Such was the team on which the success of the Government’s second term depended. I hoped that they would share the zeal and enthusiasm of their captain.
I spent most of August on holiday in Switzerland, getting over an awkward and painful eye operation that I had had at the beginning of the month. By the time I returned to England I felt fully recovered, which was all to the good since I had to make several important foreign visits in September, not least to the United States.
After visiting Canada I flew to Washington for a meeting with President Reagan. Overall, the President’s domestic political position was strong. In spite of the difficulties which the US budget deficit was causing, the American economy was in remarkably good shape. It was growing faster with markedly less inflation than when he came into office and there was widespread appreciation of this. As he himself used to say: ‘Now that it is working, how come they don’t call it Reaganomics any more?’ The President had also set his imprint on East-West relations. The Soviets were now definitely on the defensive in international relations. And they were in the dock as a result of the shooting down of a South Korean Airliner. In Central America the Government of El Salvador, which the United States had been backing against communist insurgency, was looking stronger. Perhaps only in the Middle East had the Administration’s policy not proved even a qualified success. Arab-Israeli peace talks were unlikely to be resumed and there was a growing danger of the US and its allies becoming irrevocably sucked into the turbulent politics of the Lebanon. The President had yet to announce whether he would stand for a second term, but I thought and hoped that he would and it looked as if he would win.
Our discussion that morning and over the lunch which followed covered a wide canvas. I raised the question of the US resuming the supply of arms to Argentina, telling him that a decision to do this would simply not be understood in Britain. The President said that he was aware of that, but there would be great pressure for the resumption of arms supplies if a civilian regime were established in Buenos Aires.
I also took the opportunity to explain our opposition to the inclusion of the British and French independent nuclear deterrents in the arms talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet insistence on the inclusion of our deterrents was simply a device to divert attention from the American proposal for deep reductions in strategic nuclear weapons. From the point of view of Britain, our deterrent constituted an irreducible minimum, but it was only 2.5 per cent of the Soviet strategic arsenal. I repeated what I had told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that morning: the inclusion of the British deterrent would logically mean that the United States could not have parity with the Soviet Union. Would that really be acceptable to the United States? Or if, say, the French decided to increase their nuclear weapons, would the United States really be prepared to cut its own by an equivalent amount? The President seemed to take my point, which I found reassuring. I for my part was able to reassure him as regards the timetable for deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe.
However, our discussion turned on the strategy we should pursue towards the Soviet Union generally over the years ahead. I had been giving a good deal of thought to this matter and had discussed it with the experts at a Chequers seminar. I began by saying that we had to make the most accurate assessment of the Soviet system and the Soviet leadership so as to establish a realistic relationship: whatever we thought of them, we all had to live on the same planet. I congratulated the President on his speech to the UN General Assembly after the shooting down of the Korean Airliner and said how right he was to insist that despite this outrage the arms control negotiations in Geneva should continue. The President agreed that now was not the time to isolate ourselves from the Soviet Union. When the USSR failed to prevent NATO’s INF deployment they might start to negotiate seriously. Like me, he had clearly been considering the way in which we should deal with the Soviets once that happened.
The President argued that there were two points on which we had to form a judgement. First, the Russians seemed paranoid about their own security: did they really feel threatened by the West or were they merely trying to keep the offensive edge? The second question related to the control of Soviet power itself. He had always assumed that in the Soviet Union the Politburo controlled the military. But did the fact that the first public comments on the Korean Airliner incident had come from the military indicate that the Politburo was now dominated by the generals? As regards negotiation with the Soviets, we should never forget that the main reason why they were at the negotiating table in Geneva at all was the build-up of American defences. They would never be influenced by sweet reason. However, if they saw that the United States had the will and the determination to build up its defences as far as necessary, the Soviet attitude might change because they knew they could not keep up the pace. He believed that the Russians were now close to the limit in their expenditure on defence. The United States, on the other hand, had the capacity to double its military output. The task was to convince Moscow that the only way it could remain equal was by negotiations because they could not afford to compete in weaponry for very much longer. The President recalled a cartoon which had Mr Brezhnev saying to a Russian general, ‘I liked the arms race better when we were the only ones in it.’
Now that the Soviet system has crumbled along the lines he envisaged, his words seem prophetic. It may be that one reason why President Reagan and I made such a good team was that, although we shared the same analysis of the way the world worked, we were very different people. He had an accurate grasp of the strategic picture but left the tactical detail to others. I was conscious that we must manage our relations with the communists on a day-to-day basis in such a way that events never got out of control. This was why, throughout my discussion with the President, I kept on coming back to the need to consider precisely how we should deal with the Soviets when they faced up to reality and returned to the negotiating table in a more reasonable frame of mind.
Unexpectedly, the autumn of 1983 turned out to be a testing time for Anglo-US relations. This was because we adopted different attitudes towards crises in the Lebanon and in Grenada.
