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
Foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration but Reagan recognized the real change in the direction of the Soviet leadership, and shifted to skillful diplomacy to personally push Gorbachev further with his reforms. Reagan sincerely believed that if he could persuade the Soviets to simply look at the prosperous American economy, they too would embrace free markets and a free society. At a speech given at the Berlin Wall on the city's 750th birthday, Reagan pushed Gorbachev further in front of 20,000 onlookers: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here