The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

by Margaret Thatcher

  A distinct chill entered into Britain’s relations with the Soviet Union as a result of expulsions which I authorized of Soviet officials who had been spying. The defection of Oleg Gordievsky, a former top KGB officer, meant that the Soviets knew how well informed we were about their activities. I had several meetings with Mr Gordievsky and had the highest regard for his judgement about events in the USSR. I repeatedly tried — without success — to have the Soviets release his family to join him in the West. (They eventually came after the failed coup in August 1991.)

  In November President Reagan and Mr Gorbachev had their first meeting in Geneva. Not much of substance came out of it — the Soviets insisted on linking cuts in strategic nuclear weapons to an end to SDI research — but a good personal rapport quickly developed between the two leaders (though not, sadly, between their wives). There had been some concern expressed that President Reagan might be outmanoeuvred by his sharp-witted and younger Soviet counterpart. But he was not, which I found not at all surprising. For Ronald Reagan had had plenty of practice in his early years as President of the Screen Actors Guild in dealing with hard-headed trade union negotiations — and no one was more hard-headed than Mr Gorbachev.

  During 1986 Mr Gorbachev showed great subtlety in playing on western public opinion by bringing forward tempting, but unacceptable, proposals on arms control. Relatively little was said by the Soviets on the link between SDI and cuts in nuclear weapons. But they were given no reason to believe that the Americans were prepared to suspend or stop SDI research. Late in the year it was agreed that President Reagan and Mr Gorbachev — with their Foreign ministers — should meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, to discuss substantive proposals.

  In retrospect, the Reykjavik summit on that weekend of 11 and 12 October can be seen to have a quite different significance than most of the commentators at the time realized. A trap had been prepared for the Americans. Ever greater Soviet concessions were made during the summit: they agreed for the first time that the British and French deterrents should be excluded from the INF negotiations; and that cuts in strategic nuclear weapons should leave each side with equal numbers — rather than a straight percentage cut, which would have left the Soviets well ahead. They also made significant concessions on INF numbers. As the summit drew to an end President Reagan was proposing an agreement by which the whole arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons — bombers, long-range Cruise and ballistic missiles — would be halved within five years and the most powerful of these weapons, strategic ballistic missiles, eliminated altogether within ten. Mr Gorbachev was even more ambitious: he wanted the elimination of all strategic nuclear weapons by the end of the ten-year period.

  But then suddenly, at the very end, the trap was sprung. President Reagan had conceded that during the ten-year period both sides would agree not to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, though development and testing compatible with the Treaty would be allowed. Mr Gorbachev said that the whole thing depended on confining SDI to the laboratory — a much tighter restriction that was likely to kill the prospect of an effective SDI. The President rejected the deal and the summit broke up. Its failure was widely portrayed as the result of the foolish intransigence of an elderly American President, obsessed with an unrealizable dream. In fact, President Reagan’s refusal to trade away SDI for the apparent near fulfilment of his dream of a nuclear-free world was crucial to the victory over communism. He called the Soviets’ bluff. The Russians may have scored an immediate propaganda victory when the talks broke down. But they had lost the game and I have no doubt that they knew it.[65] For they must have realized by now that they could not hope to match the United States in the competition for military technological supremacy and many of the concessions they made at Reykjavik proved impossible for them to retrieve.

  My own reaction when I heard how far the Americans had been prepared to go was as if there had been an earthquake beneath my feet. I supported the idea of a 50 per cent reduction in strategic ballistic missiles over five years, but the President’s proposal to eliminate them altogether after ten years was a different matter. The whole system of nuclear deterrence which had kept the peace for forty years was close to being abandoned. Had the President’s proposals gone through, they would also have effectively killed off the Trident missile, forcing us to acquire a different system if we were to keep an independent nuclear deterrent. My intense relief that Soviet duplicity had finally caused these proposals to be withdrawn was balanced by a gnawing anxiety that they might well be put forward on some new occasion. I had always disliked the original INF ‘zero option’, because I felt that these weapons made up for western Europe’s unpreparedness to face a sudden, massive attack by the Warsaw Pact; I had gone along with it in the hope that the Soviets would never accept. But extending this approach more generally to all strategic ballistic missiles would have left the Soviets confronting western Europe with a huge superiority of conventional forces, chemical weapons and short-range missiles. It also undermined the credibility of deterrence: talk about eliminating strategic ballistic missiles (and possibly nuclear weapons altogether) at some point in the future raised doubts in people’s minds about whether the United States was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the present. Somehow I had to get the Americans back onto the firm ground of a credible policy of nuclear deterrence. I arranged to fly to the United States to see President Reagan.

