The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

by Margaret Thatcher

  A month before the NATO summit I set out in my speech to the North Atlantic Council my own views on the matter. The stress I placed on preservation of the United States’ military presence in Europe and the continuing role of updated nuclear weapons would not have surprised my audience. But I also emphasized that NATO must consider an ‘out of area’ role. I asked the question:

  Ought NATO to give more thought to possible threats to our security from other directions? There is no guarantee that threats to our security will stop at some imaginary line across the mid-Atlantic. It is not long since some of us had to go to the Arabian Gulf to keep oil supplies flowing. We shall become very heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil once again in the next century. With the spread of sophisticated weapons and military technology to areas like the Middle East, potential threats to NATO territory may originate more from outside Europe. Against that background, it would be only prudent for NATO countries to retain a capacity to carry out multiple roles, with more flexible and versatile forces.

  This passage reflected my thinking over a number of years. I had seen for myself how important a western presence could be in securing western interests in far-flung areas of the world, not least the Middle East. I did not believe that even if the military threat from the Soviets had diminished, that from other dictators would not arise. But of course I could not know that within two months we would be confronted by an explosive crisis in the Gulf.

  REFLECTIONS

  As I look back on the international developments of the late 1980s, they seem to be overwhelmingly positive. Communism was defeated, freedom restored to the former satellites, the cruel division of Europe ended, the Soviet Union launched onto the path of reform, democracy and national rights and the West, in particular the United States, left in possession of the field as its political values and economic system were embraced both by its former adversaries and, increasingly, by the countries of the Third World.

  The credit for these historic achievements must go principally to the United States and in particular to President Reagan, whose policies of military and economic competition with the Soviet Union forced the Soviet leaders, in particular Mr Gorbachev, to abandon their ambitions of hegemony and to embark on the process of reform which in the end brought the entire communist system crashing down. But this would never have been accomplished without the long and courageous resistance of the peoples of the Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe. We will never know the names of all who suffered and perished in that struggle but we can celebrate their leaders from Vladimir Bukovsky to Václav Havel, from Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Cardinal Mindszenty, and the four young heroes who gave their lives defending the Russian White House in the last dying days of the old regime.

  As that old order crumbled and its people emerged blinking into the light, President Bush managed the dangerous and volatile transformation with great diplomatic skill. Nor should credit be withheld from the steadfast European allies of America who resisted both Soviet pressure and Soviet blandishments to maintain a strong western defence: in particular, Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand and… but modesty forbids.

  The world is a better place. But in some ways it is an old-fashioned place. The Europe that has emerged from behind the Iron Curtain has many of the features of the Europes of 1914 and 1939: ethnic strife, contested borders, political extremism, nationalist passions and economic backwardness. And there is another familiar bogey from the past — the German Question.

  If there is one instance in which a foreign policy I pursued met with unambiguous failure, it was my policy on German reunification. This policy was to encourage democracy in East Germany while slowing down the country’s reunification with West Germany. With the first half of that policy no one disagrees. Nor at the time did everyone disagree with the second, to which indeed frequent lip service was paid. Most observers were unaware of the nationalist passion for German unity that burned in the East. Indeed, even the dissident leaders of the East German demonstrations that led to freedom were themselves unaware of it, being in favour of a free, reformed, independent East Germany, rather than a larger Federal Republic. And Germany’s neighbours all hoped to avoid this latter outcome because they saw it as destabilizing an already unsettled continent.

  In the event, the desire for unity among Germans on both sides of the Elbe proved irresistible. So the policy failed.

  But was the policy wrong? That is a more complex question requiring a more nuanced reply. Look first at the consequences of the rapid reunification as they worked themselves out. West Germany’s absorption of its next-door relation has been economically disastrous, and that disaster has spread to the rest of the European Community via the Bundesbank’s high interest rates and the ERM. We have all paid the price in unemployment and recession. East German political immaturity has affected the whole country in the form of a revived (though containable) neo-Nazi and xenophobic extremism. Internationally, it has created a German state so large and dominant that it cannot be easily fitted into the new architecture of Europe.

  Look also at the incidental benefits that the policy brought about. It forced the German Government to clarify the border question with its eastern neighbours. More generally, it provided the occasion whereby the CSCE framework was established to ensure that existing borders would not be changed by unilateral action or without general agreement. It strengthened the relationship between Britain and the other countries of central and eastern Europe who now, to some extent, see us as attentive guardians of their interests. But the fundamental argument for slowing German reunification was to create a breathing space in which a new architecture of Europe could be devised where a united Germany would not be a destabilizing influence/over-mighty subject/bull in a china shop. Arriving prematurely as it did, a united Germany has tended to encourage three unwelcome developments: the rush to European federalism as a way of tying down Gulliver; the maintenance of a Franco-German bloc for the same purpose; and the gradual withdrawal of the US from Europe on the assumption that a German-led federal Europe will be both stable and capable of looking after its own defence.

