Bruce B. G. Clarke senior military officer in arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. After his first year at the State Department he was selected for brigade command but the busy pace of Soviet-American negotiations caused his assignment to be extended one year beyond the normal two-year posting. In his three years at the State Department, he regularly shuttled between negotiations in Washington and Geneva. This period include three summit meetings between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev: the November 1985 Geneva Summit, the October 1986 Reykjavík Summit and the December 1987 Washington summit where the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was
Washington Summit many supporters of both leaders, Reagan and Gorbachev began putting resources into INF Treaty negotiations. This, in addition to various troubles foreign and domestic in both countries led to a tense time preceding the Washington Summit. For Reagan, trouble with the stock market, failure to win approval for Supreme-Court-nominee Robert Bork, and the Iran-Contra scandal were all generating political pressure. Also, criticism from an uncharacteristically large number of notable conservatives including former President Richard Nixon, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, commentator William Buckley, as well as members of his own administration resulted in a contentious political atmosphere around the