  FURTHER DISCUSSIONS OF NUCLEAR STRATEGY AT CAMP DAVID

  I have never felt more conscious than in the preparation for this visit of how much hung on my relationship with the President. It seemed to me that we were poised between a remarkable success and a possible catastrophe. I received the fullest briefing from the military about the implications of a defence strategy involving the elimination of all ballistic missiles. It was argued in some quarters in the US Administration that NATO strategy would not be undermined by the elimination of strategic ballistic missiles, and that aircraft, Cruise missiles and nuclear artillery, in all of which it was thought the West had a superiority, would provide an even better deterrent. In fact, NATO’s whole strategy of flexible response — dependent as it was on a full range of possible military, including nuclear, responses to a Soviet attack — would have ceased to be viable. The so-called ‘Air Breathing Systems’ (Cruise missiles and bombers) were less certain to penetrate Soviet defences and generally more vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike. That would weaken their deterrent value. Europe would be dangerously exposed.

  Just as important were the political considerations. To provide a credible British deterrent using Cruise missiles rather than Trident might be twice as expensive. Was it really likely that in an atmosphere full of talk of a world free of nuclear weapons we would ever obtain public support for such a programme? The more closely I examined the implications, the worse they were.

  Percy Cradock (my Special Adviser on security matters), Charles Powell and I drafted and redrafted the arguments I would use with President Reagan. These must be logically coherent, persuasive, crisp and not too technical.

  I flew into Washington on the afternoon of Friday 14 November. That evening I practised my arguments in meetings with George Schultz and Cap Weinberger. I saw George Bush for breakfast the following morning and then left for Camp David where I was met by President Reagan.

  To my great relief I found that the President quickly understood why I was so deeply concerned about what had happened in Reykjavik. He agreed the draft statement which we had finalized after talking to George Shultz the previous day and which I subsequently issued at my press conference. This stated our policy on arms control after Reykjavik. It ran as follows:

  We agreed that priority should be given to: an INF agreement, with restraints on shorter range systems; a 50 per cent cut over 5 years in the US and Soviet strategic offensive weapons; and a ban on chemical weapons. In all three cases, effective verification would be an essential element. We also agreed on the need to press ahead with the SDI research programme which is permitted by the ABM Treaty
. We confirmed that NATO’s strategy of forward defence and flexible response would continue to require effective nuclear deterrence, based on a mix of systems. At the same time, reductions in nuclear weapons would increase the importance of eliminating conventional disparities. Nuclear weapons cannot be dealt with in isolation, given the need for stable overall balance at all times. We were also in agreement that these matters should continue to be the subject of close consultation within the alliance. The President reaffirmed the United States’ intention to proceed with its strategic modernization programme, including Trident. He also confirmed his full support for the arrangements made to modernize Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, with Trident.

  I had reason to be well pleased.

  PREPARATION FOR MOSCOW VISIT

  It is easy to imagine what the effect of the Camp David statement must have been in Moscow. It meant the end of the Soviets’ hope of using SDI and President Reagan’s dream of a nuclear weapons-free world to advance their strategy of denuclearizing Europe, leaving us vulnerable to military blackmail and weakening the link between the American and European pillars of NATO. It also demonstrated that, whether they liked it or not, I was able to have some influence on President Reagan on fundamental issues of alliance policy. Mr Gorbachev, therefore, had as much reason to do business with me as I with him. Add to this the fact that the Soviets often preferred to deal with right-wing western governments, because they regarded them as hard-headed negotiators who would nonetheless keep a bargain when it has been reached, and that I had struck up such a good personal relationship with Mr Gorbachev at Chequers before he became leader, and it is no surprise that I was soon invited to Moscow.

  I prepared myself very thoroughly. On Friday 27 February 1987 I held an all-day seminar on the Soviet Union at Chequers. The two opposing tendencies among Sovietologists, which I have mentioned earlier, were apparent on this occasion. The enthusiasts stressed the scope and energy of Mr Gorbachev’s reforms. The sceptics emphasized the orthodox communist objectives which Mr Gorbachev was pursuing and the limited effect even these modest measures of reform were having. On balance, the sceptics probably had the better of the argument. The view was that fundamental change was not on the agenda, only limited change which fully preserved the powers and guiding role of the Communist Party. Although Mr Gorbachev might want to enjoy the fruits of the incentive system, he could not take the risk of adopting it. Reform would, therefore, be conducted firmly within the bounds of the socialist system. In retrospect, it is possible to see that this analysis was flawed by a confusion between the intentions of Mr Gorbachev, which at any particular time were limited both by his communist way of thinking and by the circumstances of the moment, and the effects of his reforms, which unleashed forces that would sweep away the Soviet system and the Soviet state.

  The seminar was only one aspect of my preparations. I also read through in detail the — usually long and indigestible — speeches which Mr Gorbachev had been making. Even though the political language was so different from that which I would have used, I felt that something new was emerging from them. Of these, by far the most important to date was that which he delivered to the Central Committee of the Communist Party towards the end of January 1987. In this he placed a new emphasis on democratizing the Party and, at the local level, the Soviet body politic itself: the forthcoming Soviet local elections would allow the nomination of more candidates than seats available in a small number of multi-member constituencies. This would prove to be the beginning — though only the beginning — of the replacement of democratic centralism by real democracy in the Soviet Union.

