The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  Discussion at the official meetings of the Strasbourg Council was of course very different in tone, although the Dutch Prime Minister Mr Lubbers said at the heads of government dinner that he thought Chancellor Kohl’s ‘ten-point’ plan would encourage reunification, that there were dangers in talking about self-determination and that it was better not to refer to one ‘German people’. This required some courage. But it hardly deflected Chancellor Kohl, who said that Germany had paid for the last war by losing one-third of its territory. He was vague about the question of borders — too vague for my liking — arguing that the Oder-Neisse line, which marked the border with Poland, should not become a legal issue. He did not seem now or later to understand the Polish fears and sensitivities.

  I was due to meet President Mitterrand in January 1990 and I asked for papers to be drawn up showing ways in which we could strengthen Anglo-French co-operation. The French President had been to East Berlin shortly before Christmas in order to assert France’s interests in the future of Germany. But his public attitude hardly betrayed his private thoughts and at his press conference there he claimed that he was not ‘one of those who were putting on the brakes’. I hoped that my forthcoming meeting with him might overcome this tendency to schizophrenia.

  Almost all the discussion I had with President Mitterrand at the Elysée Palace on Saturday 20 January concerned Germany. Picking up the President’s remarks in the margins of Strasbourg I said that it was very important for Britain and France to work out jointly how to handle what was happening in Germany. East Germany seemed close to collapse and it was by no means impossible that we would be confronted in the course of this year with the decision in principle in favour of reunification. The President was clearly irked by German attitudes and behaviour. He accepted that the Germans had the right to self-determination but they did not have the right to upset the political realities of Europe; nor could he accept that German reunification should take priority over everything else. He complained that the Germans treated any talk of caution as criticism of themselves. Unless you were whole-heartedly for reunification, you were described as an enemy of Germany. The trouble was that in reality there was no force in Europe which could stop reunification happening. He agreed with my analysis of the problems but he said he was at a loss as to what we could do. I was not so pessimistic. I argued that we should at least make use of all the means available to slow down reunification. The trouble was that other governments were not ready to speak up openly — nor, I might have added but did not, were the French. President Mitterrand went on to say that he shared my worries about the Germans’ so-called ‘mission’ in central Europe. The Czechs, Poles and Hungarians would not want to be under Germany’s exclusive influence, but they would need German aid and investment. I said that we must not just accept that the Germans had a particular hold over these countries, but rather do everything possible to expand our own links there. At the end of the meeting we agreed that our Foreign and Defence ministers should get together to talk over the issue of reunification and also examine the scope for closer Franco-British defence co-operation.

  The fact that little or nothing in practical terms came of these discussions between me and President Mitterrand about the German problem reflected his basic unwillingness to change the direction of his whole foreign policy. Essentially, he had a choice between moving ahead faster towards a federal Europe in order to tie down the German giant or to abandon this approach and return to that associated with General de Gaulle — the defence of French sovereignty and the striking up of alliances to secure French interests. He made the wrong decision for France. Moreover, his failure to match private words with public deeds also increased my difficulties. But it must be said that his judgement that there was nothing we could do to halt German reunification turned out to be right.

  In February Chancellor Kohl — again without any consultation with his allies — went to Moscow and won from Mr Gorbachev agreement that ‘the unity of the German nation must be decided by the Germans themselves.’ (The quid pro quo would soon become clear. In July at a meeting in the Crimea the West German Chancellor agreed to provide what must have seemed to the Soviets a huge sum, though they could in fact have extracted much more, to cover the costs of providing for the Soviet troops who would be withdrawn from East Germany. For his part, Mr Gorbachev now finally agreed in public that the reunified Germany should be part of NATO.)

  On Saturday 24 February I had a three-quarters-of-an-hour telephone conversation with President Bush. I broke with my usual habit of trying to avoid detailed factual discussions over the telephone and tried to explain to the President how I thought we should be thinking about the future of a western alliance and a Europe which contained a reunified Germany. I stressed the importance of ensuring that a united Germany stayed within NATO and that United States troops remained there. However, if all Soviet forces had to leave East Germany that would cause difficulties for Mr Gorbachev and I thought it best to allow some to stay for a transitional period without any specific terminal date. I also said that we must strengthen the CSCE framework, which would not only help avoid Soviet isolation but would help balance German dominance in Europe. One had to remember that Germany was surrounded by countries most of which it had attacked or occupied on mainland Europe in the course of this century. Looking well into the future, only the Soviet Union — or its successor — could provide such a balance. President Bush, as I afterwards learnt, failed to understand that I was discussing a long-term balance of power in Europe rather than proposing an alternative alliance to NATO. It was the last time that I relied on a telephone conversation to explain such matters.