These events took place against the background of great strategic decisions for the West. November 1983 was the time we had agreed for the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Britain and West Germany: I had to ensure that nothing interfered with it. Doing so depended to a large degree on demonstrating that the United States could indeed be relied upon as a trustworthy ally.
I had wider objectives as well. I needed to ensure that whatever short-term difficulties we had with the United States, the long-term relationship between our two countries, on which I knew Britain’s security and the free West’s interests depended, would not be damaged. I was equally determined that international law should be respected and that relations between states should not be allowed to degenerate into a game of realpolitik played out between contesting power blocs.
Shortly before the end of the Falklands War Israel had launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, which led in August 1982 to the deployment of a mainly American Multi-National Force (MNF) in Beirut. The MNF was withdrawn after a brief period but returned in September following the massacres that took place in the Palestinian refugee camps in the suburbs of Beirut which shocked the world. At this point it consisted of American, French and Italian forces. The Lebanese Government asked Britain to make a contribution too. I explained that in my view we were overextended as it was. But they sent a special envoy to see me who told me that Britain held a unique position and that it was vital that it be represented in the Force. So I agreed, with the support of Michael Heseltine and Geoffrey Howe, that about 100 of our men currently stationed in Cyprus with the UN should join the MNF. In practice, the British contingent had a slightly different role from the others, manning no substantial fixed positions. The mandate of the MNF was to assist the Lebanese Government and the Lebanese Armed Forces to restore their authority o
ver the Beirut area and so help to ensure the safety of the population there.
I am always uneasy about any commitment of British forces if it is made without very clear objectives. The original limited mandate of the MNF was indeed clear, at least on paper. But later in September we came under strong pressure from the Americans and the Italians to increase our commitment and to extend the mandate. The doubt in everyone’s mind was whether the current force would be sufficient to allow the Lebanese Government and Army to restore their authority. But that fact was, of course, as much an argument for withdrawing the MNF as for expanding it. I held a meeting to discuss these matters with ministers and advisers at Chequers on Friday 9 September. I was alarmed by reports that the US seemed determined to take a much tougher line with the Syrians than seemed sensible. Syria’s support for any solution to the Lebanese crisis would be essential.
In the Chouf mountains south of Beirut, the force of the Druze minority, historically friendly to Britain, were locked in a conflict with the Lebanese Army which neither side seemed able to win: it looked like a military stalemate. The Druze were under pressure from their Syrian backers to secure wider objectives than they themselves probably wanted. Certainly, they had no quarrel of their own with the British and sought to avoid firing on our position. On one occasion during a lunch party at Downing Street I was told that a Druze shell had fallen close to our troops. Michael Heseltine was at the lunch, so I asked him to telephone the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, to have the shelling stopped – and it was. Our force was small, exposed and isolated, and I was becoming increasingly concerned about what might happen. Three-quarters of the Lebanon was now occupied by the Syrians or the Israelis and the prospects for peace and stability for the remainder seemed bleak.
Then on Sunday 23 October a suicide bomber drove a lorry laden with explosives into the basement of the US Marine headquarters in Beirut. The building was totally destroyed. A second bomb shortly afterwards did the same to the headquarters of the French Paratroopers. Altogether 242 American and 58 French troops were killed – in total more than Britain had lost in the Falklands War. Responsibility was claimed by two militant Shia Muslim groups. My immediate reaction was one of shock at the carnage and disgust at the fanatics who had caused it. But I was also conscious of the impact it would have on the position and morale of the MNF. What had happened highlighted the enormous dangers of our continued presence and the question arose about whether we were justified in continuing to risk the lives of our troops for what was increasingly no clear purpose.
At this point my attention was abruptly diverted by events on the other side of the world. The humiliation inflicted on the United States by the Beirut bombing undoubtedly influenced its reaction to the events which were taking place on the island of Grenada in the eastern Caribbean.
On Wednesday 19 October 1983 a pro-Soviet military coup had overthrown the Government of Grenada. The new regime were certainly a vicious and unstable bunch. Maurice Bishop, the overthrown Prime Minister, and five of his close supporters were shot dead. Jamaica and Barbados wanted military intervention in which they would have liked the Americans and us to take part. My immediate reaction was that it would be most unwise of the Americans, let alone us, to accede to this suggestion. I was afraid that it would put foreign communities in Grenada at severe risk. There were some 200 British civilians there and many more Americans. The main organization of Caribbean States, CARICOM, was not prepared to agree to military intervention in Grenada. However, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, the OECS, decided unanimously to put together a force and called on other governments to help in restoring peace and order in the island. Clearly, the American reaction would be crucial.
