Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [505]
A month before the NATO summit I set out in my speech to the North Atlantic Council my own views on the matter. The stress I placed on preservation of the United States’ military presence in Europe and the continuing role of updated nuclear weapons would not have surprised my audience. But I also emphasized that NATO must consider an ‘out of area’ role. I asked the question:
Ought NATO to give more thought to possible threats to our security from other directions? There is no guarantee that threats to our security will stop at some imaginary line across the mid-Atlantic. It is not long since some of us had to go to the Arabian Gulf to keep oil supplies flowing. We shall become very heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil once again in the next century. With the spread of sophisticated weapons and military technology to areas like the Middle East, potential threats to NATO territory may originate more from outside Europe. Against that background, it would be only prudent for NATO countries to retain a capacity to carry out multiple roles, with more flexible and versatile forces.
This passage reflected my thinking over a number of years. I had seen for myself how important a western presence could be in securing western interests in far-flung areas of the world, not least the Middle East. I did not believe that even if the military threat from the Soviets had diminished, that from other dictators would not arise. But of course I could not know that within two months we would be confronted by an explosive crisis in the Gulf.
REFLECTIONS
As I look back on the international developments of the late 1980s, they seem to be overwhelmingly positive. Communism was defeated, freedom restored to the former satellites, the cruel division of Europe ended, the Soviet Union launched onto the path of reform, democracy and national rights and the West, in particular the United States, left in possession of the field as its political values and economic system were embraced both by its former adversaries and, increasingly, by the countries of the Third World.
The credit for these historic achievements must go principally to the United States and in particular to President Reagan, whose policies of military and economic competition with the Soviet Union forced the Soviet leaders, in particular Mr Gorbachev, to abandon their ambitions of hegemony and to embark on the process of reform which in the end brought the entire communist system crashing down. But this would never have been accomplished without the long and courageous resistance of the peoples of the Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe. We will never know the names of all who suffered and perished in that struggle but we can celebrate their leaders from Vladimir Bukovsky to Václav Havel, from Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Cardinal Mindszenty, and the four young heroes who gave their lives defending the Russian White House in the last dying days of the old regime.
As that old order crumbled and its people emerged blinking into the light, President Bush managed the dangerous and volatile transformation with great diplomatic skill. Nor should credit be withheld from the steadfast European allies of America who resisted both Soviet pressure and Soviet blandishments to maintain a strong western defence: in particular, Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand and … but modesty forbids.
The world is a better place. But in some ways it is an old-fashioned place. The Europe that has emerged from behind the Iron Curtain has many of the features of the Europes of 1914 and 1939: ethnic strife, contested borders, political extremism, nationalist passions and economic backwardness. And there is another familiar bogey from the past — the German Question.
If there is one instance in which