There is No Alternative

by Claire Berlinski

  CB: Uh-huh—

  NK: And it wasn’t, at that time, that Gorbachev could have been described as the most profound Marxist-Leninist, although at the time he did think that he could adapt Marxist-Leninism for the purposes of a more open and free society—

  CB: When you talked to him about it, did he seem to be describing her warmly?

  NK: No. I mean, there was a twinkle, and he had—um, he has regard for her strengths, he’s a very courteous man, but he thought she was so wrong about the central issues and difficulties of Soviet society that—he treated her with some bemusement. He wasn’t dismissive, it wouldn’t be in his nature to be dismissive, but he thought she was sort of—skidding off the surface. But anyway, the caricature of this series of exchanges is of two immensely earnest people who had a political chemistry, and if a few more hours had been available, they could have probably resolved the problems of the world. That’s the impression that’s conveyed, but what I’ve heard from the other side, including from Gorbachev’s interpreter . . . that um, you know, it wasn’t desperately profound.

  Kinnock is very passionate on the subject, no doubt, but in the end, his account of the meeting diverges from Powell’s in only one substantive way: He claims the meeting lasted only nine hours. Was it nine hours or thirteen? I don’t know; it is easy to imagine that it was really nine hours but felt like thirteen. Either way, it sounds like a long meeting.

  But Kinnock seems otherwise to be describing more or less the same events. I am not sure what his problem is, really. Neither of them gave way? What would he expect? Was he expecting Margaret Thatcher to say, “You know, Gorby, I’ve thought it over, and there’s more to this Marxist-Leninism business than I realized. Do you think you could give me a few tips on shooting my intellectuals and collectivizing my farms?” Was Kinnock expecting the head of the Politburo suddenly to declare, “You know, Margaret, I’ve seen the light, and you’re right, communism will never work. It’s time to tear down the Wall”?

  The very idea would be risible, were it not for one thing: One year later, Gorbachev said—through his actions if not his words—exactly that. Perhaps things would have worked out even better had Thatcher evinced in this meeting a more sophisticated understanding of Marxist-Leninism.

  But how, exactly?

  On December 8, 1987, Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, eliminating from the planet intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles. Reagan kept SDI. The treaty strongly favored NATO, giving it unequivocal strategic superiority over the Soviet Union. It resulted in the most dramatic and significant reduction of nuclear arms in history.

  Gorbachev signed the treaty for many reasons, not least among them that he was a great and visionary leader. But it is fair to assume that the personal relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev—and Reagan’s success in persuading Gorbachev that he would not use this advantage to launch a first strike—gave Gorbachev the confidence to make this deal. And it is reasonable to assume that Thatcher’s friendship with Gorbachev played a large role in this.

  There is a great debate, of course, about the extent to which Reagan’s policies prompted the Soviet Union’s collapse. Many scholars are now inclined to believe that it would have soon collapsed anyway. Gorbachev, many say, is the hero of this story.

  The debate is to an extent artificial. Heroism is not a zero-sum game. Gorbachev is a hero. I agree. A monumental historical figure. We should not understate his role. I am not seeking the nomination of the Republican Party, so I am happy to say the obvious: Gorbachev was even more significant to history than Reagan.

  Would the Soviet Union have collapsed absent Reagan’s policies? Absent Gorbachev’s ascent? No one knows. We can only guess. Some of the people who now say it would have collapsed anyway are the ones who were saying it would never collapse before.

  Peter Schweizer, an analyst of the Reagan doctrine, estimates that Reagan’s policies cost the Soviet Union roughly $45 billion a year—a catastrophic burden, given that Soviet hard currency earnings amounted to $32 billion a year. He bases these numbers on Moscow’s own estimates. Specifically, Reagan blocked the Soviet’s natural gas pipeline to Europe, costing them $7 billion to $8 billion per year in revenues. By financing anti-communist guerrillas from Latin America to Afghanistan, Reagan forced the Soviet Union to spend an additional $8 billion a year in counterinsurgency operations. Following the invasion of Grenada, an anxious Cuba demanded and received an additional $3 billion in Soviet arms. The Soviets lost between $1 billion and $2 billion a year because of the restrictions Reagan placed on technology exports. Aid to Poland, to counter Reagan’s sanctions, cost them another billion per year. Reagan cajoled the Saudis into opening the oil spigots, depressing the global price of oil, and thereby depriving the Soviets of billions of dollars in hard currency.231 Most devastatingly, to match Reagan’s defense spending, the Soviets increased their military budget by $15 billion to $20 billion per annum.232

  I can’t resolve this debate—and neither can anyone else—but this much we can say with confidence: Reagan’s policies did not provoke the Stalinist reflex in the Soviet Union, as the Sovietologists at Chequers had feared. The Soviet economy was not growing, as the Sovietologists at Chequers believed. The destabilization of Eastern Europe did have a profound effect on the Soviet Union itself. Soviet defense spending was a millstone, not a dynamo. And Soviet leaders did face problems of a nature that compelled them to change drastically—and indeed prompted the system itself to collapse. Now that the Soviet archives are open, it is clear that Reagan’s policies at the very least hastened the Soviet Union’s demise.

