US Presidency
1988

And I also said peace conferences, arms negotiations, proposals for treaties could make sense only if they were part of a wider context, a context that sought to explore and resolve the deeper, underlying differences between us. I said to Mr. Gorbachev then, as I've said to you before: Nations do not mistrust each other because they're armed; they're armed because they mistrust each other. And in that place, by that peaceful lake in neutral Switzerland, Mr. Gorbachev and I did begin a new relationship based not just on engagement over the single issue of arms control but on a broader agenda about our deeper differences, an agenda of human rights, regional conflicts, and bilateral exchanges between our peoples. Even on the arms control issue itself, we agreed to go beyond the past, to seek not just treaties that permit building weapons to higher levels but revolutionary agreements that actually reduced and even eliminated a whole class of nuclear weapons.