The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  In formulating our approach to SDI, there were four distinct elements which I bore in mind. The first was the science itself. The American aim in SDI was to develop a new and much more effective defence against ballistic missiles. This would be what was called a ‘multi-layered’ Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), using both ground and space-based weapons. This concept of defence rested on the ability to attack incoming ballistic missiles at all stages of their flight, from the boost phase when the missile and all its warheads and decoys were together — the best moment — right up to the point of re-entry of the earth’s atmosphere on its way to the target. Scientific advances opened up new possibilities to make such defence far more effective than the existing Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defences. The main advances which appeared likely were in the use of kinetic energy weapons (which were non-nuclear and which, when launched at high speed against the nuclear missile, would smash it) and in the use of laser weapons. Even more challenging than the development of these different elements of SDI, however, was the requirement for an enormously powerful and sophisticated computer capability to direct and coordinate the system as a whole. Such an undertaking would not only require huge sums of money but also test the ultimate creative abilities of the western and communist systems competing for it.

  The second element to be considered was the existing international agreements limiting the deployment of weapons in space and ABM systems. The 1972 ABM Treaty, as amended by a 1974 Protocol, allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to deploy one static ABM system with up to one hundred launchers in defence of either an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silo field or the national capital. The precise implications of the treaty for the research, testing, development and deployment of new kinds of ABM system were subject to heated legalistic dispute. The Soviets had started out with a ‘broad interpretation’ of the treaty which they narrowed when it later suited them. Within the American Administration there were those who pressed for a ‘broader than broad’ interpretation which would have placed almost no effective constraint on the development and deployment of SDI. The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence always sought to urge the narrowest possible interpretation, which the Americans — rightly in my view — believed would have meant that SDI was stillborn. I always tried to steer away from this phraseology and made it clear in private and public that research on whether a system was viable could not be said to have been completed until it had been successfully tested. Underneath the jargon, this apparently technical point was really a matter of straight common sense. But it was to become the issue dividing the United States and the USSR at the Reykjavik summit and so assumed great importance.

  The third element in the calculation was the relative strength of the two sides in Ballistic Missile Defence. Only the Soviet Union possessed a working ABM system (known as GALOSH) around Moscow, which they were currently up-grading. The Americans had never deployed an equivalent system. The United States assessed that the Soviets were spending in the order of $ 1 billion a year on their research programme of defence against ballistic missiles. Also the Soviets were further advanced in anti-satellite weapons. There was, therefore, a strong argument that the Soviets had already acquired an unacceptable advantage in this whole area.

  The fourth element was the implications of SDI for deterrence. I started off with a good deal of sympathy for the thinking behind the ABM Treaty. This was that the more sophisticated and effective the defence against nuclear missiles, the greater the pressure to seek hugely expensive advances in nuclear weapons technology. I was always a believer in a slightly qualified version of the doctrine known as MAD — ‘mutually assured destruction’. The threat of (what I preferred to call) ‘unacceptable destruction’ which would follow from a nuclear exchange was such that nuclear weapons were an effective deterrent against not just nuclear but also conventional war. I had to consider whether SDI was likely to undermine that. On one argument, of course, it would. If any power believed that it had a completely effective shield against nuclear weapons it had, in theory, a greater temptation to use them. I knew — and post-war experience demonstrated beyond doubt — that the United States would never start a war by launching a first strike against the Soviet Union, whether it believed that it was secure from retaliation or not. The Soviets, by contrast, claimed to have no such confidence.

  But I soon began to see that SDI would strengthen not weaken the nuclear deterrent. Unlike President Reagan and some other members of his Administration I never believed that SDI could offer one hundred per cent protection, but it would allow sufficient United States missiles to survive a first strike by the Soviets. Theoretically, the US would then be in a position to launch its own nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. It follows that the Soviets would be far less likely to yield to the temptation to use nuclear weapons in the first place.

  The decisive argument for me, however, was precisely the one which made me reject President Reagan’s vision of a nuclear weapon-free world. It was that you could not ultimately hold back research on SDI any more than you could prevent research into new kinds of offensive weapons. We had to be the first to get it. Science is unstoppable: it will not be stopped for being ignored. The deployment of SDI, just like the deployment of nuclear weapons, must be carefully controlled and negotiated. But research, which necessarily involved testing, must go ahead.

  DISCUSSION OF SDI AT CAMP DAVID

  It was the subject of SDI which dominated my talks with President Reagan and members of his Administration when I went to Camp David on Saturday 22 December 1984 to brief the Americans on my earlier talks with Mr Gorbachev. This was the first occasion on which I had heard President Reagan speaking about SDI. He did so with passion. He was at his most idealistic. He stressed that SDI would be a defensive system and that it was not his intention to obtain for the United States a unilateral advantage. Indeed, he said that if SDI succeeded he would be ready to internationalize it so that it was at the service of all countries, and he had told Mr Gromyko as much. He reaffirmed his long-term goal of getting rid of nuclear weapons entirely.

  These remarks made me nervous. I was horrified to think that the United States would be prepared to throw away a hard-won lead in technology by making it internationally available. (Fortunately the Soviets never believed that he would.) But I did not raise this directly. Instead, I concentrated on my areas of agreement with the President. I said that it was essential to pursue the research, but that if this reached the point where a decision had to be made to produce and deploy weapons in space a very different situation would arise. Deployment would not be consistent either with the 1972 ABM Treaty or the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Both of these would have to be renegotiated. I also explained my concern about the possible intermediate effect of SDI on the doctrine of deterrence. I was worried that deployment of a Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system would be destabilizing and that while it was being constructed a pre-emptive first strike against it would become an attractive option. But I acknowledged that I might well not be fully informed of all the technical aspects and wanted to hear more. In all this I was keen to probe the Americans, not just in order to learn more of their intentions but to ensure that they had clearly thought through the implications of the steps they were now taking.

