The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

by Margaret Thatcher

  THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

  A fortnight later I was back in Washington as President Reagan’s last official guest. This gave me the chance of discussions with President-elect Bush. Mr Bush was slowly putting his Administration team together. On this occasion I also met Dan Quayle, the Vice-President-elect — who for all the cruel mockery to which he was subject I always found very well briefed and with a good political sense — and also future Secretary of State Jim Baker, whose views I shall mention shortly. Both the outgoing President and the President-elect spoke of the importance of dealing with the US budget deficit which had fallen for four years but which was still a problem. This inevitably raised a question mark over defence, so I was keen to restate to Mr Bush my views about SNF and the great significance I attached to the continuation of the SDI programme.

  I had always found Vice-President Bush easy to get on with and I felt that he had performed good service to America in keeping the Reagan Administration in touch with European thinking. He was one of the most decent, honest and patriotic Americans I have met. He had great personal courage, as his past record and his resilience in campaigning showed. But he had never had to think through his beliefs and fight for them when they were hopelessly unfashionable as Ronald Reagan and I had had to do. This meant that much of his time now was taken up with reaching for answers to problems which to me came quite spontaneously, because they sprang from my basic convictions.

  I later learned that President Bush was sometimes exasperated by my habit of talking nonstop about issues which fascinated me and felt that he ought to have been leading the discussion. More important than all of this perhaps was the fact that, as President, George Bush felt the need to distance himself from his predecessor: turning his back fairly publicly on the special position I had enjoyed in the Reagan Administration’s counsels and confidence was a way of doing that. This was understandable; and by the time of my last year in office we had established a better relationship. By then I had learned that I had to defer to him in conversation and not to stint the praise. If that was what was necessary to secure Britain’s interests and influence I had no hesitation in eating a little humble pie.

  Unfortunately, even then the US State Department continued to put out briefing against me and my policies — particularly on Europe — until the onset of the Gulf crisis made them hastily change their stance. To some extent the relative tilt of American foreign policy against Britain in this period may have been the result of the influence of Secretary of State James Baker. Although he was always very courteous to me, we were not close as the admirable George Shultz and I had been. Yet that was not crucial. Rather, it was the fact that Jim Baker’s many abilities lay in the area of ‘fixing’. He had had a mixed record of this, having as US Treasury Secretary been responsible for the ill-judged Plaza and Louvre Accords which brought ‘exchange rate stability’ back to the centre of the West’s economic policies with highly deleterious effects. Now at the State Department Jim Baker and his team brought a similar, allegedly ‘pragmatic’ problem-solving approach to bear on US foreign policy.

  The main results of this approach as far as I was concerned were to put the relationship with Germany — rather than the ‘special relationship’ with Britain — at the centre. I would be the first to argue that if one chose to ignore history and the loyalties it engenders such an approach might appear quite rational. After all, there was some danger that Germany — first under the spell of Mr Gorbachev and later with the lure of reunification — might have moved away from the western alliance towards neutralism. Once Germany was reunified there was another argument — propagated by the French, but swallowed by the US State Department too — that only a ‘united Europe’ could keep German power responsibly in check and, more positively, that a German-led ‘united Europe’ would allow the Americans to cut back on the amount they spent on Europe’s defence.

  Each of these arguments — the sort I could imagine being generated by our own British foreign policy establishment — was false. The risk of Germany loosening its attachment to the West was greatly exaggerated. A ‘united Europe’ would augment, not check, the power of a united Germany. Germany would pursue its interests inside or outside such a Europe — while a Europe built on the corporatist and protectionist lines implicit in the Franco-German alliance would certainly be more antipathetic to the Americans than the looser Europe I preferred. Finally, the idea that the Europeans — with the exception of the British and possibly the French — could be relied on to defend themselves or anyone else for that matter was frankly laughable. In fact, the ties of blood, language, culture and values which bound Britain and America were the only firm basis for US policy in the West; only a very clever person could fail to appreciate something so obvious. But this was the range of personal and political considerations which affected US policy towards Britain as I tried to pursue my threefold objectives of keeping NATO’s defences strong, of ensuring that the Soviet Union did not feel so threatened as to march into eastern Europe and of managing the effects of German reunification.

  NATO SPLIT ON SHORT-RANGE NUCLEAR FORCES (SNF)

  At the end of 1988 I could foresee neither the way in which Anglo-American relations would develop nor the scale of the difficulties with the Germans over SNF. My basic position on Short-Range Nuclear Weapons was that they were essential to NATO’s strategy of flexible response. Any potential aggressor must know that if he were to cross the NATO line he might be met with a nuclear response. If that fear was removed he might calculate that he could mount a conventional attack that would reach the Atlantic seaboard within a few days. And this, of course, was the existing position. But once land-based intermediate-range nuclear weapons were removed, as the INF Treaty signed in Washington in December 1987 took effect, the land-based short-range missiles became all the more vital. So, of course, did the sea-based intermediate missiles.

