The seminar at Chequers also prepared the ground for Mrs Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev to meet, in the same place.
At the end of September 1983, Mrs Thatcher flew to Washington. Her own developing attitudes to the Soviet Union paralleled those of the US President. Reagan had begun his presidency taking the line of Caspar Weinberger, his Defense Secretary, that the Soviet Union was not only immoral but unchangeable. But, by 1983, he was listening more to the view of his Secretary of State, George Shultz, that the Soviets, while immoral, would, if America stood up to them, be ready to make solid agreements. In this shift, he was urged on by his wife Nancy, who, according to Reagan’s aide Michael Deaver, ‘was always bugging me about “What are we doing about this Soviet thing?” ’ Deaver explained that he thought Shultz had yet to be convinced that Reagan genuinely wished to engage with the Soviets. ‘And so Nancy said, “Well, we’ll just have to have him over to dinner.” ’40 The dinner with Shultz took place on 12 February 1983 and proved ‘the beginning of the beginning’.41 Three days later, Reagan met Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador in Washington, in conditions of great secrecy. That summer, personnel changes within the NSC staff favoured those who advocated dialogue. Although debate still moved to and fro on the subject in Washington – and the opponents of dialogue gained influence because of the shooting down of the KAL airliner – Reagan was now edging towards a new approach. So when they met in September, the two most hawkish Western leaders of the post-war era were, by the US administration’s own stern standards, looking rather more like doves.
En route for Washington, Mrs Thatcher visited Canada. There, in discussion with the Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, she heard the name of Gorbachev once more. Trudeau had met him when he visited Canada earlier in the year. ‘I did not at this time foresee the importance of Mr Gorbachev for the future,’ she wrote later,42 but, as John Coles recalls it, the Canadians ‘thought he was a different sort of Russian and that the West should try to get to know him well. I know that made an impact on her.’43
On the morning of 29 September 1983, Reagan received Mrs Thatcher in the Oval Office. The friendship between the two was as warm as ever.* In his diary he wrote: ‘PM Margaret Thatcher arrived. She & I had an hour’s talk before lunch mainly about the Soviets & what it would take to get back into some kind of relationship … I don’t think U.S.–U.K. relations have ever been better.’44 In their discussions, Mrs Thatcher gave Reagan a preview of what she would say in her speech that evening to the Winston Churchill Foundation: ‘She would, of course, be emphasising that we must deal with the Soviets from strength,’ but she felt that it might be time to engage. ‘While she would not say so this evening, we must, she stressed, strive to establish normal relations … The President replied that he shared her views.’45
Her speech that evening contained plenty of strong words about the Soviet Union that the press happily reported: ‘Their creed is barren of conscience, immune to the promptings of good and evil,’ she declared. ‘To them it is the system that counts, and all men must conform.’46 Less attention was paid to her other point that, however unpleasant it might be, ‘We have to deal with the Soviet Union. But we must deal with it not as we would like it to be, but as it is. We live on the same planet and we have to go on sharing it. We stand ready therefore – if and when the circumstances are right – to talk to the Soviet leadership.’47
Interviewed in November, Mrs Thatcher complained that ‘no-one took any notice of the part that I thought they would fall upon,’ by which she meant the section about the need to talk. Instead of carrying this conciliatory message, ‘so many of the papers said Maggie Slashes Moscow.’48 At the time of the speech, though, she was not displeased by such coverage. Just after her Washington visit, she told George Urban,* who had helped with her speech, that her warning about the danger of thinking the Soviets shared Western morality was ‘the most important thing I said in Washington’.49 As was often the case in her interpretations of her own views and actions, she varied them considerably depending upon the moment and the interlocutor.
