Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [147]
On the morning of Friday 11 May 1979 I discussed the issue with Helmut Schmidt in London. He was very concerned at the effect on German public opinion of stationing more nuclear missiles on German soil, although of course he had been one of the principal authors of the strategy. The Americans had developed a longer range equivalent of the Pershing missiles already stationed in West Germany and Cruise missiles, which could be launched from the air, sea or land. At this stage Helmut Schmidt still hankered after a sea-based system, though he later reluctantly accepted the advantages of the ground-launched Cruise missile (GLCM). He was under strong pressure from within his own party and placed equal emphasis on the second aspect of the ‘dual track’ approach — that is for the US to negotiate for the removal of the Soviet threat at the same time as we were preparing to deploy our own weapons. He also insisted that West Germany should not be the only recipient of these missiles which was a non-nuclear state.* In sharp contrast to future debate in Britain, the Germans were adamant that the nuclear weapons should have no ‘dual key’: they must be able to say to the rest of the world that they did not own or control nuclear weapons.
On the morning of Wednesday 13 June I saw Al Haig, who was at that time the outgoing Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. We discussed not only questions of nuclear policy but also what we knew of the threat posed by Soviet preparations for offensive chemical warfare, which I found deeply disquieting. I said that although my initial reaction to my first briefings on the East/West military balance had been one of concern, my considered conclusion was that the West’s superiority in human and material resources would enable us to respond to any challenge. But that did not diminish my worry about our immediate problems. On the evening of Tuesday 24 July I saw General Haig’s successor, General Bernard Rogers, and expressed my anxiety about the lead enjoyed by the Warsaw Pact forces in the matter of standardization of weapons and equipment and about the vulnerability of NATO’s own organization to Soviet penetration.
The deadline which NATO had set itself for achieving a firm decision on the new intermediate-range missiles was the end of that year, 1979. The longer we waited, the greater the opportunities for Soviet campaigns of propaganda and disinformation to do their work. On Wednesday 19 September the small group of ministers which I chaired to consider nuclear policy decided that the UK would accept the basing of our allotted 144 American owned GLCMs. I had received a telephone call from Helmut Schmidt asking if we could accept a further flight of 16 Cruise missiles. The Germans wished to reduce their own number and in order to prevent any further time being lost in argument I immediately agreed to the request. With Britain and West Germany remaining solid the West’s strategy could be accounted a success. But would others follow our lead?
A week earlier I had already seen Prime Minister Martens of Belgium for talks in Downing Street. The Belgians were looking over their shoulder at the Dutch, whose Government’s future was endangered by rifts and popular agitation against deployment of nuclear weapons. The Belgians were particularly important because if the Dutch, and possibly also the Italians, failed to go along with the decision which would soon be required, Chancellor Schmidt’s own position would become perilous and it was of crucial importance to the alliance to shore up West German commitment. I told M. Martens that I wondered whether western European leaders were giving a sufficiently effective lead to public opinion. My own experience was that audiences were always quick to respond when addressed