  I will not reiterate here all the reasons I have given earlier for believing these developments to be damaging. But I will hazard the forecast that a federal Europe would be both unstable internally and an obstacle to harmonious arrangements — in trade, politics and defence — with America externally; that the Franco-German bloc would increasingly mean a German bloc (in economics, a deutschmark bloc) with France as very much a junior partner; and that as a result America would, first bring its legions home, and subsequently find itself at odds with the new European player in world politics.

  These developments are not inevitable. One revelation that emerged from the failure of Britain’s German policy was the evident anxiety of France in relation to German power and ambition. It should not be beyond the capacity of a future British prime minister to rebuild an Anglo-French entente as a counter-balance to German influence. Nor, as part of this policy, to shift the emphasis in Europe back towards the original Gaullist idea of a Europe des Patries. What these new approaches will require, however, is a recognition from the French political élite that any stable European balance of power will require the more or less permanent presence of the United States in Europe. And that is a recognition that so far French presidents have been prepared to grant only in private.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  No Time to Go Wobbly

  The response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990

  EVENTS AT ASPEN

  On the morning of Wednesday 1 August 1990 the VC10 left Heathrow with me and my party aboard bound for Aspen, Colorado. The President was due to open the Aspen Institute Conference on the Thursday and I was to close it on the Sunday. I had gone out early in order to be present for his speech. At the time I left I already knew that the Iraqis were sending troops down to the border with Kuwait. The negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait which had been taking place in Jeddah had broken for
the day but we understood that they were to be resumed. It therefore seemed that the Iraqi military action was a case of sabre rattling. We soon learnt that it was not. At 2 a.m. Kuwaiti time on Thursday 2 August Iraq carried out a full-scale military invasion — though claiming that it was an internal coup — and assumed total control.

  An hour later — early evening on Wednesday, Colorado time — Charles Powell telephoned me from his hotel to tell me the news and I decided at once to instruct two ships in Penang and Mombasa, both about a week’s sailing time away, to make for the Gulf while the situation developed. We already had one ship of the Armilla patrol in the Gulf — HMS York, at Dubai. First thing the following morning I learnt in a note from Charles about the latest situation. Other Arab governments had evidently been caught off balance. The Arab League of Foreign Ministers meeting in Cairo had failed to agree a statement. King Hussein was trying to excuse the Iraqi action on the grounds that the Kuwaitis had been unnecessarily difficult. The ruling families in the Gulf were alarmed. With strong British support the UN Security Council had passed a resolution condemning Iraq for its action and calling for total withdrawal and immediate negotiations. Back in London, Douglas Hurd — competent professional that he was — had ordered the freezing of Kuwaiti assets in Britain, the Iraqis unfortunately having only debts. An immediate question now was whether Saddam Hussein would go over the border and seize Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. (This was indeed important: but I was convinced from the start that it must not divert us from the need to get Saddam Hussein out of the territory he had already seized by an act of illegal aggression.)

  I was staying at the guesthouse to Ambassador Henry Catto’s ranch while all this was going on. I read Charles’s note, listened to the news and then went for a walk to sort things out in my own mind. By the time I got back Charles and Sir Antony Acland, our ambassador, were waiting for me. We established from the White House that President Bush was still coming to Aspen and would arrive later that morning. As is my wont, I set about arguing through the whole problem with them and by the end had defined the two main points. By the time I was due to meet him at the main ranch I was quite clear what we must do.

  Fortunately, the President began by asking me what I thought. I told him my conclusions in the clearest and most straightforward terms. First, aggressors must never be appeased. We learned that to our cost in the 1930s. Second, if Saddam Hussein were to cross the border into Saudi Arabia he could go right down the Gulf in a matter of days. He would then control 65 per cent of the world’s oil reserves and could blackmail us all. Not only did we have to move to stop the aggression, therefore, we had to stop it quickly.

  In making these two points I felt that experience as well as instinct enabled me to trust my judgement. There was, of course, the enormously valuable experience of having been Prime Minister through the Falklands War. My visits to the Gulf had also allowed me to establish bonds of trust with the rulers of many of these states, who often had closer links with Britain than with America. I understood their problems and could gauge their reactions.

  President Bush listened to what I had to say. He then told me that he had been speaking to President Mubarak and King Hussein. The message he had received was that the United States should stay calm and give an Arab solution a chance. He had said that that was fine but that it must involve Iraqi withdrawal and the restoration of the lawful Government of Kuwait. He had meanwhile authorized a boycott of Iraqi goods, termination of credits and the freezing of Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets. He had also instructed ships of the American fleet to move north from the Indian Ocean into the Gulf, although they were currently being hampered by heavy seas.