In essence, though, the strong words and the more conciliatory ones were not contradictory. They fitted the ‘bargain from strength’ idea. There was no formal collaboration between the United States and Britain on this subject at this time, but there was a common approach. As Shultz put it,
The British and we bounced ideas off each other … Margaret Thatcher had a very clear view of the nature of the contest [in East–West relations], its importance and the interplay of strength with diplomatic efforts. This was always consistent with President Reagan’s view … Since President Reagan always had a great deal of confidence in her judgement, whenever she went to the Soviet Union, or somebody visited London, or before our own visits, we always had a very full and complete exchange. President Reagan would say, ‘Well, I see this is the cable that has come from the Foreign Office, but what does Margaret really think?’ He was always very interested in what came directly from her.50
Mrs Thatcher was well pleased with her Washington visit. She now felt emboldened to make her readiness for dialogue with the Soviets more public. At the Conservative Party conference, speaking the day after her fifty-eighth birthday, and hours after Cecil Parkinson’s resignation, she reasoned with her potentially sceptical audience: ‘But whatever we think of the Soviet Union, Soviet Communism cannot be disinvented.’ She repeated her Washington point about living on the same planet: ‘and that is why, when the circumstances are right, we must be ready to talk to the Soviet leadership … But such exchanges must be hard headed. We do not want the word “dialogue” to become suspect in the way the word “détente” now is.’51
The Soviet reaction to Mrs Thatcher’s talk of dialogue was negative. According to Oleg Gordievsky,* the KGB officer who had been recruited as a double agent by SIS† in 1974, and from June 1982 worked in the Soviet Embassy in London, the Soviets disliked her as much as she disliked them. The Soviet leadership had a general belief that ‘A Labour government would always be much better for the Soviet Union.’52 They also had ‘an instinctively positive attitude to Edward Heath’ and would say ‘Look what that woman has done to him.’ Once she came into office, their ‘hatred and respect for her grew’.53 The task of the KGB was to discredit her politically. They were particularly eager to undermine her efforts to deploy US cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. When Mrs Thatcher started to speak in less hostile tones, just as the missiles were about to be deployed, they reacted sceptically: ‘The general attitude was that she was the Iron Lady. She’s an imperialist. She’s an American lackey. She’s anti-Soviet. She’s an enemy … there was not much of a belief that she would change.’54
There was also a more specific and dangerous Soviet anxiety, which Gordievsky’s clandestine work for Britain revealed. Implausible as it might seem, there were growing Soviet concerns that the West might launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against them. From 2 to 11 November 1983, NATO conducted a ‘command post’ exercise, known as ABLE ARCHER. This was designed to test what would happen in a gradually escalating conflict. According to John Scarlett,‡ Gordievsky’s SIS case officer at the time, and much later the head of the Service, the exercise was part of an established pattern of annual ‘war games’, which tested procedures and communications without the involvement of weapons. But it ‘came at a moment when tension between Moscow and the US was at a particular height and paranoia was dominant’.55 The extent to which this infected Soviet thinking was made clear to SIS by Gordievsky. His high level of information was considered unusual, and his briefings struck home. In the words of Colin McColl,§ then Deputy Director of SIS and later its chief, it alerted the service to ‘a very important thing to know which we didn’t know’.56 When SIS shared the information with the Foreign Office, it compared it with its wider sources, and agreed. Geoffrey Howe later wrote: ‘Gordievski left us in no doubt of the extraordinary but genuine Russian fear of a real-life nuclear strike. NATO deliberately changed some aspects of th
e exercise so as to leave the Soviets in no doubt that it was only an exercise.’57* Moscow, however, remained suspicious. The Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 had both taken place under cover of exercises. They feared, incorrectly, that Western planners might share their mindset. Towards the end of ABLE ARCHER, KGB headquarters despatched a ‘most urgent’ telegram to its residencies overseas. It reported, erroneously, that American forces had been put ‘on alert’ and provided a number of possible explanations, ‘one of which was that the countdown to a nuclear first-strike had begun under the cover of ABLE ARCHER’.58 Gordievsky, of course, reported this to his British handlers. ‘I felt that this was a further and disturbing reflection of the increasing paranoia in Moscow,’ he said later, ‘but not a cause of urgent concern in the absence of other indications.’59
This moment gave birth to a controversy which rumbles on to this day:60 did Moscow really think that the West might be on the verge of launching a surprise nuclear attack? Or were the Soviets, well aware that this was an exercise, merely responding in kind? Worse, was there an element of Soviet disinformation here, designed to confuse the West? Britain’s intelligence analysts later concluded that ‘we cannot discount the possibility that at least some Soviet officials/officers may have misinterpreted Able Archer 83 … as posing a real threat.’61
If Soviet paranoia was indeed genuine, the question became, what should be done about it? Rodric Braithwaite,† one of the Foreign Office Russian ‘doves’, recalled that ‘What Gordievsky made clear was that the rhetoric that she and Reagan were using was terrifying.’ The ABLE ARCHER experience ‘gave an insight into the way officials and senior people in the Soviet system felt about the Western threat to them. Reagan and Thatcher had only ever thought the other way, about the Soviet threat to them.’62 Oddly enough, Mrs Thatcher does not appear to have disagreed with this analysis. As is customary with intelligence work, she did not, at the time, know Gordievsky’s name or position in the KGB, but she probably knew that there was a British ‘mole’ at the Soviet Embassy, and was certainly given the results of his espionage, first hearing about Gordievsky’s warnings on 23 December 1982.63 Always someone who studied intelligence carefully and believed in its value, she was strongly impressed with what Gordievsky reported, and worried by what it conveyed. She later directed her officials to share Gordievsky’s revelations with the Americans.64 In John Scarlett’s view, the discovery of the Soviet reaction to ABLE ARCHER had a wider, slower influence on policy: ‘It is possible that this set off a train of thought that Cold War stability wasn’t so stable. We were misjudging the mentality and psychology of the rather old Soviet leadership.’65* The train of thought led naturally to an interest in a fuller conversation with the Soviet leadership. It fitted with the conclusions of the Chequers seminar.
Just as she was trying to get a better understanding of her Soviet enemies, Mrs Thatcher was confronted with a nasty shock from her American friends. Late in the afternoon of 24 October 1983, the Prime Minister was told to expect a cable from President Reagan. She saw it at 7.15 p.m. In it, Reagan explained that he was now so worried about the situation on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, whose leader, Maurice Bishop, had been murdered the previous week, that he was ‘giving serious consideration’ to a request from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS)† for military assistance. In the cable, Reagan sought Mrs Thatcher’s ‘thoughts on these matters’. He also pledged to ‘inform you in advance should our forces take part in the proposed collective security force, or of whatever political or diplomatic efforts we plan to pursue. It is of some assurance to know that I can count on your advice and support on this important day.’66 The cable gave no hint (except, perhaps unintentionally, in the use of the phrase ‘this important day’) that invasion was imminent. Mrs Thatcher was just off to a farewell dinner given by Princess Alexandra for the outgoing US Ambassador, John Louis. She was ‘strongly against intervention’67 and left instructions for a reply to be drafted accordingly. Intuiting urgency, however, she also asked for a meeting to be arranged for her return. Mrs Thatcher hoped to extract some explanation from the guest of honour after the dinner. But when the ladies ‘retired’, the Prime Minister, now increasingly ‘edgy’, was forced to make small talk with the wives while the men lingered over port and brandy at the table. ‘Oh, I do wish they would come out!’ she exclaimed.68 When they finally emerged, she buttonholed the Ambassador only to discover he knew less than she did.
When Mrs Thatcher returned to No. 10 shortly after 11 p.m., a second message from Reagan was waiting. ‘I have decided to respond positively to this [the OECS] request …’ Reagan told her. ‘Our forces will establish themselves in Grenada.’69 He was invading without the consultation with Mrs Thatcher which he had promised little more than three hours earlier. ‘We were both dumbfounded,’ recalled Geoffrey Howe. ‘What on earth were we to make of a relationship, special or otherwise, in which a message requesting the benefit of our advice was so quickly succeeded by another which made it brutally clear that that advice was being treated as of no consequence whatsoever?’70 The Americans were not even acting against Mrs Thatcher’s advice, but without it. Her drafted reply had not, at the time Reagan’s second message was received, been sent.
Grenada was a strange story – as unusual, in its way, as the Falklands War the previous year. Like the Falklands, it exposed tensions between the United States and Britain which neither partner had quite bargained for. Unlike the Falklands, it did not end harmoniously.
Part of the trouble arose, as so often in Anglo-American difficulties, because of Britain’s colonial legacy. In 1974, Grenada, until then a British colony, gained independence. As was fairly common, the Queen remained head of state, represented on the island by a governor-general. In 1979, the government was overthrown in a Marxist coup led by Maurice Bishop. The United States, always vigilant about Communist subversion in its backyard, noted a growing Cuban presence on the island, including a large workforce helping to construct a new airport with suspected military application. On 13 October 1983, hardliners in Bishop’s government led by the military commander, General Hudson Austin, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Coard, overthrew their leader. The Americans feared for the fate of the thousand or so US students attending the St George’s Medical School on the island who might be taken hostage. Anxiety deepened when, on 19 October, Austin’s men put down a revolt by Bishop’s supporters. Between thirty and forty Grenadians were killed and Bishop and his lieutenants executed by firing squad.
The Americans sensed danger, but also opportunity. On 20 October, the administration’s Crisis Preplanning Group met and discussed a rescue plan for the students, but also the possibility of overthrowing the hostile Grenadian regime. According to Lawrence Eagleburger,* the Under-Secretary for Political Affairs at the State Department, ‘The prime motivation was to get rid of that son of a bitch [General Austin] before the Cubans got any further embedded … The students were the pretext … but we would not have done it simply because of the students.’71 In the view of Robert ‘Bud’ McFarlane,† who had recently succeeded Judge Clark as National Security Advisor, there was a real fear of the Communists subverting the whole region: ‘It was Reagan’s sense that this was truly a strategic move by the Soviet Union. It had to be countered.’72
The British, recalled Howe, ‘were aware of the long-standing US concern with Communists on Grenada, but we didn’t really take it very seriously.’73 And the Americans were not shipshape in communicating their concerns. McFarlane blamed his predecessor. ‘It was very, very badly handled from our side,’ he said, insisting that the administration’s position should have been shared with Mrs Thatcher months earlier. ‘I was surprised at Judge Clark.’74 But there was some contact. According to an early draft of George Shultz’s memoirs, in a passage excised before publication, ‘A plan was floated after lower level British–American consultations that involved a small assault effort b
y a Special Air Services [SAS] Team, the elite British commando unit.’75 Officials at the Embassy in Washington were involved in discussions about the extent of possible UK–US co-operation.76 The plans did not get very far, however, because, when the Americans, on 21 October, sought a Foreign Office view about direct intervention, they were, in the words of Robin Renwick,‡ the Head of Chancery at the British Embassy in Washington, ‘heavily brushed off’.77 As Renwick saw it, ‘The effect of this uncompromising response was to ensure that we were excluded from US planning.’78
Mrs Thatcher was not directly involved in this exchange, but the Foreign Office’s attitude reflected her view. On the same day, 21 October, she received reports revealing that Tom Adams, the Prime Minister of Barbados, was trying to arrange ‘a multi-national intervention’79 in Grenada, involving the Americans, various Caribbean states and ‘a British contribution’. Mrs Thatcher put her wiggly line of disapproval under the last phrase. The source indicated that Adams wanted Britain to know what he was up to, and that the British contribution he had in mind was that the SAS should secure the safety of the Governor-General, Sir Paul Scoon. These ruminations from the Caribbean were far from a formal request for British assistance and consequently had little standing in London. Mrs Thatcher’s desire was to avoid military action of any kind against Grenada. She indicated this on John Coles’s covering note.80 Encircling the phrases ‘American troops’ and ‘the SAS’, she linked them with arrows and the words ‘This seems most unwise’ (underlined three times). Coles described the idea that the Governor-General’s safety could be a pretext for invasion as ‘dubious’. He told Mrs Thatcher that Geoffrey Howe, who was in Athens, was being consulted, and added, in words which Mrs Thatcher underlined, ‘There is a just a chance … that one of the Caribbean Prime Ministers or perhaps even the Americans will try to get in touch with you over the weekend.’81
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