At his first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, the American president unexpectedly asked the USSR to help repel an alien invasion.
In 1985, during their first meeting in Geneva, American President Ronald Reagan surprised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. During a private walk, the American leader asked his Soviet counterpart head-on: "If the US is attacked by aliens, can we count on your military assistance?" To this day, most experts believe it was little more than rhetorical. An attempt to find some common ground with Moscow for a dialogue. But there are those who think that the American president, passionate about UFOs, was seriously afraid of such a scenario.
A meeting in private
By 1985, when the meeting in Geneva took place, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were among the most hostile of the entire period of the Cold War. The Brezhnev détente policy had long since ended, the two sides had traded boycotts of the Olympic Games, the Americans were actively helping the Afghan mujahedeen, and Reagan was more intransigent towards the USSR than any of his predecessors. Even in the Kremlin, perestroika and new thinking were not yet on their minds.
The first meeting between an American president and a Soviet general secretary was held in Geneva in November 1985. No revolutionary breakthroughs were made. The parties did not agree on anything. Reagan considered Gorbachev a "stubborn Bolshevik" and Gorbachev dubbed the American leader a "retrograde and a real dinosaur".
Only a few years later it became known that that meeting discussed not only the reduction of nuclear arsenals, but also the creation of a military alliance in the event of a hypothetical invasion by an alien civilization. Of course, it sounds incredible, but this fact was later confirmed by Gorbachev and Reagan himself.
The conversation took place in private, away from members of government delegations. Only interpreters were with the leaders of state. Reagan asked Gorbachev if the USSR would provide military assistance to the US in the event of an alien invasion. The Soviet leader was surprised, but replied without hesitation that undoubtedly, in such a case, the USSR and the US would be on the same side.
A rhetorical device
Most experts and researchers believe that Reagan's sudden speech about aliens was nothing more than a rhetorical device. Reagan was a staunch and implacable anti-communist, while Gorbachev was still considered an equally staunch Marxist-Bolshevik. They needed some point of unequivocal agreement. Some platform on which their positions would converge 100 per cent regardless of ideology.
Thus, Reagan killed several birds with his exotic proposal. Firstly, he made a joke and eased the general tension. Second, he probed his opponent. Thirdly, he made sure that American-Soviet confrontation has certain limits, which it will not exceed. In the event of a hypothetical threat to mankind, the USSR was prepared to set aside its differences and act as an ally. Even though this threat was theoretical, it became clear to Reagan that the new Soviet leadership was guided more by pragmatic considerations than purely ideological dogma.
Reagan was afraid of aliens
There is, however, another perspective on the dialogue between the two leaders. Some researchers believe that Reagan seriously feared an alien invasion and his request was not an oratorical device, but a real offer of a military alliance to protect the Earth from a hypothetical threat.
Of all American presidents, Reagan was perhaps the most obsessed with the topic of UFOs. Space aliens were regularly mentioned by the president in public speeches. There are at least ten known public statements by Reagan on the subject. This included conversations with political leaders.