  We then got down to discussing what must be done next. I said that if Saddam Hussein did not withdraw, the Security Council would need to impose a full trade embargo. That, however, would only be effective if everybody implemented it. It would be necessary to close down the pipelines across both Turkey and Saudi Arabia through which Iraq exported the greater part of its oil. Those would not be easy decisions. Saudi Arabia, especially, might fear that Iraq would use such action as an excuse to attack her. We could send troops to protect Saudi Arabia; but only at the specific request of the king. (In fact, a few days later the US Defence Secretary, Dick Cheney, flew to Saudi Arabia to talk to the king about precisely this.)

  At this point President Bush was told that the President of Yemen wanted to speak to him on the telephone. Before the President left to take the call, I reminded him that Yemen, a temporary member of the Security Council, had not voted on the resolution demanding the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. It turned out that the President of Yemen too wanted time to come up with an Arab solution. President Bush told him that such a ‘solution’ must involve the withdrawal of Iraqi forces and return of the proper Government of Kuwait if it was to be accepted. The President of Yemen then apparently compared what had happened in Kuwait to US intervention in Grenada at which George Bush rightly bridled. When he returned President Bush and I agreed that all this did not seem very encouraging. We then went out to give a press conference. The President was asked if he ruled out the use of force. He replied that he did not — a statement the press took to be a strengthening of his position against Saddam Hussein. But I had never found any weakness in it from the first.

  By now I was receiving a flood of telegrams reporting on reactions to the invasion. The Cabinet Office assessment of Iraq’s plans noted that an attack against Saudi Arabia did not seem imminent, because it would probably take a week to assemble the required forces. To my mind this reinforced rather than diminished the need for immediate tough action.

  Understandably, I now had only half my mind on the programme of events which had been arranged for me. That said, I was fascinated by what I saw. Friday was a day of presentations and discussions about science, environment and defence — punctuated by news about what was happening in the crisis which now gripped the international community. I was talking to the young scientists working at the SDI National Test Facility at Falcon when I was called away to speak to President Bush on the telephone. He gave me the good news that President Ozal of Turkey had said he would take action to cut off the Iraqi oil which was going through the Turkish pipeline. I was not surprised. In my two visits to Turkey I had been very impressed with the President’s toughness. I had also been struck by the country’s strategic significance. As a secular but predominantly Muslim state with a large army, looking westwards to Europe but also on the fringe of the Middle East, Turkey would be a vital bulwark against aggressive Islamic fundamentalism or other brands of revolutionary Arab nationalism like that of Saddam Hussein.

  After lunch I went by helicopter to the Strategic Air Defence Monitoring Centre at Cheyenne Mountain which keeps a watch on every satellite launched. Again I felt awed by the sophistication of America’s scientific and technological achievement. From within this hollowed-out mountain the United States could observe deep into space for military and scientific purposes. Two days later I was told by the general in charge of the operation that they had observed that the Soviets had now put up two satellites over the northern end of the Gulf. It was a useful indication of their concern.

  On Saturday morning I spoke with President Mitterrand on the telephone. As over the Falklands, he was taking a robust position: in spite of a misconceived speech at the United Nations which tried to link a solution of the Gulf crisis with other Middle Eastern issues, President Mitterrand and France showed throughout the crisis that the French were the only European country, apart from ourselves, with the stomach for a fight.

  I have already described the speech I gave on Sunday morning to the Aspen Institute.[116] Though it addressed broader international issues, I inserted a section on the Gulf. It read:

  Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait defies every principle for which the United Nations stands. If we let it succeed, no small country can ever feel safe again. The law of the jungle would take over from the rule of law.

  The United Na
tions must assert its authority and apply a total economic embargo unless Iraq withdraws without delay. The United States and Europe both support this. But to be fully effective it will need the collective support of all the United Nations’ members. They must stand up and be counted because a vital principle is at stake: an aggressor must never be allowed to get his way.

  My mind was now turning to the next practical steps we could take to exert pressure on Iraq. The European Community countries had agreed to support a complete economic and trade embargo of Iraq. But it was the Iraqi oil exports and the willingness of Turkey and Saudi Arabia to block them which would be crucial. The Americans had some lingering doubts about whether Turkey and Saudi Arabia would act. I was more confident. But these doubts increased the importance of enforcing all other measures still more effectively. I instructed the Foreign Office to prepare plans to implement a naval blockade in the north-east Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the north of the Gulf to intercept shipments of Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil. I also asked that more thought be given to precise military guarantees for Saudi Arabia and for details of what aircraft we could send to the Gulf area immediately.

  I had planned to take a few days’ holiday with my family after the Aspen speech, but after an invitation from the White House decided instead to fly to Washington and resume my talks with the President. For all the friendship and co-operation I had had from President Reagan, I was never taken into the Americans’ confidence more than I was during the two hours or so I spent that afternoon at the White House. The meeting began in a very restricted session with just the President, Brent Scowcroft, myself and Charles Powell. Half an hour later we were joined by Dan Quayle, Jim Baker and John Sununu. The last twenty minutes of discussion was attended by the Secretary-General of NATO.