The new ‘hemispheric’ strategy which President Reagan’s Administration was pursuing, combined with experience of living beside the Soviet satellite of Cuba, in our view led the United States to exaggerate the threat which a Marxist Grenada posed. Our intelligence suggested that the Soviets had only a peripheral interest in the island. By contrast, the Government of Cuba certainly was deeply involved. A new airfield was being constructed as an extension to the existing airport. It was due to open in March 1984, though aircraft would be able to land there from about January. The Americans saw this as having a military purpose. It did indeed seem likely that the Cubans, who were providing the workforce for the project, regarded it in this light. For them, it would be a way of managing more easily the traffic of their thousands of troops in Angola and Ethiopia back and forth to Cuba. It would also be useful if the Cubans wished to intervene closer to home. But our view remained that the Grenada Government’s main purpose was, as they claimed, a commercial one, planning to cater for the undoubtedly exaggerated projections of their currently minimal tourist industry. The coup of 19 October 1983, morally objectionable as it was, was a change in degree rather than in kind.
On Saturday 22 October – the day before the Beirut bomb outrages – I received a report of the conclusions of the United States National Security Council meeting about Grenada. I was told that it had been decided that the Administration would proceed very cautiously. An American carrier group based on the USS Independence had been diverted south to the Caribbean; it was now east of the southern tip of Florida and due north of Puerto Rico. An amphibious group with 1,900 marines and two landing craft was 200 miles further east. The Independence would reach the area the following day but would remain well to the east of Dominica and well to the north of Grenada. The amphibious group would reach the same area later on the following day. The existence of this force would give the Americans the option to react if the situation warranted it. They had received a firm request from the east Caribbean heads of government to help them restore peace and order in Grenada. Jamaica and Barbados were supporting the request. If the Americans took action to evacuate US citizens they promised to evacuate British citizens as well. We were also assured that there would be consultation if they decided to take any further steps.
That evening I spoke with Richard Luce, now back in the Foreign Office as Minister of State (Geoffrey Howe was in Athens), Willie Whitelaw and Michael Heseltine. I approved the order that HMS Antrim should sail from Colombia to the area of Grenada, remaining beyond the horizon. In public it should be made clear that this was a precautionary move designed to help with the evacuation of British subjects from Grenada should this be required. In fact, it did not seem necessary. The Deputy High Commissioner in Bridgetown (Barbados) reported after a day’s visit to Grenada that British citizens were safe, that the new regime in Grenada was willing to allow arrangements to be made for them to leave if they wished and that Sir Paul Scoon, the Governor-General (the Queen’s representative on the island), was well and in reasonably good heart. He did not request our military intervention, either directly or indirectly.
Suddenly the whole position changed. What precisely happened in Washington I still do not know, but I find it hard to believe that outrage at the Beirut bombing had nothing to do with it. I am sure that this was not a matter of calculation, but rather of frustrated anger – yet that did not make it any easier for me to defend, not least to a British House of Commons in which anti-American feeling was increasing. The fact that Grenada was also a Commonwealth member, and that the Queen was Head of State, made it harder still.
At 7.15 in the evening of Monday 24 October I received a message from President Reagan while I was hosting a reception at Downing Street. The President wrote that he was giving serious consideration to the OECS request for military action. He asked for my thoughts and advice. I was strongly against intervention and asked that a draft reply be prepared at once on lines which I laid down. I then had to go to a farewell dinner given by Princess Alexandra and her husband, Angus Ogilvy, for the outgoing American Ambassador, J.J. Louis, Jnr. I said to him: ‘Do you know what is happening about Grenada? Something is going on.’ He knew nothing about it.
I received a telephone call during the dinner to return immediately to No. 10 and ar
rived back at 11.30 p.m. By then a second message had arrived from the President. In this he stated that he had decided to respond positively to the request for military action. I immediately called a meeting with Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine and the military chiefs and we prepared my reply to the President’s two messages, which was sent at 12.30 a.m. There was no difficulty in agreeing a common line. My message concluded:
This action will be seen as intervention by a western country in the internal affairs of a small independent nation, however unattractive its regime. I ask you to consider this in the context of our wider East-West relations and of the fact that we will be having in the next few days to present to our Parliament and people the siting of Cruise missiles in this country. I must ask you to think most carefully about these points. I cannot conceal that I am deeply disturbed by your latest communication. You asked for my advice. I have set it out and hope that even at this late stage you will take it into account before events are irrevocable.
I followed this up twenty minutes later by telephoning President Reagan on the hotline. I told him that I wanted him to consider very carefully the reply which I had just sent. He undertook to do so but said, ‘We are already at zero.’
At 7.45 that morning a further message arrived, in which the President said that he had weighed very carefully the considerations that I had raised but believed them to be outweighed by other factors. In fact, the US military operation to invade Grenada began early that morning. After some fierce fighting the leaders of the regime were taken prisoner.
At the time I felt dismayed and let down by what had happened. At best, the British Government had been made to look impotent; at worst we looked deceitful. Only the previous afternoon Geoffrey had told the House of Commons that he had no knowledge of any American intention to intervene in Grenada.
Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography Page 56
