The post-lunch meeting so exceeded its allotted time that Gorbachev did not leave for London until six, making him nearly two hours late for a reception at the Soviet Embassy. Mrs Thatcher lingered briefly with her officials before exclaiming, ‘ “Tomorrow it’s China, and I haven’t had my hair done!” She ran upstairs and was gone.’71
Those with Mrs Thatcher that day noticed her excitement. ‘At the end, she felt very elated: this really was something new,’ recalled Charles Powell.72 Tony Bishop registered the ‘palpable human chemistry at work between them’.73 He looked upon the occasion with his interpreter’s eye: ‘It struck me – not just as an observer but as one who had to be her voice and reflect her tone – that at such times I was witnessing something akin to a flirtation between two people with much to gain from and offer to each other: a flirtation that was pleasurable and stimulating but ultimately “safe” and platonic.’74*
After Gorbachev had left, Bernard Ingham came and asked Mrs Thatcher how he should brief the press. As Charles Powell remembered it, ‘she was going on about how different he was from previous generations and how she could have a good discussion with him. I maintain that I said, “Yes, he’s the sort of guy you can do business with.” Bernard said, “That’s it. A man to do business with.” ’75 Ingham, however, insisted that he, not Powell, came up with the words while listening to Mrs Thatcher’s account of their talks and then persuaded her to use the phrase with the media.76 Whatever the parentage of the famous phrase, Ingham duly put it out that night. Mrs Thatcher repeated it herself in interviews the next day.
Gorbachev himself took an almost identical view of what had happened. Talking to Richard Luce at the Speaker’s dinner in his honour that followed the Chequers meeting, he pronounced himself ‘very satisfied indeed with his talks with the Prime Minister. He had arrived with preconceived ideas about her attitude towards the Soviet Union. These had been proved wrong, and, to his great pleasure, he had established a good understanding with her.’77 She had what he considered good ideas about each country defending its own interests: ‘On such a basis, people could do business.’* The visit also helped Gorbachev’s standing domestically. He had passed what Grachev termed the ‘Thatcher test’. Given her reputation as a staunch anti-Communist, there was a feeling that if Gorbachev ‘could make it in London, he could make it anywhere’.78
From his unique position in the Soviet Embassy, Oleg Gordievsky was critical of Mrs Thatcher’s enthusiasm for Gorbachev. He felt at the time that ‘The British were dreaming about a change, and grossly exaggerated what was coming.’79 Mrs Thatcher found Gorbachev ‘attractive and charming’, but in Gordievsky’s view, he seemed to most Russians, with his ‘Tartar eyes’, to be ‘an oriental monster’. He was ‘an apparatchik listening to himself with great pleasure’. He later came to think that ‘the British intuition had been correct’80 because Gorbachev was surrounded by genuine reformers such as Alexander Yakovlev,† who accompanied him to Chequers. Gordievsky’s reports from the Embassy did, however, bring out the fact that Soviet officials themselves were excited by Gorbachev. Although no longer Gordievsky’s case officer by the time of Gorbachev’s visit, John Scarlett recalled that the Soviet hierarchy had conveyed ‘an inchoate sense of weakness and vulnerability because of being left behind by American power: it was not clear how much the gerontocracy understood. It was always clear that Gorbachev was the liberal, the reformer. He seemed different.’81 Gordievsky also reported the enthusiastic Moscow feedback from the Chequers meeting. ‘The phrase that Gorbachev always used [about the nuclear confrontation] was “We can’t live like this.” ’82 The Thatcher meeting made him feel that both sides could move towards the change required.
Buoyed up by these reactions, and enthusiastic press coverage, Mrs Thatcher had only one immediate problem about the Gorbachev visit – how it would go down in Washington. She probably had a slightly guilty conscience about her remarks to Gorbachev on SDI. In her memoirs, she makes much – too much – of how she reiterated her staunch support for America: ‘My frankness on this was particularly important because of my equal frankness about what I saw as the President’s unrealistic dream of a nuclear-free world.’83 Her ‘equal frankness’ to Gorbachev about Reagan’s ‘unrealistic dream’ gave ammunition to the enemy. The day after the Chequers visit, Powell wrote to the Foreign Office to advise that the report of the meeting offered to NATO allies should be kept fairly general, holding back specifics for Mrs Thatcher’s meeting with Reagan on the coming Saturday. He added: ‘Particular care should be taken in dealing with any suggestions that the Prime Minister distanced herself from President Reagan over the question of arms control in space.’84 The ‘particular care’ was required because that is exactly what she had done.