  Chancellor Kohl had managed to convey the worst possible impression by his unwillingness to have a proper treaty to settle Germany’s border with Poland. Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, whom I had first met in very different circumstances in Gdansk in November 1988, discussed his fears with me when he came to London in February 1990. I pressed the matter — though I received no real response — when I met Chancellor Kohl at the start of an Anglo-German summit in London at the end of March. I also ensured that the Poles received special status at the talks of the ‘two-plus-four’ (or as I preferred to call it the ‘four-plus-two’ — that is the Berlin Four Powers and the Two Germanies). Finally, and after much pressure, Chancellor Kohl did agree to settle Germany’s border with Poland by a special treaty signed in November 1990.

  THE CSCE AND THE ‘ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY’

  One minor benefit which did come out of the saga of German reunification was an enhanced role for the CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe). I had begun by being very sceptical of the whole Helsinki process. But whatever its shortcomings at the height of the Cold War, it now provided a useful framework within which at least some of the problems arising in the new democratic Europe might be tackled. It could never take the place of NATO which must remain the basis of our defence, whatever changes in its strategy and priorities were required; though it did provide the framework for the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) arms negotiations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact which would lead to the CFE agreement, signed at what turned out to be my final summit in Paris in November 1990. The CSCE could not give the new democracies the assurance of security which they wanted: they continued to hanker after some sort of association agreement with NATO.

  But the CSCE did have three important advantages. First, it involved both the Americans and the Soviet Union in Europe’s future. Europe could never be stable without an American presence and commitment. Second, the CSCE was well suited to be the forum for any discussions of border disputes, although it would not be able to go beyond conciliation to enforcement. (Enforcement should be a matter for NATO, the UN or if necessary one or more countries under the inevitable lead of the United States.) Third, I envisaged that, building on the human rights content of the Helsinki principles, we should add the complementary principles of private property and free markets. We should use
the CSCE summit in November to create the basis of a ‘great alliance for democracy [stretching] from the Atlantic to the Urals and beyond’ — as I described it in my speech to the Anglo-German Königswinter Conference in Cambridge in March.

  I returned to the theme in my speech at Aspen, Colorado on Sunday 5 August. At Aspen I set out what I described as the ‘fundamental tenets of true democracy’. These were not just related to suffrage: I pointed out that Britain was free long before a majority of the population had the vote. Democracy, I contended, required the limitation of the powers of government, a market economy, private property — and the sense of personal responsibility without which no such system could be sustained. I called for the CSCE summit to agree on what I called a ‘European Magna Carta’ which would enshrine all these basic rights, including the right to maintain one’s nationhood. I urged closer association between east and west Europe. I also called for the Soviet Union to be brought into the western economic system. (These ideas were the basis of the Charter of Paris which I signed the morning after I learned that I had failed to secure the size of majority I needed in the first round of the Conservative Party leadership election.)

  THE SOVIET UNION — 1989–90

  Throughout my last year in office doubts were increasingly raised about the wisdom of supporting Mr Gorbachev in his reforms. But I continued to do so and have no regrets. First, I am not by instinct someone who throws over those I like and have shown themselves my friends simply because their fortunes change. And though this may have immediate disadvantages, in my experience it increases the respect in which one is held by those with whom one has to do business: respect is a powerful asset, as those in politics who fail to inspire it might secretly agree. But second, and more important, it did not seem to me that at the time anyone was better able than Mr Gorbachev to push ahead with reform. I wanted to see the fall of communism — indeed I wanted to see it not just in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union but in every corner of the globe — but I wanted to see this achieved peacefully. The two obvious threats to peace were a takeover — covert or overt — by hardliners in the Soviet military or the violent break-up of the Soviet Union. Throughout the summer of 1990 there were disturbing reports of possible rebellious activities within the Soviet military. Their authenticity was never certain but they carried some credibility. But it was the nationalities question — that is the future of the Soviet Union itself — which was most difficult for outsiders to assess.

  I now believe that all of us in the West overestimated the degree to which a Soviet Empire whose core was provided by Marxist ideology and a communist nomenklatura — an empire constructed and bound together by force — could survive the onset of political liberty. Perhaps we listened too much to the diplomats and western experts and too little to the emigrés. That said, I did not go along with much of the thinking which characterized the British Foreign Office and US State Department on the issue of nationalities or nationhood.

  We were all quite clear, as it happens, about the special legal status of the Baltic States: it was not a question of whether but of when they must be allowed to go free. (I had a long-standing interest in their future, having voted in 1967 against an agreement between the then Labour Government and the Soviet Union to use the Baltic States’ gold reserves — frozen in the Bank of England since the Soviets invaded them in 1940 — to settle outstanding financial claims.) I warned the Soviets about the severe consequences of the use of force against the Baltic States when I saw Mr Gorbachev in June. But I urged the greatest caution on President Landsbergis (of Lithuania) when I saw him in London in November. And I pressed both sides to negotiate throughout — though only on the clear understanding that the final destination of the Baltic States was freedom.

