The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, From Grocer's Daughter to Prime Minister by John Campbell & David Freeman

Author:John Campbell & David Freeman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780143120872
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2011-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

(2) SDI-related deployment would, in view of treaty obligations, have to be a matter for negotiations;

(3) The overall aim is to enhance, not undercut deterrence;

(4) East – West negotiations should aim to achieve security with reduced levels of offensive systems on both sides.90,91

This was a brilliant diplomatic coup. Reagan’s staff were not pleased at being bounced in this way; but the President happily accepted her four points, saying ‘he hoped they would quell reports of disagreement between us’.92 Thus, in exchange for publicly expressing her strong support for the research, she secured – and promptly went out and publicised – assurances that the Americans would not deploy SDI unilaterally and would not abandon deterrence. Of course she knew that Shultz and others in the American administration shared her doubts and welcomed her support: she could not have done it alone. But she knew exactly what she wanted and played her hand skilfully to obtain it. When Reagan sent a long cable to allied leaders setting out the American negotiating position for the resumed arms-control talks in Geneva a few weeks later it specifically included Mrs Thatcher’s four points – though he also reiterated his personal dream of eventually eliminating nuclear weapons entirely.93

She got her ‘comprehensive briefing’ in London two weeks later from the director of SDI.94 But she was not yet ready to relax. ‘Margaret Thatcher . . . was on the rampage for a year or more about SDI’, Macfarlane recalled. ‘She wouldn’t let us hear the end of it.’ She flew over to Washington again in February, looking for another ‘concentrated discussion of the substantive problems’.95 Accorded the rare honour of addressing both Houses of Congress, she contrived a neat quotation from Churchill speaking to the same audience in 1952, in the very early days of nuclear weapons. ‘Be careful above all things,’ the old warrior had warned, ‘not to let go of the atomic weapon until you are sure and more than sure that other means of preserving peace are in your hands.’ Implicitly repudiating Reagan’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons, she emphasised that the objective was ‘not merely to prevent nuclear war, but to prevent conventional war as well’ – and nuclear weapons were still the surest way of doing that.96

At her meeting with Reagan she raised a new worry, as she reminded him when she got home:

As regards the Strategic Defense Initiative, I hope that I was able to explain to you my preoccupation with the need not to weaken our efforts to consolidate support in Britain for the deployment of cruise and for the modernisation of Trident by giving the impression that a future without nuclear weapons is near at hand. We must continue to make the case for deterrence based on nuclear weapons for several years to come.97

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