Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [156]
While pressing the Americans on this particular point, I ensured that we gave them the strongest possible backing both in NATO and the European Community for the general line they wanted to take. This was by no means easy. Initially, the Germans were reluctant to take any measures against the Polish Government, let alone against the Soviet Union. The French were pressing hard for continuing the sale of food at special subsidized prices by the European Community to the Soviet Union. But I still felt that if we could persuade the Americans to take a more reasonable line over the pipeline project we would be able to demonstrate a fairly impressive western unity. The trouble was that there were those in the American Administration whose opposition to the pipeline project had nothing much to do with events in Poland. These people believed that if it went ahead the Germans and the French would be dangerously dependent on Soviet energy supplies, which would have damaging strategic implications. There was some force in this argument; but it was exaggerated. Although Russia would be providing just over a quarter of Germany’s and just under a third of France’s gas, this would be no more than 5 per cent of either country’s total energy consumption. But in any case neither the Germans nor the French were going to accede to American pressure. Such pressure would therefore be counter-productive as well as irrelevant to the specific problem we faced in Poland. There was also American talk, which seriously worried the Bank of England, of forcing Poland to default on her international debts, which would have had severe effects on European banks.
At OD towards the end of January 1982 we discussed these possibilities. I said that there was a clear danger of the American Government’s present policy damaging western interests more than those of the East and provoking a major transatlantic quarrel of precisely the sort that it had long been the main objective of Soviet policy to bring about. Britain had already offered to do more to meet American wishes than our European partners were likely to accept. This was no longer a time for concessions but for some straight talking to our American friends. I decided to approach President Reagan. I also asked other ministers to try to influence their American counterparts. An urgent invitation would be extended to Al Haig to visit London on the way back from his current visit to the Middle East.
In fact, Al Haig joined me for a late lunch at Downing Street on Friday 29 January. I told him that the single most important aim must be to keep the western alliance together. The most recent meeting of the NATO Council had gone well. But the measures now being proposed by the United States were causing concern. Anything that the West did must be designed to harm the Soviet Union more than ourselves. The reports of possible steps by the US to bring about a default on Polish debts and indeed the debts of other East European countries were worrying: although this would doubtless bring about difficulties for the countries concerned it would also create incalculable problems for the western banking system, which was so important to the reputation of the western world as a whole. I also said that whatever the Americans felt about the matter we had to face the fact that the French and the Germans were never going to abandon their contracts for the Siberian Gas Pipeline. Nearer the bone, I noted that the Americans had not included a grain embargo in their first round of measures because this would clearly hurt their own people. Indeed, few of the measures adopted by the United States would have any serious effect at home — but they would hurt Europe. To say the least there was a certain lack of symmetry.
I gained the strong impression that Mr Haig basically agreed with my analysis. I also had the sense that he was feeling increasingly isolated and powerless in the American Administration, which indeed he