Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (100 page)

She felt quite sure, after Afghanistan, that the argument was coming her way. Addressing her party conference that autumn, she made the point explicitly:

Long before we came into office, and therefore long before the invasion of Afghanistan, I was pointing to the threat from the East. I was accused of scaremongering. But events have more than justified my words. Soviet Marxism is ideologically, politically and morally bankrupt. But militarily the Soviet Union is a powerful and growing threat … The British Government are not indifferent to the occupation of Afghanistan. We shall not allow it to be forgotten. Unless and until the Soviet troops are withdrawn, other nations are bound to wonder which of them may be next. Of course there are those who say that by speaking out we are complicating East–West relations, that we are endangering détente. But the real danger would lie in keeping silent. Détente is indivisible and it is a two-way process.
⁶⁰

What she still lacked in her battle with Soviet Marxism was a powerful ally who shared her worldview. This was about to change. As she spoke to her party conference, the American presidential campaign was in full swing, and Jimmy Carter was fighting to survive. That July, on a flight to the Republican convention in Detroit which nominated him as the party’s presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan had chatted with his political guru, Stuart Spencer: ‘Spencer asked the question all political pros learn to ask their candidates early on. “Why are you doing this, Ron? Why do you want to be President?” Without a moment’s hesitation Reagan answered, “To end the Cold War.” ’
⁶¹

While Reagan’s election in November thrilled Mrs Thatcher, it alarmed British officials. ‘I think we were concerned’, recalled Christopher Mallaby, ‘that it might turn out to be a very hard-line, perhaps a crude, policy towards the Soviet Union,’
⁶²
but it was this ‘crude’ or, as she would have said, principled approach which attracted Mrs Thatcher. Carrington summed it up: ‘I think that in many ways Reagan and Thatcher were exactly the same. She was basically extremely hostile towards the Soviets. Talk about evil empire … she believed it really was an evil empire. They had the same kind of values. The difference between them was that while he had gut feelings, she had an intelligence that he did not have.’
⁶³

The ‘evil empire’ was, of course, Reagan’s own phrase, first used later, in March 1983. The slogan, calculated to make diplomats blanch, reflected the moral tone which both Reagan and Mrs Thatcher employed in describing the Soviet Union. ‘Reagan believed it was essential to take on the Soviets on the moral plane: aggression and oppressing their own people and others was not something that would be countenanced,’ said Edwin Meese,
*
a Reagan confidant and counsellor to the President.
⁶⁴
In his very first press conference as President, Reagan declared that ‘the only morality [the Soviets] recognise is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat …’
⁶⁵
On the same day, 29 January 1981, in London, Mrs Thatcher attacked the dishonesty with which the Soviets conducted détente, in terms which prompted a personal letter of thanks from Reagan; and in a press conference a couple of weeks later for American journalists in London, she focused on how the lack of genuine détente produced the oppression of the Soviet Union’s own people: ‘You will have seen that Sakharov
*
was sent to Gorky, you have seen Yuri Orlov,
^†
after all he was there to monitor Helsinki … Détente should be two-way …’
⁶⁶
All this registered strongly with Reagan, who referred to Mrs Thatcher privately at this time as ‘the only European leader I know with balls’.
⁶⁷

Hoping to capitalize on Reagan’s inexperience, Brezhnev issued a surprise invitation to the President after he had been in office for just a month. He offered to meet him at a superpower summit to discuss whatever he wanted. The idea was to present Moscow as eager to defuse tensions through dialogue. In fact by this stage Brezhnev was no longer well enough to discuss international issues coherently, so the invitation was issued in the knowledge that the meeting would never take place. Publicly, Reagan gave it a cautious welcome, but discussed it with Mrs Thatcher in private, when she paid her first visit to him as president, in Washington three days later.