Washington, where the administration was itself divided – Shultz on one side, Weinberger on the other – about whether the US should even agree to discuss SDI with the Soviets, was buzzing with rumours that Mrs Thatcher had gone too far. According to the Washington Post, ‘President Reagan fervently hopes that during their meeting in Camp David this weekend his straight-talking conservative ally from London will get off the gee-whiz kick about the Kremlin’s personable heir apparent … What shook White House insiders was the juxtaposition of Thatcher’s “can-do-business” pledge and Gorbachev’s assertion that killing Star Wars is the precondition for serious arms control negotiations.’85 Both Shultz and McFarlane warned the President of differences between himself and Mrs Thatcher on SDI. The US Ambassador in London, Charlie Price, also weighed in with Reagan. ‘During my first year in London, I have met with the PM perhaps 15 times,’ Price wrote. ‘In every meeting, she does most of the talking. On SDI, it’s time she did some listening.’86
On 22 December 1984, Reagan received Mrs Thatcher’s own report about the Chequers meeting. Using the already familiar phrase, Mrs Thatcher wrote, ‘I certainly found him a man one could do business with. I actually rather liked him,’87 but added, ‘I got the impression that in some ways he was using me as a stalking horse for you … At the same time, he was on the look-out for possible divergences of view between us.’ She downplayed talk of SDI but reported that Gorbachev had made the ABM Treaty a ‘key stone’ of his approach. ‘I warned him of trying to drive wedges between the Allies.’ She described the Russians as ‘genuinely fearful’ of the costs of technological advance in any arms race and ‘therefore prepared to negotiate seriously on nuclear weapons if they believe that you are politically committed to reductions’.88 She did not repeat what she had told Gorbachev about Reagan’s ‘dream’ of a nuclear-free world.
If one looks at the week leading up to Christmas 1984, one can see how prodigious were Mrs Thatcher’s powers of mental and physical endurance. On Sunday 16 December, she met Gorbachev at Chequers, a six-hour encounter which had required heavy preparation. On Monday evening, she set off for Peking to sign the Hong Kong Agreement with China on Wednesday 19 December, and went thence to Hong Kong itself to encourage a favourable reaction in the colony. Sending Geoffrey Howe back to London (she always travelled more happily without him), she then flew to Washington for the Camp David meeting on Saturday 22 December, returning to London in the early hours of the following day.
The flight from Hong Kong to Washington lasted twenty-four hours and included two stops and a twelve-hour time change The VC-10 in which they were travelling was far from luxurious, but it did have a bed for Mrs Thatcher in a curtained-off area. Some time into the flight Robin Butler announced his intention to get some sleep. ‘Well, I’m not going to,’ Mrs Thatcher replied. ‘I’m going to stay awake for the 24 hours. And I’m going to study the ABM Treaty and Cap Weinberger’s statements on the SDI.’89 And so she did, staying in her seat for the entire journey.* The plane touched down in Honolulu in the early hours of the morning to refuel. The prime ministerial party were received by the base commanders, including one ‘very sleepy admiral’. Mrs Thatcher, always eager to put her time to good use, said how sorry she was that she could n
ot stay long enough to visit Pearl Harbor. It was still dark and her hosts seemed somewhat relieved. Pearl Harbor was just the other side of the airfield, they told her, but it was a long drive, all the way around the base perimeter, to get there. Mrs Thatcher’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘if it’s just the other side, why don’t we walk across?’ ‘Well, it’s dark,’ came the response. ‘Ah,’ she replied, ‘but I have a torch in my handbag’ (something she always carried after the Brighton bomb that October). So the party set off, recalled Butler, ‘She in her high-heeled shoes and this admiral and this air force commander dragging along. And we got to the edge of the airfield [by this time, it was dawn] and looked out over Pearl Harbor.’ Mrs Thatcher’s inspection complete, the party marched back whence they came. ‘We got back on the plane and she resumed her study of the ABM Treaty and Cap Weinberger’s speeches.’90
When she arrived at the Washington Embassy Mrs Thatcher ordered a briefing meeting at 11 p.m. She got up at six the next morning for a hairdressing appointment, which was followed by another briefing meeting, and then breakfast with Vice-President Bush. She reached Camp David, some 60 miles away, by helicopter at 10.30 a.m. She had been briefed by the Embassy that ‘the President will be wearing an open-necked shirt, sweater and slacks … We have said that, since the Prime Minister will be giving a press conference immediately after Camp David, we doubt that she would wish to dress casually.’ Mrs Thatcher was also warned to expect rather colder weather at Camp David than in Washington: ‘the Prime Minister will wish to dress accordingly particularly because the President will meet the Prime Minister at the Camp David heli-pad in his golf cart … the reason for the golf cart is that the White House are keen to have a memorable and informal pre-Christmas photo opportunity.’91 Mrs Thatcher stepped off the helicopter dressed, as predicted, formally. She wore a smart beige tweed suit for the ride in the cart with the casually dressed President.