  At the Rhodes European Council in early December 1988 I discussed arms control with Chancellor Kohl. I found him quite robust. He was keen for an early NATO summit which would help him push through agreement within his Government on the ‘comprehensive concept’ for arms control. I agreed that the sooner the better. We must take decisions on the modernization of NATO’s nuclear weapons by the middle of the year, in particular on the replacement of LANCE. Chancellor Kohl said that he wanted both of these questions out of the way before the June 1989 European elections.

  By the time of the next Anglo-German summit in Frankfurt the political pressure on the German Chancellor had increased further and he had begun to argue that a decision on SNF was not really necessary until 1991–2.

  A week before I went to Frankfurt I had talked through the problem with Jim Baker over lunch at Chequers. I told him that I still considered that Chancellor Kohl was a courageous man and a strong supporter of the United States: the problem was Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who normally favoured a softer, more accommodating approach to the Soviets. I predicted that a number of other governments would be inclined to waver on SNF, because the opinion polls showed that people no longer believed in the Soviet threat. It was therefore vital that the United States and Britain should stand firm. Jim Baker said he very much agreed with my line. The Administration needed an assurance on deployment or it would not get funding from Congress to develop a successor to LANCE. But he wondered whether the price of German agreement would have to be the acceptance of vague language on negotiations on SNF. I replied that though there was scope for NATO to make unilateral reductions in its holdings of nuclear artillery, we could not negotiate on SNF without getting trapped into another ‘zero’. Jim Baker was clearly more anxious about handling German sensitivities than I was, but I still believed that we saw things in the same way.

  Consequently, when I met Chancellor Kohl in Frankfurt I was quite direct. I said that in putting the case for SNF to his people he should simply ask the fundamental question whether they valued their freedom. Freedom for the German people had started on the day the Second World
War had ended and NATO had preserved it for forty years. The Soviet Union continued to represent a military threat. Britain, Germany and the United States represented the real strength of NATO. I understood his difficulties in dealing with German public opinion but I believed that he and I were fundamentally in agreement. NATO had to modernize its weapons, otherwise the United States would sooner or later start to withdraw its troops from Germany. Britain and Germany together should give a lead. In spite of the pressure the Federal Chancellor was under, I came away from Frankfurt feeling that the agreed line on SNF might still hold.

  Certainly, the Soviets were in no doubt about the strategic importance of the decisions which would have to be made about SNF. Mr and Mrs Gorbachev arrived at 11 o’clock at night on Wednesday 5 April in London for the visit which had had to be postponed the previous December as a result of an earthquake in Armenia. I met them at the airport and returned to the Soviet Embassy where the number of toasts drunk suggested that the Soviet leader’s early crackdown on vodka was not universally applicable. In my talks with Mr Gorbachev I found him frustrated by — and surprisingly suspicious of — the Bush Administration. I defended the new President’s performance and stressed the continuity with the Reagan Administration. But the real substance of our discussions related to arms control. I raised directly with Mr Gorbachev the evidence which we had that the Soviets had not been telling us the truth about the quantity and types of chemical weapons which they held. He stoutly maintained that they had. He then brought up the issue of SNF modernization. I said that obsolete weapons did not deter and that NATO’s SNF would certainly have to be modernized. The forthcoming NATO summit would confirm this intention. Mr Gorbachev returned to the subject in his speech at Guildhall which contained a somewhat menacing section about the effect on East-West relations and arms control talks more generally if NATO went ahead with SNF modernization.

  All this pressure was by now having an effect. In particular, Chancellor Kohl was retreating. In April a new German position on SNF modernization and negotiation was extensively leaked before any of the allies — other than the Americans — were informed. The German position paper did not rule out a ‘third zero’, did not call on the Soviet Union unilaterally to reduce its SNF levels to those of NATO and cast doubt on SNF modernization.

  I had acrimonious discussions with Chancellor Kohl behind the stage-managed friendliness of our meeting at Deidesheim at the end of April.[112] Chancellor Kohl gave a lengthy justification for Germany’s recent conduct. He wanted NATO to discuss a mandate for negotiations on SNF, though he said he was absolutely opposed to a ‘third zero’. He said that it was simply not sustainable politically in Germany to argue that those nuclear weapons which most directly affected Germany should be the only category not subject to negotiation.

  I said that I would begin by reminding Chancellor Kohl of some of the background. He had been the one who had originally proposed that there should be an early NATO summit to take the decision on modernization and I had supported him. I read out to him the joint statement which we had issued at Frankfurt. We had not been informed of the German Government’s new position until several days after it had been leaked to the press. NATO had to have SNF and they must be modernized, as he himself had agreed recently. We could not become embroiled in SNF negotiations which would lead inexorably to a ‘third zero’. I told Chancellor Kohl about the reports we had been getting of the Soviet Union’s real views and intentions. They were delighted that they had gained an advantage with the modernization of their own SNF and that we were delaying ours. They were also confident that they could influence opinion in West Germany in favour of SNF negotiations. I repeated that Britain and the United States were absolutely opposed to negotiations on SNF and would remain so. Our present forces were an irreducible minimum if we were to sustain the strategy of flexible response and they would in due course have to be modernized. Even if a decision to deploy the Follow-On to LANCE (FOTL) were postponed, there must be clear evidence at the forthcoming summit of NATO support for the US development programme. In fact, the German Government’s actions had put NATO under severe strain.

