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By Root 2815 0

to put out briefing against me and my policies — particularly on Europe — until the onset of the Gulf crisis made them hastily change their stance. To some extent the relative tilt of American foreign policy against Britain in this period may have been the result of the influence of Secretary of State James Baker. Although he was always very courteous to me, we were not close as the admirable George Shultz and I had been. Yet that was not crucial. Rather, it was the fact that Jim Baker’s many abilities lay in the area of ‘fixing’. He had had a mixed record of this, having as US Treasury Secretary been responsible for the ill-judged Plaza and Louvre Accords which brought ‘exchange rate stability’ back to the centre of the West’s economic policies with highly deleterious effects. Now at the State Department Jim Baker and his team brought a similar, allegedly ‘pragmatic’ problem-solving approach to bear on US foreign policy.

The main results of this approach as far as I was concerned were to put the relationship with Germany — rather than the ‘special relationship’ with Britain — at the centre. I would be the first to argue that if one chose to ignore history and the loyalties it engenders such an approach might appear quite rational. After all, there was some danger that Germany — first under the spell of Mr Gorbachev and later with the lure of reunification — might have moved away from the western alliance towards neutralism. Once Germany was reunified there was another argument — propagated by the French, but swallowed by the US State Department too — that only a ‘united Europe’ could keep German power responsibly in check and, more positively, that a German-led ‘united Europe’ would allow the Americans to cut back on the amount they spent on Europe’s defence.

Each of these arguments — the sort I could imagine being generated by our own British foreign policy establishment — was false. The risk of Germany loosening its attachment to the West was greatly exaggerated. A ‘united Europe’ would augment, not check, the power of a united Germany. Germany would pursue its interests inside or outside such a Europe — while a Europe built on the corporatist and protectionist lines implicit in the Franco-German alliance would certainly be more antipathetic to the Americans than the looser Europe I preferred. Finally, the idea that the Europeans — with the exception of the British and possibly the French — could be relied on to defend themselves or anyone else for that matter was frankly laughable. In fact, the ties of blood, language, culture and values which bound Britain and America were the only firm basis for US policy in the West; only a very clever person could fail to appreciate something so obvious. But this was the range of personal and political considerations which affected US policy towards Britain as I tried to pursue my threefold objectives of keeping NATO’s defences strong, of ensuring that the Soviet Union did not feel so threatened as to march into eastern Europe and of managing the effects of German reunification.

NATO SPLIT ON SHORT-RANGE NUCLEAR FORCES (SNF)

At the end of 1988 I could foresee neither the way in which Anglo-American relations would develop nor the scale of the difficulties with the Germans over SNF. My basic position on Short-Range Nuclear Weapons was that they were essential to NATO’s strategy of flexible response. Any potential aggressor must know that if he were to cross the NATO line he might be met with a nuclear response. If that fear was removed he might calculate that he could mount a conventional attack that would reach the Atlantic seaboard within a few days. And this, of course, was the existing position. But once land-based intermediate-range nuclear weapons were removed, as the INF Treaty signed in Washington in December 1987 took effect, the land-based short-range missiles became all the more vital. So, of course, did the sea-based intermediate missiles.

At the Rhodes European Council in early December 1988 I discussed arms control with Chancellor Kohl. I found him quite robust.