United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

The expression "summit meeting" derives from the coincidence of a chance phrase from Winston Churchill in 1950 with the "conquest" of Mt. Everest in 1953, according to a new book entitled Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century.[1] -- "David Reynolds, professor of international history at Cambridge, has had the excellent idea of compiling a history of six 20th-century conferences that, he believes, open 'a window into international relations during the 20th century,'" wrote Vernon Bogdanor in a review on Saturday for the Financial Times of London. -- "The golden age of summitry, Reynolds believes, lasted from the late 1930s to the end of the 1980s . . . Today, however, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the growth of terrorism mean that responsibility for peace has become diffused, while the internet and other technology allows political leaders to be in regular and constant contact without actually meeting. Summitry, therefore, has now become multilateral and institutionalized, as with European Union and G8 meetings." ...

[Review of Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century by David Reynolds. Allen Lane £25, 481 pages.]

The term "summit" was coined by Winston Churchill in an election speech in 1950, where he advocated a meeting with Stalin. "It is not easy to see," he declared, "how matters could be worsened by a parley at the summit." A few years later, in 1953, the conquest of Everest led the cartoonist Vicky to show "a four-power expedition -- preparing the long delayed attempt to climb the highest mountain of all," which is of course peace.

But, although Churchill coined the word, the practice of high-level meetings between leaders is much older. Napoléon was particularly fond of them -- believing, perhaps rightly, that he could dominate personal interviews; when he met Tsar Alexander I on a raft at Tilsit on the Niemen river in 1807, they sought to redraw the map of Europe as if they were emperors of the world. Poor Frederick William III of Prussia could only watch from the bank in the pouring rain.

David Reynolds, professor of international history at Cambridge, has had the excellent idea of compiling a history of six 20th-century conferences that, he believes, open "a window into international relations during the 20th century."

Summits is based on a secure mastery both of the original documents and a vast secondary literature, and its depth of scholarship is only partially concealed by its graceful and witty prose. Indeed, Reynolds has the enviable gift of making the reader feel that he is actually present at the various summits he describes, personally negotiating with Gorbachev, Hitler, Stalin, or Brezhnev.

The first three "parleys" -- Munich in 1938, Yalta in 1945, and Vienna in 1961 -- seem, despite Churchill's assertion, to have worsened world affairs. Munich yielded a temporary peace, but at the ruinous cost of allowing Hitler to believe that Britain and France were not interested in central Europe. Yalta fed the illusion that Britain and the United States could enjoy a constructive post-war relationship with Stalin; while at Vienna, Khruschev decided that Kennedy was inexperienced and immature, which meant he could risk adventures abroad. The result, the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962, brought the powers to the brink of confrontation.

The pioneer of the modern summit was Neville Chamberlain. For his first meeting with Hitler, he brought neither officials nor interpreters, and had to rely for a report of the meeting on Hitler's interpreter, who was at first unwilling to provide it. Churchill, at Yalta, did not do much better, or so the permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, believed. "It's always the same with these conferences -- The Great Men don't know what they're talking about and have to be educated."

That bureaucratic view seems somewhat unfair. For the remaining conferences analyzed did have better outcomes -- between Nixon and Brezhnev in 1972; the Camp David conference on the Middle East in 1978, which led to peace between Israel and Egypt; and the 1985 Geneva meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev.

What, then, are the preconditions of a successful summit? One-on-one meetings, Reynolds believes, such as those between Chamberlain and Hitler or Kennedy and Khruschev, are unlikely to succeed as "the chemistry between two leaders is insufficient to set off a chain reaction." The best summits are based on preparation and form part of a series. That was what Reagan and Gorbachev managed to achieve in 1985 when they began "a sequence of meetings" that enabled the Cold War to end "not with a bang, or a whimper, but a handshake."

The golden age of summitry, Reynolds believes, lasted from the late 1930s to the end of the 1980s: "It was made possible by air travel, made necessary by weapons of mass destruction, and made into household news by the mass media."

Today, however, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the growth of terrorism mean that responsibility for peace has become diffused, while the internet and other technology allows political leaders to be in regular and constant contact without actually meeting. Summitry, therefore, has now become multilateral and institutionalized, as with European Union and G8 meetings.

The human factor, however, remains. When Reagan visited Moscow in 1988, Gorbachev reminded him of a Russian proverb: "It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times."