The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

by Margaret Thatcher

  I was too well versed in the ways of the Community to take all this bonhomie at face value. But even I was unprepared for the way things went once the Council formally opened. Sig. Andreotti made clear right at the beginning that there was no intention of discussing the GATT. I spoke briefly and took them to task for ignoring this crucial issue at such a time. I had hoped that someone other than me would intervene. But only Ruud Lubbers did and he raised a mild protest. Although something found its way into the communiqué, no one else was prepared to speak up for these imminent and crucial negotiations.

  Then M. Delors reported on his recent meeting with Mr Gorbachev. To my surprise, he proposed that the Council should issue a statement saying that the outer border of the Soviet Union must remain intact. Again I waited. But no one spoke. I just could not leave matters like this. I said that this was not for us in the Community to decide but for the peoples and Government of the Soviet Union. I pointed out that the Baltic States had in any case been illegally seized and incorporated in the USSR. In effect, we were denying them their claim to independence. M. Delors said that he had received an assurance from Mr Gorbachev that the Baltic States would be freed, so we should not become alarmed on that point. I came back at him, saying that we had heard this sort of reassurance before from the Soviets; and, in any case, what about the other nations of the Soviet Union who might wish to leave it as well? At this point first Sr. Gonzalez, then President Mitterrand and finally Chancellor Kohl intervened on my side and this ill-judged initiative foundered.

  But the atmosphere went from bad for worse. The others were determined to insert in the communiqué provisions on political union, none of which I was prepared to accept. I said that I would not pre-empt the debate in the IGC and had a unilateral observation to this effect incorporated in the text. They also insisted on following the German proposal that Stage 2 of monetary union should begin on 1 January 1994. I would not accept this either. I had inserted in the communiqué the sentence:

  The United Kingdom, while ready to move beyond Stage 1 through the creation of a new monetary institution and a common Community currency, believes that decisions on the substance of that move should precede decisions on its timing.

  They were not interested in compromise. My objections were heard in stony silence. I now had no support. I just had to say no.

  In three years the European Community had gone from practical discussions about restoring order to the Community’s finances to grandiose schemes of monetary and political union with firm timetables but no agreed substance — all without open, principled public debate on these questions either nationally or in European fora. Now at Rome the ultimate battle for the future of the Community had been joined. But I would have to return to London to win another battle on which the outcome in Europe would depend — that for the soul of the Parliamentary Conservative Party.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  The World Turned Right Side Up

  The fall of communism in eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany and the debate about the future of NATO — 1987–1990

  OVERVIEW

  The international scene in 1987 and 1988 was not so very different to that before the general election. President Reagan was in the White House, continuing the defence policies which time and again had forced the Soviets to the negotiating table. Mr Gorbachev was proceeding with increasingly far-reaching reforms in the Soviet Union which, whether he liked it or not, would eventually open the floodgates of democracy, if not prosperity. The West’s strategy of defeating communism while ensuring our peace and security — a strategy in which I believed with a passionate intensity and that I sought to communicate when I went to eastern Europe — was working. Its very success would mean that new questions about Britain’s foreign relations and NATO’s defences would arise.

  Yet even before this happened the familiar landscape changed in another way I did not foresee. I had breathed a sigh of relief when George Bush defeated his Democrat opponent in the US presidential election, for I felt that it ensured continuity. But with the new team’s arrival in the White House I found myself dealing with an Administration which saw Germany as its main European partner in leadership, which encouraged the integration of Europe without seeming to understand fully what it meant and which sometimes seemed to underestimate the need for a strong nuclear defence. I felt I could not always rely as before on American co-operation. This was of great importance at such a time. For by now — 1989 — the cracks in the eastern European communist system were widening into crevices and soon, wing by wing, the whole edifice fell away.

  This welcome revolution of freedom which swept eastern Europe raised great strategic issues, above all in the West’s relations with the Soviet Union. (Indeed, what now was ‘the West’?) But I also saw at once that it had profound implications for the balance of power in Europe, where a reunified Germany would be dominant. There was a new and different kind of ‘German Question’ which had to be addressed openly and formally: I did so.

  History teaches that dangers are never greater than when empires break up and so I favoured caution in our defence and security policy. Decisions about our security must, I argued, be made only after careful reflection and analysis of the nature and direction of future threats. Above all, they must be determined not by the desire to make a political impression by arms control ‘initiatives’ but by the need credibly to deter aggression.

  For thinking and speaking like this I was mocked as the last Cold Warrior — and an unreconstructed Germano-phobe to boot. In fact, they said, I was a tiresome woman who might once have served a purpose but who just could not or would not move with the times. I could live with this caricature; there had been worse; but I also had no doubt that I was right, that the unexpected did happen and that sooner or later events would prove it. And, without claiming any foresight about the precise timing of the fall of communism, I did find my basic approach vindicated as 1990 wore on. This occurred in several ways.