Prime Minister Thatcher asked the President if he had considered what kind of fundamental response [was] to be given to Brezhnev’s proposal for a meeting … It is recognized, of course, that one simply cannot say ‘no, we will never talk’. In the back of everyone’s mind there is the idea of ‘yes, of course, we must talk’, but we cannot talk until every problem, every possible pitfall is carefully examined. The Soviets are skilled negotiators. We can expect them to play on the peace-loving sympathies of people. She was struck, for example, by the reference [in Brezhnev’s invitation] to a moratorium on Theatre Nuclear Forces. The Prime Minister said that her attitude is that when you sup with the devil you must have a long spoon. In fact you had better have a whole lot of long spoons.
⁶⁸

She proposed that the answer should be ‘yes, in due course’. Reagan ‘replied that this is the position we’ve taken; not a no, not a yes – we are considering it very carefully.’
⁶⁹

Mrs Thatcher developed this line in a speech in New York two days later. Her criticisms of the Soviet Union – ‘what is there in the Soviet system to admire? Material prosperity? It does not produce it. Spiritual satisfaction? It denies it’
⁷⁰
– were so harsh as to drive Carrington out of town to avoid attending. ‘She gave a very very very right-wing address’ he recalled, ‘quite a lot of which I disapproved of.’
⁷¹
But in fact she restated the position which she and Reagan shared, which was that dialogue should be explored when
the time was right: ‘In this perilous world, negotiation between governments must continue, particularly in the field of arms control – or better still of arms reduction. We need to establish a military balance between East and West and to ensure that that balance holds.’
⁷²

Early in March 1981, the Soviet Ambassador in London presented a letter from Brezhnev to her (and to all alliance leaders) offering an international summit and an INF moratorium in the hope of heading off INF deployment. Mrs Thatcher told him that Britain would reduce arms only from a position of security. Détente could be pursued if the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan: otherwise, ‘it gave rise to the question, “Who next?” ’ ‘The conflict seemed to encircle the globe,’ she said, citing the adventurism of Cuba in Africa and the Caribbean (a subject on which Robert Conquest had briefed her). There should be a summit only if it were fully prepared, with ‘genuine’ discussions. She attacked the Ambassador for the treatment of Yuri Orlov, and added, ‘Ours was an open society, while that in the Soviet Union was not.’
⁷³

To her irritation, the Foreign Office was pursuing a rather different line. At the end of January she was informed that Carrington intended to negotiate a new Cultural Agreement with the Soviet Union. ‘I am very sorry that we are negotiating a new cultural agreement,’ she noted. ‘… They will gain from it – we shall lose. So much for Afghanistan.’
⁷⁴
And shortly after her meeting with the Ambassador, Carrington went against her confrontational stance by suggesting he should go to Moscow in person to establish better Soviet contacts. ‘I am very worried indeed,’ she wrote. ‘We should have to consult with the US. Can we not keep contacts to meetings in the margins of international fora.’
⁷⁵
*
One dark evening, she was standing at the door of No. 10, staring up at the bulk of the Foreign Office opposite. ‘Look at that,’ she said to an official, ‘the place that keeps the light out of Downing Street.’
⁷⁶

It was to restoring the military balance which she had emphasized in New York that Mrs Thatcher devoted her main energies. In her mind, INF deployment was the key. Although she had not liked the idea of negotiations with the Soviets over INF, she had come to the view that the best way of persuading European allies to accept INF missiles was the strategy of ‘dual track’, by which deployment was linked to a US commitment to pursue such negotiations. Mrs Thatcher was convinced that a willingness
to negotiate was essential if the allies were to win public support for the arrival of new American missiles. With the arrival of the Reagan administration, she found herself in the surprising situation of having to uphold the plan agreed with Carter in the face of criticism from her new friends in Washington. Those in the administration, such as Al Haig, the new Secretary of State, who knew Europe well, agreed with Mrs Thatcher and argued forcefully in favour of dual track. Other, more hawkish members of the administration resisted the idea of any negotiation with the Soviets. One or two, notably Richard Perle,
*
then an assistant secretary of defense, were against INF deployment altogether, on the grounds that European public opinion would never allow the American missiles to be moved around the country in a crisis, and so the weapons would prove useless.
⁷⁷
According to Richard Allen, President Reagan himself favoured the dual-track approach,
⁷⁸
but at this stage he made no effort to redress the sceptical tone being set by many in his administration.

