Mrs Thatcher reiterated her support for Reagan’s view that SDI ‘must be pursued’, but expressed concern that the West could be outflanked in the propaganda war and that ‘there remains the need to meet genuine Soviet anxieties’. She went on to suggest a series of ideas that would ‘offer the Soviet Union a greater sense of reassurance about the likely shape, scope and timescale of possible development of the SDI’.15† Although she was careful to stress that her proposals would not restrict research, she was seeking limitations on the programme that went far beyond anything yet agreed by the administration. Away from SDI, her letter reiterated her anxiety about any attempt to draw Britain’s nuclear deterrent into the arms control talks. She also cautioned against seeking the removal of Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) from Europe (the so-called ‘zero option’), fearing for the credibility of NATO’s nuclear deterrent.
Mrs Thatcher’s broad concerns about Reagan’s yearning for a nuclear-free world chimed with many of those within the President’s own administration. ‘I think Shultz probably supported the President,’ recalled Admiral Poindexter, ‘but the rest of us just didn’t think it was realistic.’16 The doubters argued with Reagan, but ‘He would listen, understand all the arguments against and thank you warmly. And then ten minutes later he would start talking about what a great world it would be without nuclear weapons!’17 Eventually, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to try to postpone the Reagan vision indefinitely. This was achieved by enumerating a series of conditions that would need to be in place before contemplating getting rid of nuclear weapons. As Ken Adelman, Director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, recalled, ‘the conditions were basically everything – from no crime on the streets, no mugging and no tooth decay! We didn’t really have much effect on Reagan’s belief, but we did manage to get those conditions.’18 Indeed, the conditions were set out in a formal National Security Decision Directive. They were wide-ranging – including not only complete conventional-force parity and ‘the peaceful resolution of regional conflicts … without interference’, but also the very vague need for ‘a demonstrated commitment by the Soviet leadership to peaceful competition’.19
The President replied to the Prime Minister before the end of February, including almost word for word all the conditions set out in his formal Directive. According to Charles Powell, this brought relief to Mrs Thatcher: ‘I remember all the “buts” in the correspondence with Reagan. They were all our “buts” too. And they [the conditions] always seemed so unachievable that they were an absolute guarantee that you would never go to the phase of getting rid of nuclear weapons. So we could rest easy.’20 Reagan’s letter emboldened Mrs Thatcher to write at once to Gorbachev:
I know that both you and President Reagan have embraced the goal of freeing the world of nuclear weapons. But this is a long-term aspiration, and simply to set down an arbitrary time-table for achieving it is not in my view a practical approach. We need to tackle the causes of the insecurity which make nuclear weapons necessary. As I said to you when you visited the United Kingdom – a visit which we remember with pleasure – nuclear weapons at present make an essential contribution to preserving peace and stability. I am convinced that East and West will continue to rely on them in their deterrent role for the foreseeable future.21
Reagan also gave Mrs Thatcher some comfort about Britain’s independent deterrent, which he pledged to keep out of any INF deal.22 But he said virtually nothing about SDI. Mrs Thatcher duly wrote to thank Reagan for his INF ideas but sought more answers: ‘I look forward in due course to hearing your reaction to the other points made in my letter of 11 February.’23 On the subject of SDI, Reagan and his staff wished to remain as unencumbered as possible.* They were not rushing to discuss the matter, even with their closest ally.
While Mrs Thatcher was trying to nudge Reagan in her direction on SDI, Geoffrey Howe was trying to push her rather more firmly in his. In March, he sent Charles Powell an advance copy of a speech which referred to his RUSI address a year earlier in which he had attacked SDI (see here). Powell proposed to Mrs Thatcher that this point be cut. She strongly agreed: ‘The RUSI speech did immense harm and in my view was intended to undermine SDI. The arguments used are Gorbachev’s.’24 The following month, Howe wrote directly to Mrs Thatcher a fifteen-page letter of anxieties about the importance of not going beyond the research stage.25 Branding it a ‘cloudy missive’, she commented, ‘The Foreign Office gets more verbose by the day.’ Four days later, she was surprised to receive a letter from Nigel Lawson, who never normally expressed an interest in such issues, supporting Howe’s letter, and warning of ‘a new spiral in the arms race’.26 ‘The Foreign Secretary is finding some allies,’ Powell warned her. ‘I can’t think what the Treasury is doing writing a letter like this,’ Mrs Thatcher scribbled.27 It was indeed unusual, and could only have happened because senior ministers felt emboldened by her weakness after the Westland crisis. Lawson’s letter was a small sign of danger, to which, perhaps, she did not pay enough attention. To adapt a phrase from the debate about SDI, one might say that a Howe–Lawson collaboration to keep Mrs Thatcher under control was now entering the research stage.
