Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (117 page)

Throughout my last year in office doubts were increasingly raised about the wisdom of supporting Mr Gorbachev in his reforms. But I continued to do so and have no regrets. First, I am not someone who throws over those I like and have shown themselves my friends simply because their fortunes change. And though this may have immediate disadvantages, in my experience it increases the respect in which one is held: respect is a powerful asset, as those in politics who fail to inspire it might secretly agree. But second, and more important, it did not seem to me that at the time anyone was better able than Mr Gorbachev to push ahead with reform. I wanted to see the fall of communism, but I wanted to see this achieved peacefully. The two obvious threats to peace were a takeover – covert or overt – by hardliners in the Soviet military or the violent breakup of the Soviet Union. Throughout the summer of 1990 there were disturbing reports of possible rebellious activities within the Soviet military. But it was the nationalities question – that is, the future of the Soviet Union itself – which was most difficult for outsiders to assess.

I now believe that all of us in the West overestimated the degree to which a Soviet Empire whose core was provided by Marxist ideology and a communist
nomenklatura –
an empire constructed and bound together by force – could survive the onset of political liberty. Perhaps we listened too much to the diplomats and western experts and too little to the émigrés. That said, I did not go along with much of the thinking which characterized the British Foreign Office and US State Department on the issue of nationalities or nationhood.

We were all quite clear, as it happens, about the special legal status of the Baltic States: it was not a question of whether but of when they must be allowed to go free. I warned the Soviets about the severe consequences of the use of force against the Baltic States when I saw Mr Gorbachev in June. But I urged the greatest caution on President Landsbergis (of Lithuania) when I saw him in November. And I pressed both sides to negotiate throughout – though only on the clear understanding that the final destination of the Baltic States was freedom.

The emergence of Boris Yeltsin as a radical proponent of reform – both political and economic – ought perhaps to have strengthened Mr Gorbachev’s position. If the two of them had been able to sink their differences and if Mr Gorbachev had been prepared to cut his links with the Communist Party perhaps the impetus of reform might have been renewed. But these were two ‘ifs’ too many. Their relations remained bad and Mr Gorbachev remained a communist to the end.

There was a strong tendency in western circles to write off Mr Yeltsin as nothing more than a buffoon. I could not believe that this judgement was correct. But I wanted to see for myself. Consequently, although I was careful to notify Mr Gorbachev in advance and to make it clear that I was receiving Mr Yeltsin in the way that I would a Leader of the Opposition, I enthusiastically agreed to meet him when he came to London on the morning of Friday 27 April 1990.

I only spoke with Mr Yeltsin for three-quarters of an hour. At first I was not quite sure what to make of him. He was far more my idea of the typical Russian than was Mr Gorbachev – tall, burly, square Slavic face and shock of white hair. He was self-confident without being self-assertive, courteous, with a smile full of good humour and a touch of self-mockery. But what impressed me most was that he had obviously thought through some of the fundamental problems much more clearly than had Mr Gorbachev. I began by saying that I supported Mr Gorbachev and wanted that to be clear from the outset. Mr Yeltsin replied that he knew I supported the Soviet leader and
perestroika
and on some of these matters our opinions differed, but basically he too supported Mr Gorbachev and the cause of reform. Mr Gorbachev should, though, have paid more attention to some of the things being said by the supporters of reform three or four years earlier.
Perestroika
had originally been intended to make communism more efficient. But that was impossible. The only serious option was for far-reaching political and economic reform, including the introduction of a market economy. But it was all getting very late.

I totally agreed with this. What struck me was that Mr Yeltsin, unlike President Gorbachev, had escaped from the communist mindset and language. He it was who also first alerted me to the relationship between economic reform and the question of what powers should be devolved to the individual republics. He explained just how little autonomy the governments of the republics really had. As a result of this discussion I looked not just at Boris Yeltsin but at the fundamental problems of the Soviet Union in a new light. When I reported later in Bermuda to President Bush on my favourable impressions of Mr Yeltsin he made it clear that the Americans did not share them. This was a serious mistake.

I shall always be glad that I was able to visit two former communist countries while I was still Prime Minister. In Czechoslovakia and Hungary in September 1990 I found myself speaking with people who not long before
had been totally excluded from power by the communists and who were coming to grips with the communist legacy of economic failure, pollution and despondency.

I had been greatly impressed by the inaugural speech of President Havel of Czechoslovakia. He had spoken of ‘living in a decayed moral environment … [in which] notions such as love, friendship, compassion, humility and forgiveness have lost their depth and dimension’. He had described the demoralization which communism brought about, how ‘the previous regime, armed with its arrogant and intolerant ideology, demeaned man into a production force and nature into a production tool. In this way they attacked their very essence and the mutual relationship between them.’

