's call to Bush just before the summit on May 30, 1990, and the U.S. Embassy cables from Moscow about Gorbachev's political crisis before the summit and Soviet reaction afterwards, including the observation that the summit played in Moscow as if it were a political campaign against insurgent Russian politician Boris Yeltsin.