  Soviet politics worked on the basis of slogans. These could not be taken at face value nor given a western interpretation. But, equally, they had to be taken seriously. The slogans under Mr Gorbachev were definitely changing. Perestroika(restructuring) had taken over from uskorenie(acceleration), reflecting his understanding that the fundamental problems of the Soviet economy required not just more of the same — central controls, discipline, efficiency drives — but real radical change. Similarly, the new talk of glasnost(openness) was based on an understanding that, unless the facts were known and at least some of the truth told about what was going on, conditions could never improve.

  In the two years since Mr Gorbachev had become Soviet leader, the political reforms were already more evident than the economic benefits. Although there was precious little evidence of the Soviet economy working better, there was far more discussion of the need for political freedom and democracy. Mr Gorbachev had gone to great lengths to win over some of the leading dissidents, particularly Professor Sakharov, to support his programme. The truth about the horrors of Stalin — though not yet of Lenin — began to be published. The Soviets started to show greater sensitivity on matters of human rights, allowing more — though by no means all — Soviet Jews who wished to emigrate to do so. Whatever Mr Gorbachev’s long-term goals, there was no doubt in my mind that he was making the Soviet Union something better than a ‘prison house of nations’ and we ought to support him in his efforts.

  Such support was certainly needed. Although there was a freer political atmosphere and the improvements in political conditions endeared him to some of the intellectuals, ordinary Soviet citizens saw no real material progress. And though many members of the Politburo and the Central Committee had been replaced, it did not follow that all these replacements necessarily supported Mr Gorbachev and reform. There were worries too about the attitude of the army and the KGB. All this posed the Soviet leader with a dilemma — and created a dilemma for us too.

  Above all, the West had to ensure that Mr Gorbachev’s reforms led to practical improvements in our own security. Were the Soviets prepared to reduce their military threat? Were they prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan? Would they end their policy of international subversion? We must press them on all these matters, but not in such as way that Mr Gorbachev’s reform programme was discredited and so reversed, either by him or a hardline successor.

  In the course of March I welcomed a stream of visitors to No. 10 and Chequers to brief me before my visit. The Chief Rabbi came to see me about the plight of the refuseniks. Peter Walker gave me his own impressions of the Soviet Union, gained on a recent visit. I discussed arrangements for the trip with the Soviet Ambassador. General Abrahamson, the Pentagon’s Director of the SDI programme, came to Chequers to give me an up-to-date account of the state of research and the strategic issues. Oleg Gordievsky gave me the benefit of his analysis. So did the human rights activist, Yuri Orlov.

  I was not going to Moscow as the representative of the West, let alone as a ‘broker’ between the USSR and the United States, but it was clearly very important that other western leaders should know the line I intended to take and that I should gauge their sentiments beforehand. I knew President Reagan’s mind and had, I knew, his confidence. I therefore limited myself to sending him a lengthy message. There was only one specific policy point at issue which I felt it necessary to raise. This was a proposal, which I had made to the Americans and which they were studying but were not so far prepared to accept, that the United States should give the Soviets an assurance about the shape and time-scale of SDI — what was known in the jargon as ‘predictability’. My argument was that since it would take a number of years before the decision about the deployment of SDI need be reached there was no point in alarming the Soviets unnecessarily now.

  I also arranged to meet President Mitterrand and then Chancellor Kohl on Monday 23 March. The French President — socialist or not — has the use of a number of delightful châ teaux. He also seems to have access to the best chefs in the French Republic. Lunch with him at the Châ teau de Benouville in Normandy was no exception. And of course each dish had to have a traditional Norman flavour, with sauces of cider or calvados and some of that aromatic Camembert against which the health-conscious bureaucrats of the European Community were to labour in vain. President Mitterrand’s attitude to the Soviets wa
s very like my own. He believed, as I did, that Mr Gorbachev was prepared to go a long way to change the system. One of his shrewdest and most perceptive observations was that the Soviet leader would find that ‘when you change the form, you are on the way to changing the substance.’ But the French President knew too that the Soviets respected toughness. He said that we must resist the attempt to denuclearize Europe. I warmly agreed.

  Nor did I find any disagreement with Chancellor Kohl. The division of Germany, past history and the existence of large numbers of Germans living as minorities throughout the Soviet bloc gave this very German leader a clear insight into the USSR. Moreover, as he reminded me, West Germany had for many years been the main target of Soviet propaganda. He had doubts about whether Mr Gorbachev would survive: he was running a high-risk policy. Nor should we assume that his reforms — which Chancellor Kohl saw as intended to modernize a communist system, not create a democratic system — could be carried through without suffering. Helmut Kohl always had a strong sense of history and he reminded me that from the time of Peter the Great the reforms of Russian leaders had not been without their victims.

  My last public pronouncement about the Soviet Union before I left had been my speech to the Conservative Central Council in Torquay on Saturday 21 March. It would have been easy to tone down my criticism of the Soviet regime. But I was not prepared to do so. Too often in the past western leaders had placed the search for trouble-free relations with foreign autocrats above plain speaking of the truth. I said: