In his decision to go ahead with the sanctions, Reagan was intolerant of what he called ‘those “Chicken Littles” in Europe’.116 The ‘Chicken Littles’ were duly furious, partly because they wanted the pipeline, partly because they disliked the unilateralism and partly because they felt that America was imposing hardship on them which it was not applying to itself. Europeans were particularly angry that Reagan lifted the grain embargo against the Soviet Union, to help farmers in the Midwest, while pushing for sanctions on the pipeline.
Mrs Thatcher had more sympathy with Reagan’s aims than did most of the Europeans.* To the draft of a letter to Reagan written early in the new year, she added, ‘… I am less than happy with the European reaction so far’117 – a line which Carrington persuaded her to remove before the letter was sent. But, faced with constantly rising unemployment, she was seriously worried about British jobs, and she was alarmed at the prospect of alliance disunity. The draft which she actually despatched argued that ‘We must ensure that the focus of attention is directed where it belongs – at a blatant example of the failure of the Soviet system and Soviet ideas – and not at differences between Alliance partners whose aims are identical.’118
At the end of January 1982, she saw Haig, who, of all the senior figures in the Reagan administration, was closest to agreeing with her fears about alliance unity. The French and Germans, she said, would not agree to what America wanted. ‘We should not do the Russians’ job for them’ by causing a split, she told Haig. The United States had avoided a grain embargo because of the effect on them: she noted drily ‘a certain lack of symmetry’. When Haig told her that there might be further measures still, she replied, ‘in that case there would be nothing left … The Russians might conclude that they had nothing further to lose by invading.’ Actions taken by the West would not reverse the situation in Poland. ‘She regarded the new freedom in Poland as a gangrene in the Soviet system. She wanted it to spread.’ Haig encouraged her to write personally to the President on the subject because he (Reagan) had a ‘great respect’ for her. Mrs Thatcher said that she ‘reciprocated that respect. She also regarded Helmut Schmidt as a great friend. He was a most loyal member of the Western Alliance, despite his difficulties with his Party.’119 As over the dual-track decision, she did not want Schmidt put in an impossible position. Haig reported to Reagan that Mrs Thatcher had shown ‘unusual vehemence’.120
On the same day, Mrs Thatcher despatched her letter to Reagan. ‘We risk losing the prize if we act hastily or out of step,’ she told him, and she pointed out that France and Germany ‘cannot and will not give up the gas pipeline project’. She urged Reagan to relent on sanctions against existing contracts. In return, the Europeans could ‘reach agreement on measures comparable to yours. We should look resolute and united.’121 Behind her talk of the ‘prize’ was always, and above all, her belief in the overriding need to deploy INF weapons, for which alliance unity had to be at the maximum. Her words seemed to have some effect. Reagan noted in his diary the following day, ‘Our choice – to go it alone with harsher steps against Poland and risk split in the alliance or meet with European alliance on things we can do together. The latter is my choice. The plain truth is that we can’t – alone – hurt the Soviets that much. The Soviets will however be disturbed at evidence their attempts to split us off from the allies have failed.’122 ‘I must take the blame for having been careless,’ the President conceded at an NSC meeting in February. Reagan explained that he had assumed that the construction of the pipeline depended predominantly on firms based in the United States, rather than in Europe. ‘Now’, he continued, ‘Maggie Thatcher has made me realise that I have been wrong.’123
On 2 April 1982, Argentina invaded the British colony of the Falkland Islands.* Mrs Thatcher, fighting for national honour and political survival, had very little time for anything else. Her approach to Anglo-American relations was suddenly governed by the imperative of winning US military and diplomatic assistance against Argentina, and for the course of the war she was much too preoccupied to take part in Washington’s debates about how to deal with the Soviet Union. While the Falklands War was in progress, these debates took, from her point of view, a turn for the worse.
With the arrival of Judge William Clark† as national security advisor at the beginning of the year, the ‘Reagan doctrine’, by which Soviet Communism had to be defeated rather than contained, had begun to gain firmer shape. Reagan reverted to his idea of economic aggression against the Russians. ‘Why can’t we just lean on the Soviets until they go broke?’ he asked at an NSC meeting in March, and he answered his own question by saying, ‘That’s the direction we’re going to go.’124 In May, he signed a top-secret policy document – NSDD 32 – which sought to ‘contain and reverse the expansion of Soviet control and military presence throughout the world … and weaken the Soviet alliance system by forcing the USSR to bear the brunt of its economic shortcomings’.125 It was in this spirit that the administration now approached the pipeline. While US officials would have preferred to see the pipeline cancelled altogether, they realized that the lack of international support made this unrealistic. Instead, they resolved to use the sanctions to delay construction for as long as possible, thus making the process more costly for the Soviets and providing time for alternative European gas reserves to be developed. They also hoped to block Soviet plans to add a second strand to the pipeline in the future. As Roger Robinson, NSC senior director of international economic affairs, put it, ‘We needed to take on the Siberian gas pipeline project because it would have made Europe inordinately dependent on Soviet gas and catapulted Moscow into a new echelon of hard currency earnings – some $10–15 billion annually per strand.’126
Luckily for Mrs Thatcher, all this – and the Falklands – coincided with the formal visit (for technical reasons, not a state visit) by President Reagan to Britain. With Reagan due to attend the Versailles G7 in June 1982, Mrs Thatcher had proposed, back in 1981, that the President also visit Britain. In December, it had also been suggested that the Reagans stay with the Queen at Windsor. There was tremendous toing and froing about the visit. Would security permit the President to ride in an open-topped carriage? Given the importance of courting West Germany in his visit to Europe, would he take time to come to Britain at all? Would the President, if he came, make a speech? In February, the view from the White House was that he would not speak. This greatly disappointed Mrs Thatcher. Reporting the White House view to her, her private secretary, John Coles, pointed out that ‘One of the main reasons’ for Reagan’s coming was to ‘help lessen the impact of the unilateralists’.127 ‘I really think we should press for a speech,’ Mrs Thatcher scribbled, and not only the one at the banquet with the Queen, because that ‘couldn’t contain anything controversial and would ∴ not meet the need’.128 The idea of a speech to both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall was eventually agreed, but was then leaked to the American press by Michael Deaver, the President’s Deputy Chief of Staff.*
A huge row ensued. With widespread discontent on the Opposition benches, Michael Foot complained that the invitation to give such a speech was the prerogative of Parliament, which had not been consulted, not of the executive.* This was constitutionally correct. The suggested compromise was that Reagan speak in the Royal Gallery in the Palace of Westminster instead. This was less grand than Westminster Hall, in which, among foreign leaders, only General de Gaulle had previously spoken. Mrs Thatcher was angry, both with the White House gaffe and with Foot and co., particularly when, in the wake of the controversy, the White House suggested again that it might be better if the President did not deliver a speech at all. She reminded staff that the US was ‘our staunchest ally’ and ‘President Reagan should be accorded the same treatment as General De Gaulle.’129 On a list of previous addresses to Parliament supplied to her by officials, she added, to emphasize her views: ‘Reagan – a strong and good friend of Britain and a defender of the free world.’130 Parliamentary feelings, h
owever, ran so high that she had no choice but to accept the Royal Gallery compromise. The White House was informed that Mrs Thatcher ‘personally would be very disappointed’ if the President decided not to speak after all.131 Reagan bowed to her wishes.
After these initial hesitations, the White House became enchanted with the whole idea of the visit. Reagan was particularly excited by the suggestion that he would go riding with the Queen in Windsor Great Park. Judge Clark, a rancher and horseman, let it be known that, if anyone else besides the two heads of state would be in the mounted posse, he would like to be one of them.132 There was discussion about what gift should be presented to Reagan, and Judge Clark opined that the President could ‘always use more leather’. An English saddle and bridle were duly agreed.
This expectation of pleasure and amity was helpful to Mrs Thatcher in winning Reagan’s support for the Falklands operation. He did not like the idea of visiting Britain in an atmosphere of unpopularity. Even less did he want to cancel the visit. It was also generally assumed that pressure from the allies at the Versailles G7 would deliver another boon for Mrs Thatcher in encouraging Reagan to bring sanctions on the pipeline to an end. This was not the case. In fact, urged on by the hardliners, Reagan had been considering extending his sanctions, particularly if the allies would not agree to tough limits on credits for the Soviet Union. ‘There was a lot of talk about not having a set to with our allies,’ Reagan noted in his diary. ‘I finally said to h—l with it. It’s time we tell them this is our chance to bring the Soviets into the real world and for them to take a stand with us – shut off credit etc.’133 No agreement was reached at Versailles. Reagan was particularly disappointed that his attempt to win tougher credit constraints had got nowhere.
After the summit, Reagan began his visit to Britain on 7 June 1982. Mrs Thatcher was delighted by his presence and by the help which America, after some hesitations, had given so munificently over the Falklands. When the President addressed MPs and peers in the Royal Gallery, how he would appear on television was all important. For the first time in Britain, a transparent Perspex autocue system was used, making it look as if Reagan were speaking off the cuff or reciting from memory. Much thought had been given to each detail. Jim Hooley, part of the President’s advance team, recalled: ‘We wanted the guys in the really cool uniforms [that is, Beefeaters] in the photo when Reagan was speaking. Our counterparts were looking bemused, but we kept saying “couldn’t they be just a little closer?” ’134 But the speech was not merely image-peddling. It was full of serious content. With a phrase that consciously echoed Winston Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri – ‘From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea’, Reagan said, there had been no free elections in thirty years – it set out in classic form Reagan’s governing idea. Poland was ‘at the centre of European civilization’ and the Berlin wall was ‘the dreadful grey gash across the city’. The Soviet state, inspired by that ‘barbarous assault on the human spirit called Marxism-Leninism’, was collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. He called for a ‘crusade for freedom’, an attempt to establish ‘the infrastructure of democracy’ and to subvert Soviet tyranny just as the Soviets tried to subvert Western freedom. He invited people to consign Marxism-Leninism to the ‘ash-heap of history’. In a passage on which he had personally insisted, Reagan linked British troops in the Falklands with his wider cause: they had been fighting for ‘the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed’.135
Mrs Thatcher was thrilled. In her private speech for Reagan, given at the lunch at No. 10 which followed his address to the Royal Gallery, she told him that, for his help over the Falklands, ‘We are grateful from the depth of our national being.’136 Into her text, she inserted, in her own hand, words from General Eisenhower: ‘One truth must rule all we think and all we do. The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defence.’137 The Royal Gallery speech, and the visit, were extremely important in making manifest the unity with America which Mrs Thatcher sought, and the more positive and vigorous advancement of Western values which she espoused. The speech also complemented the attitude to peace which, bolstered by the Falklands, she was developing. She saw peace not as a rather abject posture, merely avoiding war, but as a more tough and durable thing – ‘peace with freedom and justice’.
