The American attack was, as we had foreseen, carried out principally by sixteen F1-11s based in the UK, though a number of other aircraft were also used. The attack lasted forty minutes. Libyan missiles and guns were fired but their air defence radars were successfully jammed. The raid was undoubtedly a success, though sadly there were civilian casualties and one aircraft was lost. Television reports, however, concentrated all but exclusively not on the strategic importance of the targets but on weeping mothers and children.
The initial impact on public opinion in Britain, as elsewhere, was even worse than I had feared. Public sympathy for Libyan civilians was mixed with fear of terrorist retaliation by Libya. Conservative Central Office received large numbers of telephoned protests, as did the No. 10 switchboard. Worries were expressed about the fate of British nationals there and the potential for hostage taking. Opposition critics, Conservative back-benchers and Tory newspapers alike were bitterly critical of the fact that I had given permission for the use of the bases. I was depicted as cringing towards the US but callous towards their victims. I reported fully on what had happened to the Cabinet, some of whose members I subsequently learnt thought that they ought to have known about the raid beforehand. Later that afternoon I made my statement to a largely sceptical or hostile House of Commons. President Reagan telephoned me afterwards to fill me in on what had been happening and to wish me well in fighting off the criticism he knew I faced. He said that when in his speech on television the previous night he had referred to the co-operation of European allies, he had had only one country in mind — the United Kingdom.
I was to speak in the emergency debate on the Libyan raid in the House on Wednesday afternoon. It was intellectually and technically the most difficult speech to prepare because it depended heavily on describing the intelligence on Libya’s terrorist activities and we had to marshal the arguments for self-defence in such circumstances. Every word of the speech had to be checked by the relevant intelligence services to see that it was accurate and that it did not place sources at risk. The debate was rank with anti-American prejudice. Neil Kinnock misquoted President Reagan’s televised broadcast; but he did so once too often. I had heard him do this earlier in the day and I had the full text of what the President had actually said given to Cranley Onslow, the Chairman of the ‘22 Committee Executive. Mr Kinnock said:
The purpose of the bombing raid on Tripoli and Benghazi on Monday night was said by President Reagan to be to ‘bring down the curtain on Gaddafi’s reign of terror’. I do not believe that anyone can seriously believe that that objective has been or will be achieved by bombing.
Cranley Onslow interrupted to point out that the President had said precisely the opposite:
I have no illusion [my italics] that tonight’s action will bring down the curtain on Gaddafi’s regime, but this mission, violent as it was, can bring closer a safer and more secure world for decent men and women.
As the Victorians used to say: ‘collapse of stout party’.
My speech steadied the Party and the debate was a success. But there was still a large measure of incomprehension even among our supporters. I went that Friday to Cranley Onslow’s constituency. I felt that people were looking at me strangely, as if I had done something terrible, which given the sensational and biased media coverage you could understand. When I explained to party workers at a reception that our action had been taken to protect the victims of future terrorism, they understood: but the accusation of heartlessness stuck — and it hurt. Yet the Libyan raid was also a turning point; and three direct benefits flowed from it.
First, it turned out to be a more decisive blow against Libyan-sponsored terrorism than I could ever have imagined. We are all too inclined to forget that tyrants rule by force and fear and are kept in check in the same way. There were revenge killings of British hostages organized by Libya, which I bitterly regretted. But the much vaunted Libyan counter-attack did not and could not take place. Gaddafi had not been destroyed but he had been humbled. There was a marked decline in Libyan-sponsored terrorism in succeeding years.
Second, there was a wave of gratitude from the United States for what we had done which is still serving this country well. The Wall Street Journal flatteringly described me as ‘magnificent’. Senators wrote to thank me. In marked contrast to feelings in Britain, our Washington embassy’s switchboard was jammed with congratulatory telephone calls. It was made quite clear by the Administration that Britain’s voice would be accorded special weight in arms control negotiations. The Extradition Treaty, which we regarded as vital in bringing IRA terrorists back from America, was to receive stronger Administration support against filibustering opposition. The fact that so few had stuck by America in her time of trial strengthened the ‘special relationship’, which will always be special because of the cultural and historical links between our two countries, but which had a particular closeness for as long as President Reagan was in the White House.
The third benefit, oddly enough, was domestic, though it was by no means immediate. However unpopular, no one could doubt that our action had been strong and decisive. I had set my course and stuck to it. Ministers and disaffected MPs might mutter; but they were muttering now about leadership they did not like, rather than a failure of leadership. I had faced down the anti-Americanism which threatened to poison our relations with our closest and most powerful ally, and not only survived but emerged with greater authority and influence on the world stage: this the critics could not ignore. And such are the paradoxes of politics that within the year this wave of anti-Americanism had come to the Government’s aid. Labour was emboldened foolishly to stress an anti-American defence policy — which provoked strong reactions from Cap Weinberger and Richard Perle. When the British people were told that ‘if you want us to go, we will go’ they woke up to reality. Labour’s anti-Americanism, in vogue the year before, steadily became more of an albatross and when the election came it helped to sink them.
