Last edited Wed May 3, 2017, 07:01 PM - Edit history (1)
President Reagan had a more peaceful daughter Patti, and she made him meet anti nuclear activist Helen Caldicott on December 6, 1982:
President Reagan replied that he, too, doesn't want nuclear war but that our ways of preventing it differ; he believes in building more bombs. He seemed not to appreciate the strategic significance of the Pershing II missiles threatening part of the Soviet Central Command. He said that Russia is stronger than America and wants to take over the world, with Communism dominating, and that Russia already has a base ninety miles off the American coast. I noted that America has Russia ringed by bases in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Britain, France, and other countries, and that many of these bases are equipped with nuclear weapons and missiles. He denied the fact. I asked him if he thought they were all evil, but he declined to answer. I also asked him if he had met a Russian, and he said, "No, but we hear from their emigres."
That is from Helen Caldicott's autobiography, but do listen to her story at C-SPAN. She did not convince Reagan, but maybe made him think. He included this meeting in his memoir (and not another meeting one hour later with Strom Thurmond), and wrote that: "As president, I was devoting every effort I could to ending the threat of nuclear war. But Patti was convinced I was doing the opposite. She just didn’t believe in me."
Then at October 10, 1983, Reagan saw “The Day After” in an advance copy. He wrote in his diary that “It’s very effective and left me greatly depressed ... My own reaction: We have to do all we can to have a deterrent and see there is never a nuclear war”. Later in his memoirs he wrote, that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a nuclear war. Also the Joint Chiefs of Staff saw the film, but Reagan concluded: "We know it’s 'anti-nuke' propaganda but we’re going to take it over & say it shows why we must keep on doing what we’re doing."
This strategy could be heard in the media, as at ABC News 'Viewpoint' November 20, 1983, with a discussion panel of Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, scientist Carl Sagan and Secretary of State George Schultz:
Reagan still focused mostly on preventing full nuclear war with more weapons and the Star Wars system, but also from November 1985 arranged a series of meetings with USSR's leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which softened the Cold War. The Reykjavík Summit October 1986 resulted in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, which is still active - but so is too many nuclear missiles.
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