  First, Anglo-American relations suddenly lost their chill; indeed by the end they had hardly been warmer. The protectionism of that ‘integrated’ Europe, dominated by Germany, which the Americans had cheerfully accepted, even encouraged, suddenly started to arouse American fears and threaten to cost American jobs. But this change of heart was confirmed by the aggression of Saddam Hussein against Kuwait which shattered any illusion that tyranny had been everywhere defeated. The UN might pass its resolutions; but there would soon be a full-scale war to fight. Suddenly a Britain with armed forces which had the skills, and a government which had the resolve, to fight alongside America, seemed to be the real European ‘partner in leadership’.

  Then again the full significance of the changes in eastern Europe began to be better understood. Having democratic states with market economies, which were just as ‘European’ as those of the existing Community, lining up as potential EC members made my vision of a looser, more open Community seem timely rather than backward. It also became clear that the courageous reforming leaders in eastern Europe looked to Britain — and to me because of my anti-socialist credentials — as a friend who genuinely wanted to help them, rather than exclude them from markets (like the French) or seek economic domination (like the Germans). These eastern European states were — and are — Britain’s natural allies.

  Further east in the USSR more disturbing developments made for a reassessment of earlier euphoric judgements about the prospects for the peaceful, orderly entrenchment of democracy and free enterprise. In the Soviet Union I had won the respect both of the embattled Mr Gorbachev and of his anti-communist opponents. I never underestimated the fragility of the movement for reform; that was why I spoke up for it — and for Mr Gorbachev — so forcefully in the West. Events now increasingly suggested that a far-reaching political crisis in the USSR might soon be reached. The implications of this for control over nuclear weapons and indeed the whole arsenal which the Soviet military machine had accumulated could not be ignored even by the most enthusiastic w
estern disarmers. In short, the world of the ‘new world order’ was turning out to be a dangerous and uncertain place in which the conservative virtues of hardened Cold Warriors were again in demand. And so it was that in those last months and weeks of my premiership, while domestic political pressures mounted, I found myself once more at the centre of great international events with renewed ability to influence them in Britain’s interests and in accord with my beliefs.

  VISIT TO WASHINGTON IN JULY 1987

  On Thursday 16 July 1987 I flew into Washington to see President Reagan. Our political fortunes at this time could not have been more different. I had just won an election with a decisive majority, enhancing my authority in international affairs. By contrast my old friend and his Administration were reeling under the continuing ‘Irangate’ revelations. I found the President hurt and bemused by what was happening. Nancy was spending her time listening to the cruel and contemptuous remarks pouring out from the liberal media commentators and telling him what was being said, which made him still more depressed. Nothing wounds a man of integrity more than to find his basic honesty questioned. It made me very angry. I was determined to do what I could to help President Reagan ride out the storm. It was not just a matter of personal loyalty — though it was that too, of course: he also had eighteen months to serve as leader of the most powerful country in the world and it was in all our interests that his authority be undiminished. So I set about using my interviews and public statements in Washington to get across this message. For example, I told the interviewer on CBS’s Face the Nation:

  Cheer up. Cheer up. Be more upbeat. America is a strong country with a great president, a great people and a great future.

  Our embassy was besieged by telephone calls of congratulation. My remarks also touched another grateful audience. On Monday evening — after I arrived back in London — I received a telephone call from the President who wanted to thank me for what I had said. He was in a Cabinet meeting and at one point he put down the receiver and told me to listen. I heard loud and long applause from the Cabinet members.

  My main business in Washington, though, had been to discuss the implications for our future defence of the INF treaty which would be signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev in December. I had always had mixed feelings about the INF ‘zero option’. On the one hand, it was a great success to have forced the Soviets to withdraw their SS-20 missiles by deploying our Cruise and Pershing. But, on the other, the removal of our intermediate-range land-based missiles would have two undesirable effects. First, it threatened precisely what Helmut Schmidt had wanted to avoid when he originally urged NATO to deploy them: namely the decoupling of Europe from NATO. It could then be argued, as in the 1970s, that in the last resort the United States would not use nuclear weapons to deter a conventional Warsaw Pact attack on Europe. This argument would boost the always-present tendency to German neutralism — a tendency which it had been the long-standing Soviet objective to magnify wherever possible. Second, the INF ‘zero option’ also cast doubt on — though as I always argued it did not in fact undermine — the NATO strategy of ‘flexible response’. That strategy depended on the ability of the West to escalate its response to Soviet aggression through each stage of conventional and nuclear weapons. The removal of the intermediate-range missiles might be argued to create a gap in that capability. It followed that NATO must have other nuclear weapons, stationed on German soil, which would be a credible deterrent and that those weapons be modernized and strengthened where necessary. It was this question — the avoidance of another ‘zero’ on Short-Range Nuclear Forces (SNF) — which was to divide the alliance so seriously in 1988–9.

  The main points I now made to the President in Washington were the need to allocate submarine-launched Cruise missiles and additional F1-11 aircraft to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe to compensate for the withdrawal of Cruise and Pershing and the need to resist pressure from the Germans for early discussion of reductions of SNF in Europe. I also wanted to see an upgraded and longer-range Follow-On to LANCE missile (FOTL) developed by the Americans and deployed by the mid-1990s, and a Tactical Air to Surface Missile (TASM) to replace our free-fall bombs. On these matters relating to the strengthening of our SNF the President and I saw eye to eye. Where I did agree with the Germans — but found myself unable to convince the Americans — was that I would have liked to retain the old German Pershing 1A ballistic missiles for the rest of their natural life (a few years), not including them as part of the INF package. But it was the future of SNF that to my mind was the most crucial element in our nuclear deterrence; and it certainly proved the most controversial.

