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
Geneva Summit (1985) suggested the Soviets were overly paranoid about the United States (The Soviets had refused to allow American planes use Soviet airfields in post-World War II Germany). They broke for lunch and Reagan promised Gorbachev he'd have a chance to rebut. They talked outside for about two hours on the Strategic Defense Initiative, but both stood firm. Gorbachev accepted Reagan's invitation to the United States in a year, and Reagan was invited to do the same in 1987. On the second day, Reagan went after human rights, saying that he did not want to tell Gorbachev how to run his country,