of a gigantic 3,500-mile pipeline running from Siberia through rugged terrain to carry gas, Soviet gas, into Europe. The American and European economies were in a recession, and the pipeline contract meant good jobs during a time when they were hard to get.

But suddenly, in mid-December of 1981, the Polish government, with clear Soviet support, cracked down on the Polish labor union Solidarity and its courageous leaders. The Reagan administration was determined to register its views forcefully, to use the events in Poland as the basis for action against the Soviets. On December 29, the president ordered all U.S. firms to break any direct contract involving the Siberian pipeline and not to enter into any new ones. Six months later, on June 18, 1982, in the acrimonious aftermathof the Versailles economic summit, President Reagan carried his policy further: any European firm operating on a U.S. license or any American subsidiary operating in Europe must break all pipeline contracts. Our European allies harshly attacked the United States for this retroactive action. We were, they cried, an unreliable supplier, applying extraterritorial reach to American foreign policy that encroached upon their sovereignty.

The Europeans were enraged, as were important segments of the U.S. business community. Yet the upcoming year, 1983, would be critical for nuclear arms negotiations: close U.S.-European coordination would be essential. New Soviet missiles, SS-20s, had been deployed and, since the 1970s, explicitly and directly targeted on Europe. These intermediate-range missiles could not reach the United States. Their purpose was to intimidate West Europeans as part of