  The case of the other republics was less clear cut. Ukraine and Byelorussia — by an ill-judged concession to Stalin in 1945 — were actually members of the United Nations so they could perhaps claim a somewhat different status too. I did not share the apparently hard-headed but in fact economically illiterate view that a state had to have a certain population, or GDP, or range of natural resources to be ‘viable’: it was the spirit of the people and the general economic framework created in order to harness it which would determine such matters. Nor, in general, was I happy with the argument that it was for us in the West to determine the future shape — or even existence — of the USSR. Our duty lay in thinking about the consequences of future developments there upon our own security. And it was this last consideration which led me to go very cautiously. It is one thing to expect a military super-power — even a sickly one like the Soviet Union — to change its internal and external policies in order to survive: it is quite another to expect it peacefully to commit hara-kiri. When I was in Paris in November for the CSCE summit at a lunch for heads of government I had been saying to President Iliescu of Romania that in working out a negotiating position you must always be clear on the stopping point — the point you would never concede. Mr Gorbachev, who had been listening, leant across the table and said that he agreed: his stopping point was the external perimeter of the Soviet Union. I did not accept this — and, as I have mentioned, had challenged the same view when relayed by M. Delors in Rome* — but I took it seriously all the same.

  The whole question of the future of the republics within the Soviet Union had by 1990 become the main source of controversy in Soviet political affairs. It was one of the subjects I had discussed with Mr Gorbachev on my stop-over visit in Moscow the previous September. He had just held a plenum on the nationalities question. There had also been some significant changes in the Politburo. The long-time communist leader in Ukraine, Mr Shcherbitsky, had left its ranks. Mr Pugo, previously the Latvian Party Chief- and one of the future coup leaders of 1991 — had been promoted to candidate membership of the Politburo. Mr Kryuchkov, Chairman of the KGB — also a coup leader — had been promoted to full membership. Mr Ryzhkov, with whom Mr Gorbachev was on close personal terms but who was quite out of his depth in dealing with the economy, remained as Prime Minister. Over lunch in the Kremlin Mr Gorbachev had recalled how General de Gaulle had once complained about the difficulties of ruling a country which had 200 cheeses: how much more difficult it was to rule one with 120 nationalities. ‘Especially when there is a shortage of cheese,’ chipped in Mr Albakin, the Deputy Prime Minister. And indeed frustrations at the failure of economic reform were increasingly expressed in national dissent as the months went by.

  The emergence of Boris Yeltsin as a radical proponent of reform — both political and economic — ought perhaps to have strengthened Mr Gorbachev’s position. If the two of them had been able to sink their differences and if Mr Gorbachev had been prepared to cut his links with the Communist Party perhaps the impetus of reform might have been renewed. But these were two ‘ifs’ too many. Their relations remained bad and Mr Gorbachev remained a communist to the end.

  There was a strong tendency in western circles to write off Mr Yeltsin as nothing more than a buffoon. I could not believe that this judgement — if such it can be called — was correct. But I wanted to see for myself. Consequently, although I was careful to notify Mr Gorbachev in advance and to make it clear that I was receiving Mr Yeltsin in the way that I would a Leader of the Opposition, I enthusiastically agreed to meet him when he came to London on the morning of Friday 27 April 1990. The briefing I had received about Mr Yeltsin sums up the attitude which was then prevalent. In this he was described as ‘a controversial figure’ because he had been the only member of the Party Central Committee to vote against the Draft Platform, arguing that it was the Communist Party’s long monopoly of power which had brought the USSR to its present crisis and driven tens of millions into poverty. He had said that democratic centralism should be rejected and replaced by genuine democracy and had called for a law on parties ending the Communist Party’s special status. Three cheers, I thought. My briefing went on to say — with less than complete perspicacity — that ‘some pundits even suggest tha
t if [Mr Yeltsin] is elected as President of the Russian Federation he may end up with a more important job than Gorbachev’s presidency of a crumbling Union. This is an exaggeration.’

  I only spoke with Mr Yeltsin for three-quarters of an hour. At first I was not quite sure what to make of him. He was far more my idea of the typical Russian than was Mr Gorbachev — tall, burly, square Slavic face and shock of white hair. He was self-confident without being self-assertive, courteous, with a smile full of good humour and a touch of self-mockery. But what impressed me most was that he had obviously thought through some of the fundamental problems much more clearly than had Mr Gorbachev. I began by saying that I supported Mr Gorbachev and wanted that to be clear from the outset. Mr Yeltsin replied that he knew I supported the Soviet leader and perestroika and on some of these matters our opinions differed, but basically he too supported Mr Gorbachev and the cause of reform. Mr Gorbachev should, though, have paid more attention to some of the things being said by the supporters of reform three or four years earlier. Perestroika had originally been intended to make communism more efficient. But that was impossible. The only serious option was for far-reaching political and economic reform, including the introduction of a market economy. But it was all getting very late.