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
Mikhail Gorbachev elimination of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe and his strategy for eliminating all of the Soviet nuclear arsenal by the year 2000 (often referred to as the 'January Proposal'). He also began the process of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Mongolia on 28 July. Nonetheless, many observers, such as Jack F. Matlock, Jr. (despite generally praising Gorbachev as well as Reagan), have criticized Gorbachev for taking too long to achieve withdrawal from the Afghanistan War, citing it as an example of lingering elements of "old thinking" in Gorbachev. On 11 October 1986, Gorbachev and Reagan met at Höfði house in