  What I heard, now that we got down to discussion of the likely reality rather than the grand vision, was reassuring. President Reagan did not pretend that they yet knew where the research could finally lead. But he emphasized that — in addition to his earlier arguments in favour of SDI — keeping up with the United States would impose an economic strain on the Soviet Union. He argued that there had to be a practical limit as to how far the Soviet Government could push their people down the road of austerity. As so often, he had instinctively grasped the key to the whole question. What would the effects be of SDI on the Soviet Union? In fact, as he foresaw, the Soviets did recoil in the face of the challenge of SDI, finally renouncing the goal of military superiority which alo
ne had given them the confidence to resist the demands for reform in their own system. But of course this still lay in the future.

  What I wanted now was an agreed position on SDI to which both the President and I could lend our support, even though our long-term view of its potential was different. I had been thinking about this over the last few days and particularly on the long flight from Peking where I had been for the signing of the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong. I now jotted down, while talking to National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane, the four points which seemed to me to be crucial.

  My officials then filled in the details. The President and I agreed a text which set out the policy.

  The main section of my statement reads:

  I told the President of my firm conviction that the SDI research programme should go ahead. Research is, of course, permitted under existing US/Soviet treaties; and we, of course, know that the Russians already have their research programme and, in the US view, have already gone beyond research. We agreed on four points: (1) the US, and western, aim was not to achieve superiority, but to maintain balance, taking account of Soviet developments; (2) SDI-related deployment would, in view of treaty obligations, have to be a matter for negotiation; (3) the overall aim is to enhance, not undercut, deterrence; (4) East-West negotiation should aim to achieve security with reduced levels of offensive systems on both sides. This will be the purpose of the resumed US-Soviet negotiations on arms control, which I warmly welcome.

  I subsequently learnt that George Shultz thought that I had secured too great a concession on the Americans’ part in the wording; but in fact it gave them and us a clear and defensible line and helped reassure the European members of NATO. A good day’s work.

  VISIT TO WASHINGTON: FEBRUARY 1985

  I again visited Washington in February 1985. Arms talks between the Americans and the Soviet Union had now resumed, but SDI remained a source of contention. I was to address a joint meeting of Congress on the morning of Wednesday 20 February and I brought with me from London as a gift a bronze statue of Winston Churchill, who had also many years before been honoured with such an invitation. I worked specially hard on this speech. I would use the Autocue for its delivery. I knew that Congress would have seen the ‘Great Communicator’ himself delivering faultless speeches and I would have a discriminating audience. So I resolved to practise speaking the text until I had got every intonation and emphasis right. (Speaking to Autocue, I should add, is a totally different technique to speaking from notes.) In fact, I borrowed President Reagan’s own Autocue and had it brought back to the British Embassy where I was staying. Harvey Thomas, who accompanied me, fixed it up and, ignoring any jetlag, I practised until 4 a.m. I did not go to bed, beginning the new working day with my usual black coffee and vitamin pills, then gave television interviews from 6.45 a.m., had my hair done and was ready at 10.30 to leave for the Capitol. I used my speech, which ranged widely over international issues, to give strong support for SDI. I had a terrific reception.

  I regarded the quid pro quo for my strong public support of the President as being the right to be direct with him and members of his Administration in private. It was a little more awkward on this occasion for I had brought Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine with me for my meeting and working lunch with the President, which made for a more stilted and less satisfactory conversation than on other occasions. (I did not bring them again.) But I went to the heart of what was worrying me. I told President Reagan that I thought it was important to avoid exaggerated rhetoric about SDI. We must not get into a situation where people were told that nuclear weapons were wicked, immoral and might soon be rendered unnecessary by the development of defensive systems. Otherwise the British public’s support for them would be eroded. I think that the President took this point. He, for his part, emphasized that SDI was not going to be a bargaining chip. The United States would not go to Geneva and offer to give up SDI research if the Russians reduced nuclear weapons by a certain amount. He was to prove as good as his word.

  REYKJAVIK

  The following month (March 1985) saw the death of Mr Chernenko and, with remarkably little delay, the succession of Mr Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership. Once again I attended a Moscow funeral: the weather was, if anything, even colder than at Yuri Andropov’s. Mr Gorbachev had a large number of foreign dignitaries to see. But I had almost an hour’s talk with him that evening in St Katherine’s Hall in the Kremlin. The atmosphere was more formal than at Chequers and the silent, sardonic presence of Mr Gromyko did not help. But I was able to explain to them the implications of the policy I had agreed with President Reagan the previous December at Camp David. It was clear that SDI was now the main preoccupation of the Soviets in arms control.

  Mr Gorbachev brought, as we had expected, a new style to the Soviet Government. He spoke openly of the terrible state of the Soviet economy, though at this stage he was still relying on the methods associated with Mr Andropov’s drive for greater efficiency rather than radical reform. An example of this was the draconian measures he took against alcoholism. As the year wore on, however, there was no evidence of improvement in conditions in the Soviet Union. Indeed, as our new — and first-class — ambassador to Moscow, Bryan Cart-ledge, who had been my foreign affairs private secretary when I first became Prime Minister, pointed out in one of his first despatches, it was a matter of, ‘jam tomorrow and, meanwhile, no vodka today’.

  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.* 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.