It was not until the summer that Mrs Thatcher received a substantive response from Reagan. His letter of 20 July proposed that the two superpowers should agree to keep all research, development and testing of SDI technology within the bounds of the ABM Treaty for no fewer than five years.* He went on, however, to offer a striking new proposal: after the five years were passed, negotiations would begin over how to share the benefits of strategic defence and to eliminate entirely the offensive ballistic weapons of both sides. If no agreement were reached after two years, each side would be free to deploy SDI unilaterally after six months’ notice.28
The idea of abolishing all offensive ballistic missiles, the most potentially devastating nuclear weapons in existence, was at first glance an astonishing thought. However, it naturally appealed to the American mind because these missiles alone were capable of hitting any target in the United States when launched from Soviet soil, and the Soviets had a large numerical advantage in them. It also undermined the Soviet argument that SDI would give the US an advantage in defending itself against ballistic missiles: obviously this would no longer be true if ballistic missiles had ceased to exist. SDI would therefore serve solely as a deterrent to reacquiring the missiles later. The scheme looked much less dazzlingly brilliant to America’s NATO allies. It would undermine ‘flexible response’. Worse, it would put Britain’s proposed new Trident in jeopardy, since Trident was a ballistic missile supplied by the US. The plan stated that ‘other nuclear powers’ would be expected to participate in the arms reduction talks. It appeared that Britain’s nuclear deterrent was to be negotiated away.
It is surprising – and it would be used against her in the arguments after Reykjavik – that Mrs Thatcher made no great protest at this letter. At her suggestion, Reagan did remove the reference to ‘other nuclear powers’ from his proposals,29 but the idea of eliminating all offensive ballistic missiles – anathema to Mrs Thatcher – stayed. So Trident was threatened, in fact if not by name, and eliminating ballistic weapons (while sharing the benefits of SDI) took pride of place in a letter from Reagan to Gorbachev sent on 25 July. In her failure to react dramatically to these proposals, Mrs Thatcher seems to have relied on Reagan’s earlier assurances, including the conditions enshrined in his formal Directive and a pledge in March that ‘nuclear weapons will clearly remain the key element for the foreseeable future.’30 The British did not believe that such radical proposals would overcome the paralysis of arms control negotiations in the past. There was a certain complacency here. As Charles Powell put it, ‘Whether we should have taken his comments on abolishing ballistic missiles seriously is something you can argue about, but we didn’t. I think the attitude was “Oh, the old boy’s got ideas of his own about nuclear weapons, but NATO strategy is NATO strategy and therefore it will all be f
ine.” ’31
It may also be that Mrs Thatcher was simply too interested by the prospect of her own role in a dialogue with the Russians to kick up a fuss at this point. Back in May, just before she had left London for the G7 in Tokyo, Leonid Zamyatin, the Soviet Ambassador to the UK, had informed Mrs Thatcher that Gorbachev was eager to arrange a summit with Reagan in Washington before the end of the year: ‘The Ambassador made it clear that Gorbachev had personally asked him to convey his message about the Summit and to do it before she left for Tokyo.’32 The implication was that Mrs Thatcher would now intercede with Reagan. In Tokyo, she duly passed on the message, tactfully noting that ‘she did not really know what to make of it.’33 Reagan assured her that he remained committed to a summit later that year. By early July, however, no progress had been made. Gorbachev then wrote to Mrs Thatcher to invite her to the Soviet Union, and asked again for her help in bringing about the hoped-for summit with the US and the ‘change for the better in the international situation’ which was not ‘yet apparent’.34 Charles Powell recommended to Mrs Thatcher that she hold her fire before replying to Gorbachev until the autumn, when the US–Soviet summit would be nearer and ‘we may have important new points to make which would help bring the two sides closer.’35 But Mrs Thatcher insisted on replying rather sooner.