  Chancellor Kohl began to get agitated. He said he did not need any lectures about NATO, that he believed in flexible response and repeated his opposition to a ‘third zero’. But the fact was that Germany was more affected than anyone else by SNF and that therefore German interests should be given priority. I retorted that, contrary to what he said, SNF did not affect only Germany. Our troops were on German soil. It had never been possible to rely on all the NATO allies; there were always weak links. But hitherto the United States, Britain and Germany had constituted the real strength of NATO.

  At this Chancellor Kohl became still more worked up. He said that for years he had been attacked as the vassal of the Americans. Now he was suddenly being branded a traitor. He repeated that he did not believe that once the INF agreement had been reached you could resist negotiations on SNF. But he would think again about what I had said and would be in touch with the Americans about it. I reported on our discussion in a message to President Bush, concluding that ‘provided Britain and the United States remain absolutely firm, we can still achieve a satisfactory outcome at the [NATO] summit’.

  In the run up to the NATO summit the newspapers continued to focus on splits in the alliance. This was particularly galling because we should have been celebrating NATO’s fortieth anniversary and highlighting the success of our strategy of securing peace through strength. Apart from the Americans only the French fully agreed with my line on SNF and in any case, not being part of the NATO integrated command structure, they would not be of great importance in the final decision. I minuted on Tuesday 16 May: ‘if we get a “no negotiations” SNF section this will be reasonable, combined with a supportive piece on SNF research.’ I was still quite optimistic.

  Then on Friday 19 May I suddenly learnt that the American line had shifted. They were now prepared to concede the principle of negotiations on SNF. Jim Baker claimed in public that we had been consulted about this US change of tack, but in fact we had not. Without in any way endorsing the American text, which I considered wrong-headed, I sent two main comments to the Americans. It should be amended to make the opening of SNF negotiations dependent upon a decision to deploy a successor to LANCE. It should include a requirement of substantial reductions in Soviet SNF towards NATO levels. Jim Baker replied that he doubted whether the Germans would accept this. The attitude of Brent Scowcroft — the President’s National Security Adviser — was sounder. But I could not tell what the President’s own view would be. In any case, I now found myself going to Brussels as the odd man out. Everyone else accepted the principle of SNF negotiations, and the differences between them existed only on the conditions to be met before these were held. I did not want any negotiations at all. And, if there had to be any, I wanted tougher conditions than those in the American text. Above all there must be no fudged language on the ‘third zero’.

  This was not like a European Council: it was important that we demonstrated the unity of NATO if it was to be effective and so I felt that compromise in some circumstances was a moral duty rather than a matter of weakness. However, I put my case very strongly in the speech I made. I said that I was profoundly sceptical whether negotiations on SNF could possibly be to NATO’s benefit. I was prepared to consider a text which would envisage such negotiations, but only after an agreement for the reduction of conventional forces had been reached and partially implemented. This, moreover, could only be on the basis that another ‘zero’ was excluded.

  In fact, at the last minute the Americans brought forward proposals calling for conventional forces reductions and for not just further deep cuts but accelerated progress in the CFE talks in Vienna, so that those reductions could be accomplished by 1992 or 1993. This sleight of hand permitted a compromise on SNF by enabling the Germans to argue that the prospect of ‘early’ SNF negotiations was preserved. However, I emphasized in my subsequent stat
ement to the House of Commons the fact that only after agreement had been reached on conventional force reductions, and implementation of that agreement was under way, would the United States be authorized to enter into negotiations to achieve partial reductions in Short-Range Missiles. No reductions would be made in NATO’s SNF until after the agreement on conventional force reductions had been fully implemented.

  I felt that I had done as much as was humanly possible — without firm support from the United States for the line I really wanted — to stop our sliding into another ‘zero’. I could live with the text which resulted from the tough negotiations which took place in Brussels. But I had seen for myself that the new American approach was to subordinate clear statements of intention about the alliance’s defence to the political sensibilities of the Germans. I did not think that this boded well.

  President Bush’s remarks in his speech in Mainz on 31 May 1989 about the Germans as ‘partners in leadership’ confirmed the way American thinking about Europe was going. When the President came to London he sought to deal with the problems those remarks had caused by saying that we too were partners in leadership. But the damage had been done. Now, as 1989 wore on, the march of events in eastern Europe and the prospect of German reunification added a new element, inclining the United States to take German issues still more seriously.