Trust, but verify had been popular in the USSR when Gorbachev was in college, saying that "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." Following the 2013 Ghouta attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference in Geneva on September 14, 2013 that the United States and Russia had agreed on a framework to dispose of Syria's chemical weapons. He said "President Reagan's old adage about 'trust but verify' ... is in need of an update. And we have committed here to a standard that says 'verify and verify'." The similar phrase "Trust and Verify" was also
Soviet Middle Eastern foreign policy during the Cold War Vietnamese peace negotiations. Moscow was limited in the peace talks because it did not recognize Israel diplomatically, which enabled the United States to talk to both sides. The U.S. responded to Soviet influence in the Middle East after the Camp David Accords by using economic sanctions to influence the Arab world. Geopolitics transitioned from post-Cold War polarization to 21st-century regional conflicts. The lack of two superpowers destabilized the Middle East as pressure-relieving, limited proxy conflicts grew into greater conflicts which spawned genocide. Soviet Middle Eastern foreign policy during the Cold War The Soviet Union used its relationship with Europe to