* She asked to come to Moscow in the first half of 1987. She reminded the Soviet leader of her relationship with his American interlocutor, saying that Reagan’s response to the latest Soviet proposals at the Geneva talks ‘was made after close consultation with me’. Since getting Gorbachev’s letter, she said, ‘I have … been in touch with President Reagan. He has confirmed that, like you, he is very keen to have a second summit … It is hard to imagine that any successor could be as well-placed as he is to persuade Congress to ratify the arms control agreements which I hope a Summit would reach.’36
Not until September, however, was a date for any meeting actually set. Moving boldly in the belief that progress with the US would help him push on with reform at home, Gorbachev suddenly proposed a private and informal meeting with Reagan in advance of the Washington summit. This would allow them to work out agreements which could then be signed in Washington. Gorbachev offered two possible venues, London or Reykjavik. These suggestions surprised and pleased the Americans, since both were NATO capitals. According to George Shultz, ‘The President was tempted by London because he would have loved it if Margaret had sat in on the meeting, but he knew that was not proper.’37* But the Americans decided in favour of Reykjavik because of its much greater isolation. Before agreeing to the meeting at all, however, Reagan informed Mrs Thatcher (and other allies) of Gorbachev’s invitation, and sought her advice.
Mrs Thatcher welcomed the idea of the meeting.† Encouraged by an earlier assurance from Gorbachev, she told Reagan that ‘Soviet willingness to eliminate all reference to British and French forces is a great step forward and, of course, a condition for our accepting any agreement.’ On the question of how many US and Soviet INF should remain in Europe, she wrote, ‘I want you to know that we would accept an agreement based on any equal ceiling in Europe, always provided that the difference between this and the Asian ceiling [that is, INF stationed in Asia] is not excessive, and that other Allied conditions, above all on SR [Short Range] INF, are met.’38 She reiterated the attitude to SDI which she had expressed in her February message: the ‘key is to provide the Russians with reassurance that there will be no sudden break-out from research to deployment’.39 Like the US administration, she saw the Reykjavik meeting as laying the ground for a major summit, and said as much in a letter to Gorbachev: ‘I very much welcome the fact that you are coming together to prepare for a summit, which I hope will be held before the end of this year. I believe that it should be possible to reach agreements then on reductions in arms, as well as to register progress on regional disputes and human rights problems.’40 She saw Reykjavik as a useful step in a process, nothing more. Indeed, she worried that the original draft of her letter to Reagan was much too long: ‘we have to remember’, she scribbled, ‘that this is NOT the Summit.’41
Reagan saw the forthcoming meeting in much the same way. He wrote to Mrs Thatcher on 8 October, just three days before the meeting began: ‘My objective in Reykjavik is to increase the likelihood that the coming summit in the United States will be productive. I expect our meetings to be private and businesslike. I do not anticipate any formal agreements.’42 He reassured Mrs Thatcher that he remained ‘acutely aware of your special interest’ in the area of any INF agreement. His ‘highest priority’ was ‘significant and stabilising reductions in strategic offensive weapons’.43 Reviewing the letter, Charles Powell wrote on it: ‘Prime Minister. This crossed with your message. It is generally reassuring about the subjects to be discussed, but gives away little on substance.’44 According to Roz Ridgway, head of the State Department’s European Bureau and a senior negotiator at Reykjavik, Powell’s assessment was correct: ‘There was no new substance.’45 The administration was concentrating on reduction, not abolition. Mrs Thatcher felt comfortable. Her last message to Reagan before the meeting did not concern the big issues, but thanked him for offering to raise the plight of Oleg Gordievsky’s family with Gorbachev.
