Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [148]
By contrast, I felt reassured — and said so — by the resolute attitude of the Italian Prime Minister, Sig. Cossiga, when I talked with him in Rome on Friday 5 October. He told me that Italy would make a positive decision on deployment. He intended to exert maximum pressure at his forthcoming meeting with the Dutch Prime Minister, Mr Van Agt, and hoped that I would do the same.
However, during this time the Soviets were at work trying to undermine NATO’s unity. As I frequently pointed out in my discussions, they had been brilliantly successful in rousing popular feeling against the neutron bomb which President Carter had been considering deploying. In the months and years to come it would be clear that they had by no means lost their touch.
On Saturday 6 October, President Brezhnev made a speech in East Berlin containing a number of proposals. He announced the withdrawal of 20,000 Soviet troops and 1,000 tanks from East Germany in the next 12 months. He also offered to reduce Soviet intermediate-range nuclear systems if no ‘additional’ medium-range nuclear weapons were deployed in western Europe. Judged against the huge Soviet superiority in conventional forces the reductions, though of course welcome, were more cosmetic than of substance. But the proposals on theatre nuclear weapons were a good deal worse. We knew that the accuracy, ability to penetrate, mobility and the range of targets covered by these Soviet missiles and aircraft had increased enormously. Moreover, such missiles were targeted on western Europe from points beyond the Urals. Mr Brezhnev’s proposals — like those which followed them — would have left the Soviets in possession of a weapon which could strike at Europe and to which we had no equivalent effective response. However, such proposals inevitably increased the temptation, in the Netherlands for example, to put all the emphasis on arms control and delay the decision on modernization and deployment.
I discussed the situation with Chancellor Schmidt again — in Bonn this time — on Wednesday 31 October. How were we to help the Dutch take the right decision at the forthcoming NATO meeting? I suggested that the whole of the Dutch Cabinet, which appeared to be split, should see the impressive NATO presentation on the military balance in Europe. Helmut Schmidt was pressing for the United States to offer to withdraw unilaterally 1,000 obsolete nuclear warheads from the Federal Republic. The Americans agreed with this and President Carter wrote to me about it. All my instincts were against unilateral gestures of this sort. But I could see the practical arguments for it and with some reluctance supported the offer — not that it had much noticeable effect on Dutch opinion or the Dutch Government. In fact, the Germans at about this time seemed to become reconciled to the prospect of the Dutch failing to agree to deployment, though it was clear that they themselves would remain firm as long as the Italians and Belgians did so. On Friday 23 November Mr Gromyko visited Bonn and gave a press conference which was evidently intended to shake European and particularly German opinion, warning that arms control negotiations could not take place if the West pursued what he described as a ‘new arms race’.
On the evening of Thursday 6 December I met the Dutch Prime Minister for talks and dinner in Downing Street. I always got on well with him, but I did not envy his position. The notorious instability of coalition governments of the sort he led makes it immensely difficult to get clear decisions and stick to them. On this occasion, Mr Van Agt explained to me in some detail the difficulties he was facing. Apparently, half the sermons in Dutch churches were now dealing with nuclear disarmament and the issue of deployment was endangering his Government’s survival. I agreed with him that the fall of a NATO member government on a NATO issue would be a very serious development. But I added that