As the Thatcher party flew round the world, Charles Powell had scribbled the key thoughts for the meeting on the back of his official programme for the visit to China. Headed ‘President’, they began with ‘E/W – Gorbachev’ and then listed six points about arms control. It was, he scrawled, the ‘Last chance to lodge ideas before Geneva meeting [when Shultz and Gromyko would reopen negotiations]. Need more links between various negotiations … Key quality is readiness of US to talk about blocking off some elements of SDI.’92 This was, in essence, Mrs Thatcher’s agenda.
Mrs Thatcher’s Camp David meeting began tête-à-tête with Reagan, joined only by notetakers, and then moved into a wider gathering, including Shultz, McFarlane and others – but not, significantly, Weinberger* – which continued into a working lunch. At the private meeting with Reagan, Mrs Thatcher relayed her impressions of Gorbachev. She said ‘he was an unusual Russian in that he was much less constrained, more charming, open to discussion and debate, and did not stick to prepared notes. His wife was equally charming. The Prime Minister noted that she often says to herself the more charming the adversary, the more dangerous.’93 She reassured Reagan and the wider meeting that she ‘had emphasized to Gorbachev that it would be a futile effort to try to divide Great Britain from the US’.94
At the private meeting, it was Reagan, not Mrs Thatcher, who broached SDI. He said he saw Soviet attacks on it as part of their propaganda preparations for the Geneva talks. He defended SDI: ‘Its aim would strictly be to strengthen deterrence … if it [research] proves successful he would be willing to put this new technology into international hands. The President said we were not violating the ABM Treaty … The new Strategic Defense Initiative also has a moral context. We must search for ways to build a more stable peace. Our goal is to reduce, and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.’95 ‘These remarks made me nervous,’ Mrs Thatcher later wrote,96 but she kept her peace for the time being and made it clear that she had let Gorbachev know that ‘Britain supports the SDI program and told him it was not linked to a first strike strategy,’97 which was the truth but not the whole truth. She also reported that Gorbachev had asked her to ‘tell your friend President Reagan not to go ahead with space weapons’.98 In doing so, she was not endorsing Gorbachev’s comment but wanted Reagan to understand the impact SDI had made on the Soviet leadership. Unlike Gorbachev, she did not wish Reagan to abandon his efforts. Instead, as the British record made clear, she stressed the distinction between research, which she supported wholeheartedly, and deployment, for which she ‘foresaw grave difficulties’.99
At the larger meeting, Mrs Thatcher reiterated her support for SDI research, but expressed her desire to know more about the subject, asking for an expert to be sent to London to brief her. She went quickly to the heart of her anxieties: ‘She … understood that we will not know for some time if a strategic defense system is truly feasible. If we reached a stage where production looked possible we would have some serious and difficult decisions to take. There were ABM and outer space treaties … possible countering strategies must also be considered …’100 According to Powell, she found ‘the depth of Reagan’s anti-nuclear sentiments … a very tricky issue for her to navigate: first, because she disagreed profoundly with it. Secondly, because it was capable of causing her immense embarrassment in the UK in the debate with CND and Kinnock over unilateral disarmament.’101 She set out her own, unchanged view about nuclear weapons: ‘Nuclear weapons have served not only to prevent a nuclear war, but they have also given us forty years of unprecedented peace in Europe. It would be unwise, she continued, to abandon a deterrence system that has prevented both nuclear and conventional war.’102 ‘We have some real worries,’ she continued, ‘especially about SDI’s impact on deterrence. The wretched press has tried to make out that we have major differences. This is simply not true, but we do feel it is unwise to conclude where we will go on SDI, before the research programme is completed.’ She had her doubts about whether the programme would be feasible: ‘In the past, scientific genius had always developed a counter system. Even if an SDI system proved 95 per cent successful … over 60 million people would still die from those weapons that got through.’103