The difference between Mrs Thatcher and the Reaganites really arose from the difference of their respective situations. The new Republican administration, longing to make up for the Carter years of drift, wanted to change the whole approach towards the Soviet Union. So did Mrs Thatcher. But, being, geographically if not mentally, a European, she was very conscious of the danger of the alliance splitting, and the strong desire of the Russians to bring this about. Her experience in the autumn of 1979 of European anxieties over INF, especially those in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, had made her sensitive to the danger of rupture. She could see how Britain, in particular, could be made vulnerable by Continental weakness or American unilateral action, or both. She was playing – and playing surprisingly well – the unaccustomed role of bridge-builder. As a State Department briefing paper put it:

Prime Minister Thatcher’s government approaches East–West issues with a combination of vocal anti-communism and a pragmatic desire to harmonize Western interests in responding to Soviet adventurism … the British fear being whipsawed between contradictory US and ‘European’ approaches to the Soviets. Accordingly, while they favour greater linkage
^†
in general, they
are conscious of the greater constraints operating on the Europeans (particularly the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany]) and favour examining linkages closely on a case by case basis. This makes the UK a strong proponent of Allied consultation and harmony.
⁷⁹

Reagan supporter though she was, Mrs Thatcher thus stood in opposition to the administration’s most ardent hawks, who at this moment were making the running. As Al Haig remembered, ‘The Pentagon was, oddly enough, “don’t waste the money.” You can see what kind of trouble that gets you in. Margaret Thatcher was always steady, “Deploy.” There was no question about her position. It was an invaluable help to me within the Administration.’
⁸⁰

In advance of her visit to Washington in February 1981, British officials lobbied the administration strongly in favour of sticking with dual track. As the State Department briefed:

The UK will seek reassurance that we are not embarking on a major policy change on TNF and will welcome confirmation of continued US support for NATO’s two track approach … Provided they are persuaded that we do not underestimate the strength of arms control pressures in Europe, the British can also be helpful with other Allies in buying time for us to develop our policies.
⁸¹

Haig’s Department duly provided the White House with language reiterating the US commitment to the dual-track approach, which the NSC staff incorporated into a public statement delivered by the President at the conclusion of Mrs Thatcher’s visit.
⁸²
Those drafting these remarks considered the language unremarkable, ‘total boilerplate’,
⁸³
but the words were significant in that they put the President’s support for dual track on the record.
*
The hawks, whose opposition to negotiations remained undiminished, refused to accept defeat and now sought to avoid, or at least delay, the policy’s implementation. At the end of April, Haig returned from a visit
to Europe and urged Reagan to move ahead with dual track and set a date to begin negotiations. He prayed in aid all the main European players:

The British remain our most reliable ally, the French by far the most robust. However, both Mrs Thatcher and Giscard are deeply concerned that we take into account the situation in the FRG. Mrs Thatcher almost pleaded with me in London that we take care not to isolate Chancellor Schmidt, whom she described as ‘a really good friend of the US’. As I reported to you, they deeply fear the consequences of misunderstanding between a resurgent US and an exposed FRG.
⁸⁴

History does not usually write down Mrs Thatcher as a healer of wounds between alliance members but so, at this stage, she was. Reagan decided to proceed with both aspects of dual track.

If negotiations were to take place, however, what was to be their aim? Against the wishes of Haig’s State Department, Reagan approved a stance, championed by Richard Perle, known as the zero option.
*
Under this approach, the US would consider only an agreement that led to the complete withdrawal of all existing Soviet intermediate forces from the European theatre in return for NATO agreement not to deploy American INF in Europe. Proposals for lower levels of intermediate missiles on both sides were off the table unless the level in question was zero. Perle explained: ‘I certainly believed that it was a lot less likely that we would get the agreement than the easier-to-reach agreements that would favour the Soviets. But, if we got it, it would be very useful. And since I wasn’t all that eager for an agreement and certainly an agreement for agreement’s sake, it made perfect sense to go for the harder but more useful.’
⁸⁵
When the zero option was publicly announced in November 1981, Mrs Thatcher commended it to the Commons because it proposed ‘not merely a limitation of nuclear arms but an actual reduction both in nuclear arms and conventional forces. I believe that he [Reagan] has seized the initiative.’
⁸⁶
Michael Foot claimed that the zero option was something which Labour would welcome more than she because his party’s defence policy also favoured a zero option. The difference of course was that Reagan was proposing to negotiate zero missiles on both sides, whereas Foot advocated a unilateral Western zero. Mrs Thatcher soon pointed this out: ‘it takes two to agree to a zero option,’ she insisted.
⁸⁷