  Reagan’s policies, moreover, did not lead to nuclear war.

  To someone who was unsure, in 1983, whether there would be a 1984, this is an impressive record.

  In one sense, the end of the Cold War represented the triumph of an idea: The free market and liberal democracy defeated communism and totalitarianism. In another sense, the end of the Cold War was a contingent story of human relationships. Thatcher played a critical role in both senses of this story. It is hard to see how the story could have played out quite as it did without her.

  The end, when it came, was swift and vertiginous. In 1988, Gorbachev announced a drastic reduction of the Soviet military presence in Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union, he said, would no longer intervene in the Eastern bloc. Emboldened by this declaration, the Hungarian parliament voted in January 1989 to permit freedom of speech and assembly. It set a date for multiparty elections.

  In February 1989, the last Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan.

  On April 5, 1989, the Communist Party in Poland agreed to permit free elections. On June 4, Solidarity won an overwhelming majority of the vote. When the Communist Party leaders phoned Gorbachev to ask what to do, he replied, “The time has come to yield power.”

  Shortly afterward, the Hungarian Communist Party renounced communism and opened the border to Austria, allowing thousands of East Germans to flee to the West.

  In October, massive demonstrations took place in East Germany. “Wir wollen raus!” chanted the protestors: We want out! The hard-line communist Erich Honecker wanted to shoot them all. He turned to the Soviet Union for help, but none was forthcoming. The protests grew in number and strength, forcing Honecker and his entire cabinet to resign.

  On November 9, 1989, East Berliners breached the Berlin Wall. Fatefully, the Kremlin refused to give the orders to restrain them with lethal force. The overwhelmed border guards opened the gates. Tens of thousands of East Germans surged through the checkpoints. At first disbelieving, then euphoric, they began drilling through the wall, pounding at it with hammers. They dismantled it with chisels and screwdrivers. They lifted slabs away with cranes. They poured through the holes. They scrambled over the top. They flooded across by the millions, emerging, dazed and blinking, into the sunlight.

  West Berliners, delirious with joy, met them with champagne.

  “The Wall is gone! The W
all is gone!”

  10

  No! No! No!

  Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages hence

  Shall this our lofty scene be acted over

  In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

  —Cassius, THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR

  In 2005, the French and the Dutch held referendums on the proposed European Constitution. The constitution—265 handsome pages, forty times the length of the American Constitution, unreadable, uninspiring, and an absolute tour de force of bureaucratic jargon—would have enshrined such self-evident truths as these:As regards Huta Andrzej S.A., Huta Bankowa Sp. z o.o., Huta Batory S.A., Huta Buczek S.A., Huta L.W. Sp. z o.o., Huta Łabedy S.A., and Huta Pokój S.A. (hereinafter referred to as “other benefiting companies”), the steel restructuring aid already granted or to be granted from 1997 until the end of 2003 shall not exceed PLN 246 710 000. These firms have already received PLN 37 160 000 of restructuring aid in the period 1997–2001; they shall receive further restructuring aid of no more than PLN 210 210 000 depending on the requirements set out in the approved restructuring plan (of which PLN 182 170 000 in 2002 and PLN 27 380 000 in 2003 if the extension of the grace period under Protocol 2 of the Europe Agreement establishing an association between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and Poland, of the other part, is granted by the end of 2002, or otherwise PLN 210 210 000 in 2003).233

  I am told that visitors to the Library of Congress often find their eyes glistening when they contemplate the yellowed parchment of the American Constitution. I suspect this document might not have the same effect.

  A few points to note: Every year, the European Commission produces more than 11,000 new regulations;234 and every year, according to the commission’s own findings, these regulations cost European businesses 600 billion euros.235 The commission’s rulings are intended to supersede those made by the elected officials of the member states. Although the European parliament is elected directly by the citizens of member countries, the vastly more powerful commission is not elected at all.

  In both France and the Netherlands, the European Constitution was contemptuously rejected. And for obvious reasons: No matter how many times they have been told by their leaders that they are to cherish the ideal of European unity, ordinary Europeans feel a quaint, persistent attachment to their distinct cultural identities, their legal and educational traditions, and their sovereignty. What’s more, they don’t like all those regulations.

  Margaret Thatcher warned that they might not.

  The story of Thatcher’s downfall is often described, with justification, as a classic tragedy: a noble hero, a tragic flaw, reversal of fortune, downfall, purgation. “Ideology, aggression and arrogance grew on her,” wrote Anthony Bevins, the political editor of the Left-leaning Independent.

  . . . and with each success her image and ego became more and more inflated. She began to believe that . . . if she could conquer the miners, she could go on to conquer Brussels, too . . . She spurned the advice of friends, cast them aside, and retreated increasingly into the bunker mentality that has destroyed so many leaders deluded by visions of immortality . . . [Despite] warnings of impending disaster, Mrs. Thatcher charged ahead regardless . . . The critical weakness was the refusal to listen. Unbending, unyielding, she could only break, and break her they did. To the end, she refused to heed the advice—if, indeed, there was anyone left with the nerve to brave her wrath by telling her the truth.236

  Neil Kinnock agrees. “After she got the second victory—reduced majority, but not reduced enough—hubris set in. And you know the rest of the story.”