It was Gorbachev, the author of the Reykjavik proto-summit, who planned to spring the surprises. According to notes from the Politburo meeting beforehand, taken by Gorbachev’s foreign policy adviser Anatoly Chernyaev, Gorbachev warned his colleagues that, if Reykjavik failed, ‘we will be pulled into an arms race beyond our power, and we will lose this race’ because ‘we are presently at the limit of our capabilities.’46 Gorbachev was under tremendous pressure not only from SDI but also from the growing effectiveness of Western conventional forces, which were now benefiting from new technologies. His goal was to undermine NATO by driving a wedge between Reagan and his allies. He explained to the Politburo that ‘In order to move Reagan we have to give him something … We must emphasise that we are proposing the liquidation of nuclear weapons … If Reagan does not meet us halfway, we will tell the whole world about this.’47 As Chernyaev understood it, Gorbachev meant to use Reykjavik to ‘sweep Reagan off his feet’.48 In Mrs Thatcher’s eyes and much to her distress, he very nearly succeeded.
On the morning of Saturday 11 October 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev met in Höfði House, the official guesthouse of the Icelandic government, at first alone, except for interpreters and notetakers, and then joined by their foreign ministers, George Shultz and Eduard Shevardnadze.* Both leaders expressed themselves in favour of the total elimination of nuclear weapons as an aspiration. To the surprise of the Americans, this quickly turned into specific offers of arms control by Gorbachev. What Gorbachev called a ‘package’ of Soviet proposals included a 50 per cent cut in strategic arms, the abolition of all INF in Europe and negotiations over those remaining in Asia (with French and British missiles ignored).49 Gorbachev also proposed that both sides should agree to abide by the ABM Treaty for not less than ten years, followed by three to five years of negotiations about how to proceed; during this time, research on SDI would proceed but ‘not outside of laboratories’. Reagan pronounced all this ‘very encouraging’,50 rather alarming his staff. ‘We had prepared responses to a variety of ideas already proposed by the Soviets,’ recalled Roz Ridgway, ‘but we didn’t expect Gorbachev to come out with something new. And the President hadn’t rehearsed this. Who knew where the President was going to take this stuff?’51 Certainly Mrs Thatcher did not know. As things moved at a rapid pace, no information filtered out to the allies.
On the Sunday morning, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to reduce their strategic forces by 50 per cent and to remove INF missiles from Europe entirely.* These were dramatic shifts in favour of long-standing US positions, the INF deal reflecting the ‘zero option’ Reagan had put forward in 1981. They were also far from what Mrs Thatcher had been expecting. As was clear from her letter to Reagan the previous month, she had been ready to accept a ‘ceiling’ on INF in Europ
e, but the word ‘ceiling’ did not, obviously, mean zero. Zero went beyond what Reagan had briefed allied leaders before Reykjavik.52 Despite previous assurances to Mrs Thatcher that he was ‘acutely aware’ of her ‘special interest’, when Reagan negotiated the deal with Gorbachev on the Sunday morning, the news blackout remained absolute.
During a meeting Shultz held with the US team around midday, it began to dawn on the Americans that they should be doing more to keep the allies informed. They considered the proposed INF deal a great triumph and, as Adelman put it, were now eager to ‘relay such glad tidings from Reykjavik’ to their allies.53 Ridgway promptly began telephoning European capitals. Charlie Price, the US Ambassador in London, remembered that everything moved so fast that Ridgway, hurrying to get the information out, rang him and others using open lines.54 There was no suggestion of consulting the allies, only of letting them know shortly before the whole world did.55 It is not clear that even Ridgway’s limited briefing reached Mrs Thatcher, who was becoming increasingly concerned by the information vacuum. Around lunchtime, Mrs Thatcher rang Charles Powell from Chequers. ‘Have you heard what is going on at Reykjavik?’ she asked Powell anxiously. ‘We’ve got to do something, Charles.’56 Powell leapt into a car and drove to Chequers immediately to help her take stock of the situation. Although concrete information as to what Reagan and Gorbachev were up to did not reach Mrs Thatcher until after 4 p.m., she was already getting nervous.
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