As the spring of 1986 moved into summer the political climate began slowly, but unmistakeably, to improve.
CHAPTER XVI
Men to Do Business With
East-West relations during the second term — 1983–1987
REASSESSING THE SOVIET UNION
As 1983 drew on, the Soviets must have begun to realize that their game of manipulation and intimidation would soon be up. European governments were not prepared to fall into the trap opened by the Soviet proposal of a ‘nuclear-free zone’ for Europe. Preparations for the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles went ahead. In March President Reagan announced American plans for a Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) whose technological and financial implications for the USSR were devastating. Then, at the beginning of September the Soviets shot down a South Korean civilian airliner, killing 269 passengers. Not just the callousness but the incompetence of the Soviet regime, which could not even bring itself to apologize, was exposed. The foolish talk, based on a combination of western wishful thinking and Soviet disinformation, about the cosmopolitan, open-minded, cultured Mr Andropov as a Soviet leader who would make the world a safer place was silenced. Perhaps for the first time since the Second World War, the Soviet Union started to be described, even in liberal western circles, as sick and on the defensive.
There was a new chill in East-West relations. We had entered a dangerous phase. Both Ronald Reagan and I were aware of it. We knew that the strategy of matching the Soviets in military strength and beating them on the battlefield of ideas was succeeding and that it must go on. But we had to win the Cold War without running unnecessary risks in the meantime.
The Cold War itself had never really ended, at least from the Soviet side: there were merely variations of chill. At times, as in Korea and Vietnam, it had been far from cold. But it was always, as I never forgot, a conflict of one system against another. In this sense, the analysis of the communist ideologues was right: ultimately, our two opposing systems were incompatible — though, because both sides poss
essed the means of nuclear destruction, we had to make the adjustments and compromises required to live together. What we in the West had to do now was to learn as much as we could about the people and the system which confronted us and then to have as much contact with those living under that system as was compatible with our continued security. In a cold as in a hot war it pays to know the enemy — not least because at some time in the future you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.
Such was the thinking which lay behind my decision to arrange a seminar at Chequers on Thursday 8 September 1983 to pick the brains of experts on the Soviet Union. The difficulty of tapping into outside thinking even in our own open democratic system of government shows just why closed totalitarian systems are so sluggish and mediocre. I had been used to wide-ranging seminars from our days in Opposition and had always found them stimulating and educative. But instead of the best minds on the Soviet system I now found myself presented with a list of the best minds in the Foreign Office, which was not quite the same thing. I minuted on the original list of suggested participants:
This is NOT the way I want it. I am not interested in gathering in every junior minister, nor everyone who has ever dealt with the subject at the FO. The FO must do their preparation before. I want also some people who have really studied Russia — the Russian mind — and who have had some experience of living there. More than half the people on the list know less than I do.
Back to the drawing board.
In fact, by the time the seminar went ahead I felt that we did have the right people and some first-class papers. The latter covered almost all of the factors we would have to take into account in the years ahead in dealing with the Soviets and their system. We discussed the Soviet economy, its technological inertia and the consequences of that, the impact of religious issues, Soviet military doctrine and expenditure on defence, and the benefits and costs to the Soviet Union of their control over eastern Europe. The one issue which, in retrospect, we underestimated — though it figured briefly — was the nationality question, failure to solve which would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Soviet Union itself. Perhaps for me the most useful paper was one which described and analysed the power structure of the Soviet state, and which put flesh on the bones of what I had already learnt in Opposition from Robert Conquest.
Of course, the purpose of this seminar was not ultimately academic: it was to provide me with the information on which to shape policy towards the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc in the months and years ahead. There were always — right up to the last days of the Soviet Union — two opposite outlooks among the Sovietologists.
At the risk of over-simplification, these were as follows. On the one hand, there were those who played down the differences between the western and Soviet systems and who were generally drawn from political analysis and systems analysis. They were the people who appeared night after night on our television screens analysing the Soviet Union in terms borrowed from liberal democracies. These were the optimists, in search of light at the end of even the longest tunnel, confident that somehow, somewhere, within the Soviet totalitarian system rationality and compromise were about to break out. I remember a remark of Bob Conquest’s that the trouble with systems analysis is that if you analyse the systems of a horse and a tiger, you find them pretty much the same: but it would be a great mistake to treat a tiger like a horse. On the other hand, there were those — mainly the historians — who grasped that totalitarian systems are different in kind, not just degree, from liberal democracies and that approaches relevant to the one are irrelevant to the other. These analysts argued that a totalitarian system generates a different kind of political leader from a democratic one and that the ability of any one individual to change that system is almost negligible.