Czechoslovakia was lucky to have President Havel as an inspiration, but no less lucky to have Václav Klaus as a dynamic, convinced free enterprise economist for its Finance minister. Together they were rebuilding the social and economic foundations of the country. Apart from the obvious problems which confronted them, there was also the tension between the Czech and Slovak elements of the Federal Republic.

Then I went on to Hungary. Among the eastern European countries Hungary had three important advantages. First, substantial economic and a large amount of political reform had occurred under the previous communist regime. So the transition was less difficult and painful. Second, in Jozsef Antall, the Hungarian Prime Minister, the country was in the safe hands of a genuine Conservative. He and I shared very much the same political approach. Third, the Hungarians had held together their governing coalition rather than splitting up in divisions on minor points. Mr Antall had the skills – and was quickly developing the authority – to give Hungary the leadership and continuity it needed.

Yet the task of economic reform was still daunting. The Hungarians were tackling the key questions relating to property – both the ownership of land, which exiles and their families wanted back, and the privatization of industry. There was also a wider strategic issue. Even more than Czechoslovakia and Poland, the Hungarians were keen to break free from Soviet influence. Mr Antall had announced that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact and wanted closer relations with NATO or at least the Western European Union (WEU). Poland and Czechoslovakia were toying with the same idea. He assured me that the Warsaw Pact was indeed on its last legs. When it finally expired I favoured a special associate membership of NATO being offered to the eastern Europeans.

However fascinated I was by events in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, I could not forget that the strength and security of the West ultimately depended upon the Anglo-American relationship. For reasons I have explained that relationship had become somewhat strained. I regarded it, therefore, as essential that the talks I was due to have with President Bush in Bermuda in April 1990 should be a success. This would be as much a matter of tone as substance. Generally speaking, I now waited for the President to set out his views before explaining mine. In Bermuda we deliberately sought to create the kind of relaxed atmosphere which I now knew he preferred. It was almost a ‘family’ affair and concluded with the President and Denis playing eighteen holes of golf in the pouring rain – a very British occasion.

It was the future of NATO and decisions about the defence of Europe which were in the forefront of my and the President’s minds. I sought to leave him in no doubt about my strong commitment to NATO. The President was keen to have an early NATO summit. So, it seemed, was the NATO Secretary-General, Dr Woerner. I would have preferred one in the autumn in order to allow for more preparation. But it was clear that the President wanted a June summit and would like Britain to host it. (In fact it took place in early July.) He had also concluded that Congress was going to withhold funds for the development of a Follow-On to LANCE. He therefore wanted to announce its cancellation. I accepted that there was very little which could be done about this, but I thought it crucial to secure firm assurances about the future stationing of nuclear weapons in Germany, in particular TASM. The real question was how we were most likely to achieve this. In fact, this approach turned out to be a key to the Americans’ thinking in the run-up to the NATO summit. Their aim was to make it a public relations success, so that we could win German support for SNF and Soviet acceptance that Germany should remain in NATO. When I got back to London I set in hand the arrangements for us to host a NATO summit. There was only one complication, which was that a meeting of the North Atlantic Council – that is, NATO Foreign ministers – was scheduled for June at Turnberry, a few miles south of Ayr on the west coast of Scotland. I wanted this to go ahead because it was where the more significant decisions were likely to be made about how NATO’s forces might be reshaped.

Not for the first time, I found myself at odds with the Americans and indeed with the NATO Secretary-General about how we should approach the NATO summit. The Americans were keen to announce a range of
initiatives, proposing deep cuts in conventional forces and still deeper cuts in the nuclear stockpile. Messages flew back and forth between me and President Bush and some of the more eye-catching and less considered proposals were dropped. Not that I disagreed with everything the Americans wanted from the summit. In particular, I was strongly in favour of Jim Baker’s ideas about strengthening political consultation as one of the functions of NATO. I believed – as did the Americans – that the importance of NATO as a means of avoiding friction between America and Europe was greater than ever.

What I was unhappy about was the American proposal formally to change in the communiqué the traditional NATO strategy of flexible response. They were insistent on the insertion of the phrase that nuclear weapons were ‘weapons of last resort’. This, I felt, would undermine the credibility of NATO’s SNF. We should continue to resist any qualification of the role of nuclear weapons in NATO, just as we had always done. We were slipping towards – though we had not reached – that fatal position of undertaking that there would be ‘no first use of nuclear weapons’, on which Soviet propaganda had always insisted. Such an undertaking would leave our conventional forces vulnerable to attack by their superior numbers. In the end the first phrase did appear hedged around in the following form:

I cannot say that I was satisfied with this unwieldy compromise. But in the end military strategy is not dependent upon pieces of paper but on the commitment of resources to practical military objectives. The review which was begun at Turnberry and which in Britain’s case would be put into effect through the ‘Options for Change’ exercise that Tom King conducted as Defence Secretary had to concentrate on where the priorities for inevitably decreased expenditure would now be.