  I do; others might not. Thatcher’s reluctance to bring Britain further into Europe divided her cabinet. In September 1990, Geoffrey Howe, her longest-serving cabinet minister, resigned in protest. His bitter resignation speech set in motion the train of events that led to the revolt of the Conservative Party and her resignation.

  Those who see in Thatcher’s downfall the plot of Julius Caesar are not imagining things. Shakespeare anticipated every line in this story.

  Certainly, Thatcher had by the end of her time in power become hostile to Europe. In Statecraft, written in 2002, Thatcher laid out the case against Europe with devastating precision:You only have to wade through a metric measure or two of European prose, culled from its directives, circulars, reports, communiqués or what pass as debates in its “parliament,” and you will quickly understand that Europe is, in truth, synonymous with bureaucracy. It is government by bureaucracy for bureaucracy . . . The structures, plans, and programs of the European Union are to be understood as existing simply for their own sake . . . It is time for the world to wake up to it; if it is still possible, to stop it . . . 237

  Her critics—particularly the members of her party who defenestrated her—do not take this argument at face value. Thatcher, they say, was hostile to the European project for no good reason. She was simply, in her fundament, a profound xenophobe who despised Europeans generally and the Germans in particular.238

  As the author of a book titled Menace in Europe, I can hardly pretend neutrality on this subject. I agree with Thatcher and think it absurd to believe that the excellent arguments she advances in Statecraft are the reflection of nothing more than xenophobia. Permit me the indulgence of quoting myself: “No effort to unify Europe has ever succeeded. Most have ended in blood. The European Union is historically nuts. It reflects neither the will of a single nation-state, nor the will of an Empire, based on the ability of a central political entity to dominate its periphery, nor some form of established European national identity with deep historic roots. . . . The EU is in effect an empty empire.”239

  Thatcher is known to history as the great Euroskeptic. As a Euroskeptic myself, I would be delighted to report that on this matter she has always been constant as the northern star. But this is not the case. The peculiar truth is that for most of her career, she was a passionate advocate of European unification. The charge that her policies represented nothing more than pathological xenophobia simply can’t be reconciled with the facts.

  It is true that Thatcher didn’t much care for Germans. I ask Charles Powell whether he believes the claim that at heart, Thatcher simply loathed them. “Well, yes,” he says. “I think one has to be very candid, yes. She was antipathetic to Germany. Could never quite accept that it had changed. She had an antipathy above all to the German manner, really. [Helmut] Kohl, who tried very hard to get on to terms with her, had that German manner, had that sort of big booming German—that sense that Germany pays, and that therefore Germans were entitled to lay down the law. She just hated that. Now, what does it stem from? It stems from a girl brought up at an impressionable age coinciding with the rise of Nazism and the Second World War.”

  Of course it does.240 And not just the Second World War: Thatcher was raised, like everyone of her generation, in the shadow of the First World War. “In our attic,” she recalls in her memoirs, “there was a trunk full of magazines showing, among other things, the famous picture from the Great War of a line of British soldiers blinded by mustard gas walking to the dressing station, each with a hand on the shoulder of the one in front of him.”241

  She was not yet fourteen when the Second World War broke out. I have heard that one of her secretaries once asked her what she believed her most meaningful accomplishment to have been. Surprisingly, she replied that it was rescuing her sister’s Jewish pen-pal, Edith, from the Nazis. After the 1938 Anschluss, she persuaded her father and his Rotary Club to help Edith escape from Austria and to shelter her in Grantham. This, Thatcher said, more than anything else, was her proudest achievement.242 Thatcher mentions Edith only en passant in her memoirs: “One thing Edith reported particularly stuck in my mind. The Jews, she said, were being made to scrub the streets.”243

  During the war, German bombing raids on Grantham killed seventy-eight of her fellow townspeople. She carried a gas mask with her to school. When the air raid sirens went off, sh
e did her homework under her kitchen table. Yes, I’m sure this made an impression. The Germany of Thatcher’s adolescence—the age at which political prejudices tend to be shaped—was a nation of murderous, jackbooted thugs. Italy was ruled by a preposterous Italian bellowing from a balcony. The French and the Dutch were collaborators; Americans were liberators. It would be understandable if living through this era had persuaded Thatcher to believe that Britain should have no truck with the grand project of European unification. Certainly, this interpretation is often retrospectively imposed on the story.

  But in fact it persuaded her—as it persuaded many—that little could be more important than European unification. “We should remember,” she said in 1961, “that France and Germany have attempted to sink their political differences and work for a united Europe. If France can do this so can we.” In the same speech she argued that if Britain failed to enter the Common Market—the precursor to today’s European Community—“We should be failing in our duty to future generations.” In response to those who feared Britain would cease to formulate its own foreign policy and lose its separate identity, she replied,Sovereignty and independence are not ends in themselves . . . we have entered into many treaties and military alliances which limit our freedom of individual action. More and more we are becoming dependent for our future on action in concert with other nations . . . It is no good being independent in isolation . . . 244