Nothing, however, did the trick on the pipeline. At Versailles, Mrs Thatcher had badgered Reagan on the subject, but he had conceded nothing. Aware that it, and particularly the turbine jobs at John Brown, would come up again in London, Haig counselled delay: ‘I suggest that you tell Mrs Thatcher that … you will need to consider this issue after your return to Washington.’138 For her part, Mrs Thatcher raised John Brown with Reagan during his visit, but without success.
Reagan returned to Washington to find his administration’s conservatives angry with the failure of the Versailles summit to get results, and his White House staff intriguing against Haig, who, they believed, was trying to bypass the President and run his own foreign policy. On 18 June 1982, with Haig away in New York City, Reagan decided at an NSC meeting to extend sanctions extraterritorially, increasing the headache for many non-US firms trying to honour their contracts with the Soviets. This was publicly announced without consultation with the allies.
The decision was ‘a bolt from the blue’, said Mrs Thatcher,139 and it made her ‘very, very angry’.140 During his visit to Europe, she had been absolutely clear with Reagan that she wanted to see the sanctions lifted. Instead, the President had actually extended them. Due in New York to make a speech about disarmament, she was invited to Washington to meet with Reagan, originally at the behest of Al Haig, and arrived there on 23 June.* Despite the excellent relations between President and Prime Minister, the meeting was strained. As State Department officials reported to the US Embassy in London, Mrs Thatcher contrasted the US decision to continue grain sales to the Soviet Union with the decision on the pipeline: ‘She pointed out that the United States was getting a bad name internationally as a country which will not live up to its commitments.’141 Usually, to preserve her relationship with Reagan, Mrs Thatcher would avoid direct confrontation with him, picking instead on his advisers. ‘She would turn to the relevant Secretary or official and say “Bill, how could you ever go in that direction?” ’ recalled Judge Clark. ‘The President would sit there with a catbird smile and roll his eyes as if to say, “Yes, Bill, how could you ever have done such a thing?” ’142 This time, however, her ire reached beyond Reagan’s aides. Thomas Niles, of the State Department, who attended the meeting, remembered it vividly:
The PM was in a bad mood. She was unhappy … She laid it all out. ‘This is just unacceptable … our companies cannot be put under US law.’
The real key moment during the meeting came when, unbeknownst to us, the NSC staff had prepared some material for the President. It essentially had him saying, ‘Look Margaret, we’ve talked to your company John Brown and they told us that this doesn’t bother them. They don’t really care.’ That was the point at which she really went ballistic. She told us to stop taking notes. ‘Put down your pencils,’ she said, and banged the table. I’ll never forget it. And she said to the President, ‘Ron, you talk to your companies and I’ll talk to mine.’ It was rough. It was not a very wise thing for the President to have said.
Reagan’s reaction was interesting: ‘The President was chagrined. Deeply. But I couldn’t say that he hesitated. He was gracious to a fault … but this was a matter of East–West relations. It really was one of those lines in the sand: you do not provide money to the Soviet Union.’143 ‘The Prime Minister’s opposition was a source of puzzlement to the President,’ recalled Bud McFarlane, who at that time was Deputy National Security Advisor.* ‘She was strong in her convictions about containing the Soviet Union and ultimately rolling it back. So the President was struck by the inconsistency of her position … It was always in sorrow, not anger, but he never wavered.’144
Fo
r Mrs Thatcher, the episode was a shock, because it brought her up against the limits of her relationship with Reagan just at the moment when it seemed to be going so well. According to Clive Whitmore: ‘He had made up his mind … and having made up his mind on the main issues there wasn’t really very much concern about the repercussions for other people. I think this really did come as a bit of a blow for her. She was unable to make the good old personal relationship work in such a way that she could enlighten him.’ She also learnt something about Reagan himself that alarmed her.
I think she was really rather dismayed at how little understanding Reagan seemed to have of the issues. She had a remarkably detailed grasp of every aspect of this big policy question and it was quite plain that the President didn’t … I think she for the first time was unhappy that he was unable to respond to her concerns … And so she began to take the view that well, maybe he wasn’t quite as intelligent as she had always held him out to be … He was a bear of very little brain. It was disappointing for her. You felt a significant change in her mood after the visit.
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography Page 78