  DISCUSSIONS WITH MR GORBACHEV IN DECEMBER 1987

  Britain’s own security interests were closely bound up with US-Soviet arms negotiations. As regards SNF, these weapons were a vital protection for our troops stationed in Germany. Discussions between the two great powers about strategic nuclear weapons were also of direct interest to us insofar as they affected the position of our Trident nuclear deterrent. More generally, I never ceased to believe in the importance of nuclear weapons as a means of deterring conventional, not just nuclear, war — the one issue on which I knew I could not take the Reagan Administration’s soundness for granted.

  So although I had no intention of allowing myself to become a kind of broker between the Americans and the Soviets, I was delighted when Mr Gorbachev accepted my invitation to stop over at Brize Norton on his way to the United States to sign the INF Treaty. This would give me an opportunity to gauge his thinking before his meeting with President Reagan and to tackle him on other issues, such as human rights and regional conflicts, on which I thought I could exert beneficial influence. The Americans had specifically asked me to press Mr Gorbachev on Afghanistan, where it was clear he was trying to find a way of pulling Soviet forces out of that disastrous venture.

  Within the Soviet Union there were mixed signs. Mr Gorbachev had brought his ally Mr Yakovlev into the Politburo; but — in a move which was to have enormous long-term consequences — his one-time protégé, Boris Yeltsin, who had been brought in as head of the Moscow Party as an incorruptible radical reformer, had been publicly humiliated. Within the Soviet leadership, apart from Mr Gorbachev himself, it still seemed that probably only Foreign minister Shevardnadze and Mr Yakovlev were fully committed to the Gorbachev reforms.

  At the start of our talks I brought out my copy of Mr Gorbachev’s book, Perestroika, which seemed to please him. It prompted a long description of the difficulties he was facing in bringing about the changes he wanted. In the language of the Soviets — faithfully reflected in the language of the western media — the opponents of perestroika were usually called ‘conservatives’. I told him how irritating I found this and said that I wanted nothing to do with Mr Gorbachev’s ‘conservatives’: they could hardly be more different from mine. Then we got down to the detailed discussions on arms control. There was not much to say now about INF and it was the projected START Agreement,[110] which would lead to cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, on which we focused. There were still large differences between the two sides as regards definition and verification. I also repeated my determination to keep nuclear weapons, which Mr Gorbachev described as my preferring to ‘sit on a powder keg rather than an easy chair’. I countered by reminding him of the large superiority which the Soviets enjoyed in conventional and chemical forces. Then I raised Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the human rights issue, suggesting that any action he took on these would be likely to assist the US Administration in overcoming opposition in the Senate to the INF Treaty. But I made no headway: he said that a solution in Afghanistan would be easier if we stopped supplying the rebels with arms and that human rights was a matter for the particular country involved. (It was this sort of attitude which had already created a very bad impression in the United States as a result of Mr Gorbachev’s remarks about human rights in an interview with NBC.) There was nothing I could do on this occasion to change his mind
.

  I ended our discussion by saying that I hoped that the Gorbachevs would return for a full visit next year and he said that he was keen to accept. In spite of his tetchiness over human rights, it was a vigorous, enjoyable and even rather jolly occasion. We had lunch in the officers’ mess at which we were joined by Ken Baker and Raisa Gorbachev who had been visiting a local school, meeting the children and teachers and watching a Nativity play. On one particular matter, however, the Christmas spirit did not prevail. Biding my time and waiting until the Soviet interpreter was out of earshot, I asked Mr Gorbachev, who had been reciting for me a Russian folk-song in front of the Christmas tree in the foyer, whether he would let Oleg Gordievsky’s family out of the Soviet Union to join him in Britain. He pursed his lips and said nothing: the answer was all too clear.

  When I got back to London I telephoned President Reagan to let him know about our discussions. I told him what I had said on Afghanistan and arms control. I also said that though the President must be prepared to tackle Mr Gorbachev on human rights he should also be prepared for a sharp reaction. President Reagan said that he expected some tough sessions with Mr Gorbachev but that I had clearly softened him up. He also asked me if I thought that he should try to get on first name terms with the Soviet leader. I advised him to go carefully on this, because although I found Mr Gorbachev friendly and open he was also quite formal, something which the whole rigid Soviet system encouraged.

  NATO SUMMIT IN BRUSSELS, MARCH 1988

  In fact, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington was a success. The INF Treaty was agreed and a further summit in Moscow in the first half of 1988 was arranged in principle at which the treaty would be signed and possibly agreement reached on a START Treaty as well. In February 1988 Mr Gorbachev announced that Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in May. We were clearly moving into new territory and it seemed to me the right time to take our bearings at a NATO summit. The first NATO heads of government summit for six years — incidentally, the first attended by a French president for twenty-two years — was scheduled for March in Brussels.