Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [52]
Perhaps I was less shocked than some by the invasion of Afghanistan. I had long understood that détente had been ruthlessly used by the Soviets to exploit western weakness and disarray. I knew the beast.
What had happened in Afghanistan was only part of a wider pattern. The Soviets had instigated Cubans and East Germans to advance their aims and ambitions in Africa. They had been working to further communist subversion throughout the Third World, and for all the talk of international peace and friendship, they had built up armed forces far beyond their defensive needs. Whatever their precise motives now in Afghanistan, they must have known that they had threatened the stability of Pakistan and Iran — the latter unstable enough already under the Ayatollah — and were within 300 miles of the Straits of Hormuz. Moreover, bad as the situation was in itself, it could be worse as a precedent. There were other areas of the world in which the Soviets might prefer aggression to diplomacy, if they now prevailed: for example, Marshal Tito was evidently approaching the end of his life in Yugoslavia and there could be opportunities for Soviet intervention there. They clearly had to be punished for their aggression and taught, albeit belatedly, that the West would not only talk about freedom but was prepared to make sacrifices to defend it.
On Friday 28 December President Carter rang me at Chequers and we discussed at length what the Soviets were doing in Afghanistan and what our reaction should be. What had happened was a bitter blow to him. Britain had not felt able to comply with all that the Americans had wanted of us in response to the hostage crisis: in particular, we were not willing (or indeed legally able) to freeze Iranian financial assets, which would have had a devastating effect on international confidence in the City of London as a world financial centre. However, I was determined that we should follow America’s lead now in taking action against the USSR and its puppet regime in Kabul. We therefore decided on a range of measures, including the curtailment of visits and contacts, non-renewal of the Anglo-Soviet credit agreement and a tightening of the rules on technology transfer. I also sought to mobilize the governments of the European Community to support the Americans. But, like President Carter, I was sure that the most effective thing we could do would be to prevent their using the forthcoming Moscow Olympics for propaganda purposes. Unfortunately, most of the British Olympic team decided to attend the Games, though we tried to persuade them otherwise: of course, unlike their equivalents in the Soviet Union, our athletes were left free to make up their own minds. At the UN our ambassador, Tony Parsons, helped to rally the ‘non-aligned’ countries to condemn the Soviet Union’s aggression. In London, on 3 January, I saw the Soviet Ambassador to enlarge in vigorous terms on the contents of my exchanges by telegram with President Brezhnev.
From now on, the whole tone of international affairs began to change, and for the better. Hard-headed realism and strong defence became the order of the day. The Soviets had made a fatal miscalculation: they had prepared the way for the renaissance of America under Ronald Reagan.
But this was the future. America had still to go through the humiliating agony of the failed attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages. As I watched President Carter’s television broadcast explaining what had happened, I felt America’s wound as if it were Britain’s own; and in a sense it was, for anyone who exposed American