My own view was much closer to the second than to the first of these analyses, but with one very important difference. I always believed that our western system would ultimately triumph, if we did not throw our advantages away, because it rested on the unique, almost limitless, creativity and vitality of individuals. Even a system like that of the Soviets, which set out to crush the individual, could never totally succeed in doing so, as was shown by the Solzhenitsyns, Sakharovs, Bukovskys, Ratushinskayas and thousands of other dissidents and refuseniks. This also implied that at some time the right individual could challenge even the system which he had used to attain power. For this reason, unlike many who otherwise shared my approach to the Soviet Union, I was convinced that we must seek out the most likely person in the rising generation of Soviet leaders and then cultivate and sustain him, while recognizing the clear limits of our power to do so. That is why those who subsequently considered that I was led astray from my original approach to the Soviet Union because I was dazzled by Mr Gorbachev were wrong. I spotted him because I was searching for someone like him. And I was confident that such a person could exist, even within that totalitarian structure, because I believed that the spirit of the individual could never ultimately be crushed in the Kremlin any more than in the Gulag.
At the time of my Chequers seminar, although as I have explained East-West relations were worsening — and would become worse still when the Soviets pulled out of arms control talks in Geneva in response to the stationing of Cruise and Pershing missiles — it did seem that there would soon be important changes in the Soviet leadership. Mr Andropov, though he was no liberal, did undoubtedly want to revive the Soviet economy, which was in fact in a far worse state than any of us realized at the time. In order to do this he wanted to cut back bureaucracy and improve efficiency. Although he had inherited a top leadership which he could not instantly change, the high average age of the Politburo would present him with the opportunity of filling vacancies with those amenable to his objectives. There were already doubts about Andropov’s health. If he lived for just a few more years, however, it seemed likely that the leadership would pass to a new generation. The two main contenders appeared to be Grigory Romanov and Mikhail Gorbachev. I asked for all the information we had about these two. It was not very much and a good deal was vague and anecdotal. It was soon obvious to me, however, that — attractive as was the idea of seeing a Romanov back in the Kremlin — there would probably be other unpleasant consequences. Romanov as First Secretary of the Communist Party in Leningrad had won a reputation for efficiency but also as a hardline Marxist which, like many of the sort, he combined with an extravagant lifestyle. And I confess that when I read about those priceless crystal glasses from the Hermitage being smashed at the celebration of his daughter’s wedding some of the attraction of the name was lost as well.
Of Mr Gorbachev what little we knew seemed modestly encouraging. He was clearly the best educated member of the Politburo, not that anybody would have described this group of elderly soldiers and bureaucrats as intellectuals. He had acquired a reputation for being open-minded; but of course this might be just a matter of style. He had risen steadily through the Party under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and now Andropov, of whom he was clearly a special proté gé; but that might well be a sign of conformity rather than talent. Nevertheless, I heard favourable reports of him from Pierre Trudeau in Canada later that month. I began to take special notice when his name was mentioned in reports on the Soviet Union.
VISIT TO HUNGARY
For the moment, however, relations with the Soviets were so bad that direct contact with them was almost impossible. It seemed to me that it was through eastern Europe that we would have to work. The Deputy Prime Minister of Hungary, Mr Marjai, had come to see me in March, before the general election, and had renewed an invitation from his Government for me to visit Hungary. I had been fascinated by what he told me about the Hungarian ‘economic experiment’. At one point Mr Marjai, having noted the importance of profits and incentives, declared that it was not for the government to hand out money because the government did not have money. I commented that these remarks could have been made in one of my own speeches.
Hungary was
the choice for my first visit as Prime Minister to a Warsaw Pact country for several reasons. The Hungarians had gone furthest along the path of economic reform, although they were anxious to describe it as anything but capitalism. A certain amount of liberalization had occurred, though outright dissent was punished. The strategy of Já nos Ká dá r, officially First Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party but in fact unchallenged leader, was summed up in the telling if hardly original slogan, ‘he who is not against us is with us.’ He used economic links with the West to provide his people with a tolerable standard of living while constantly asserting Hungary’s loyalty to the Warsaw Pact, socialism and the Soviet Union: a necessary consideration, given that some 60,000 Soviet troops had been ‘temporarily’ stationed in Hungary since 1948. By this time Mr Kâdâr seemed to be regarded with some respect, perhaps even affection, by many Hungarians because he was credited with avoiding a repetition of the events of 1956, while allowing a gradual process of reform to continue. Although he himself had been tortured by his comrades, his own past included the incidents of villainy which marked the careers of all that generation of old communist leaders: he had been responsible for the torture and trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, the execution of his friend, Foreign minister Rajk, and the betrayal of the Revolution of 1956. However, he denied to me personally that he had had any responsibility for the execution of Imre Nagy, the reformist communist leader; indeed he said he had obtained an undertaking from the Soviets that Nagy would be allowed to live. In any case, the fact that Kâdâr had been in power for so long meant that he had come to know the Soviets and their thinking better than any other eastern European leader. In particular, he knew Mr Andropov, who had been the Soviet Ambassador in Budapest at the time of the 1956 uprising, and, we believed, remained close to him. I hoped that he would report back to the Soviet leader what I had to say.
The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990 Page 59