All this had quite an impact. ‘Reagan was taken aback,’ said Bud McFarlane. ‘He had heard it through us, but it was palpable across the table from the Prime Minister. This was not a pro forma position at all. This was the first time he had grasped that the person he respected above all others was making a very compelling case. It was passionate. He was very sobered by it.’104 He conceded that many of Mrs Thatcher’s points needed to be addressed, but stuck to his vision. The argument then got more detailed and eventually more circular, with Reagan’s lieutenants taking it up as their chief’s attention began to wander. Bernard Ingham, who was present, noted that ‘There were times in the log cabin when he didn’t seem engaged at all.’105
At drinks before lunch, Mrs Thatcher seized the moment. ‘Put these points down, the points we’ve been discussing, on a bit of paper,’ she said to Powell, ‘and we can see if we can’t get them agreed.’106 Powell and John Kerr,* the Head of Chancery, disappeared to a side room and got to work.† They produced a draft press statement, culminating in four points said to have been agreed by both the UK and the US. In Powell’s view, this statement was not intended ‘to be very very clever … It reflected principally what she said, but also what Reagan had not objected to.’107 The draft said that Reagan and Mrs Thatcher, in relation to arms control negotiations and SDI, ‘see matters in very much the same light’, and warned the Soviet Union that ‘Wedge-driving is just not on.’ It had Mrs Thatcher saying, ‘I told the President of my firm conviction that the SDI programme which at present is solely a research programme should go ahead.’ Then it stated the four points of agreement. The first was that the US and the West aimed for balance, not superiority. The second said that ‘SDI-related testing and deployment would, in view of treaty obligations, have to be a matter for negotiation.’ Point 3 stated that ‘The overall aim should be to maintain, not undercut, deterrence.’ The fo
urth point said that the aim of resumed US–Soviet arms control negotiations would be ‘to achieve security with reduced levels of offensive systems on both sides’.108 Points 1, 3 and 4 essentially reflected American points with which the British agreed. Point 2, however, represented a British push which the Americans had been resisting. At no stage in the discussions had the Americans conceded that SDI was bound by treaty obligations. Point 2 was an important reassurance for Mrs Thatcher and for allies more generally.
Powell passed Mrs Thatcher the draft before the party had gone in to lunch. ‘She read it and said, “That’s fine.” She handed it to the President who appeared to read it and nodded. He then handed it to George Shultz. This was the first time they had seen it.’109 McFarlane and other US officials now looked at the draft, and quickly came back with minimal changes. They removed Powell’s description of SDI as ‘solely’ a research programme. For Point 2, they took ‘testing’ out, leaving only ‘deployment’ as ‘a matter for negotiation’.
The Four Points were a triumph for Mrs Thatcher. She had something clear to say at the press conference which would quell reports of differences between herself and Reagan. Much more important, she had an all-purpose form of words. As Powell put it, ‘The Camp David points became the Bible. They were the basic text, the constitution. It did produce a position which could command broad support in the alliance as well, at a time when a lot of Europeans were throwing their hands in the air (in Britain too) and saying [SDI] would mean an end to arms control.’110
Nothing in the Four Points required Reagan to back away from SDI. But ‘the Treaty of Camp David’, as it was sometimes referred to in Washington, did alter the balance of forces within the administration. It upset the Pentagon and pleased the State Department as it geared up for negotiation. As Shultz put it in his memoirs: ‘It was an excellent statement: it differentiated between research and deployment of space-based defense and gave me some running room in Geneva. Since the president had signed on, my instructions would reflect what had been agreed upon. The argument coming from Cap [Weinberger] and others at the Defense Department that we should not be willing to discuss SDI in any way was bypassed.’111 Richard Burt, one of the State Department officials present at the meeting, explained the effect of the treaty: ‘Nobody could come back and say “How could you have done this?” You’d just say, “The President and Mrs Thatcher did it.” ’112
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