The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

OVERVIEW

The international scene in 1987 and 1988 was not so very different to that before the general election. President Reagan was in the White House, continuing the defence policies which time and again had forced the Soviets to the negotiating table. Mr Gorbachev was proceeding with increasingly far-reaching reforms in the Soviet Union which, whether he liked it or not, would eventually open the floodgates of democracy, if not prosperity. The West’s strategy of defeating communism while ensuring our peace and security — a strategy in which I believed with a passionate intensity and that I sought to communicate when I went to eastern Europe — was working. Its very success would mean that new questions about Britain’s foreign relations and NATO’s defences would arise.

Yet even before this happened the familiar landscape changed in another way I did not foresee. I had breathed a sigh of relief when George Bush defeated his Democrat opponent in the US presidential election, for I felt that it ensured continuity. But with the new team’s arrival in the White House I found myself dealing with an Administration which saw Germany as its main European partner in leadership, which encouraged the integration of Europe without seeming to understand fully what it meant and which sometimes seemed to underestimate the need for a strong nuclear defence. I felt I could not always rely as before on American co-operation. This was of great importance at such a time. For by now — 1989 — the cracks in the eastern European communist system were widening into crevices and soon, wing by wing, the whole edifice fell away.

This welcome revolution of freedom which swept eastern Europe raised great strategic issues, above all in the West’s relations with the Soviet Union. (Indeed, what now was ‘the West’?) But I also saw at once that it had profound implications for the balance of power in Europe, where a reunified Germany would be dominant. There was a new and different kind of ‘German Question’ which had to be addressed openly and formally: I did so.

History teaches that dangers are never greater than when empires break up and so I favoured caution in our defence and security policy. Decisions about our security must, I argued, be made only after careful reflection and analysis of the nature and direction of future threats. Above all, they must be determined not by the desire to make a political impression by arms control ‘initiatives’ but by the need credibly to deter aggression.

For thinking and speaking like this I was mocked as the last Cold Warrior — and an unreconstructed Germano-phobe to boot. In fact, they said, I was a tiresome woman who might once have served a purpose but who just could not or would not move with the times. I could live with this caricature; there had been worse; but I also had no doubt that I was right, that the unexpected did happen and that sooner or later events would prove it. And, without claiming any foresight about the precise timing of the fall of communism, I did find my basic approach vindicated as 1990 wore on. This occurred in several ways.

First, Anglo-American relations suddenly lost their chill; indeed by the end they had hardly been warmer. The protectionism of that ‘integrated’ Europe, dominated by Germany, which the Americans had cheerfully accepted, even encouraged, suddenly started to arouse American fears and threaten to cost American jobs. But this change of heart was confirmed by the aggression of Saddam Hussein against Kuwait which shattered any illusion that tyranny had been everywhere defeated. The UN might pass its resolutions; but there would soon be a full-scale war to fight. Suddenly a Britain with armed forces which had the skills, and a government which had the resolve, to fight alongside America, seemed to be the real European ‘partner in leadership’.

Then again the full significance of the changes in eastern Europe began to be better understood. Having democratic states with market economies, which were just as ‘European’ as those of the existing Community, lining up as potential EC members made my vision of a looser, more open Community seem timely rather than backward. It also became clear that the courageous reforming leaders in eastern Europe looked to Britain — and to me because of my anti-socialist credentials — as a friend who genuinely wanted to help them, rather than exclude them from markets (like the French) or seek economic domination (like the Germans). These eastern European states were — and are — Britain’s natural allies.

Further east in the USSR more disturbing developments made for a reassessment of earlier euphoric judgements about the prospects for the peaceful, orderly entrenchment of democracy and free enterprise. In the Soviet Union I had won the respect both of the embattled Mr Gorbachev and of his anti-communist opponents. I never underestimated the fragility of the movement for reform; that was why I spoke up for it — and for Mr Gorbachev — so forcefully in the West. Events now increasingly suggested that a far-reaching political crisis in the USSR might soon be reached. The implications of this for control over nuclear weapons and indeed the whole arsenal which the Soviet military machine had accumulated could not be ignored even by the most enthusiastic western disarmers. In short, the world of the ‘new world order’ was turning out to be a dangerous and uncertain place in which the conservative virtues of hardened Cold Warriors were again in demand. And so it was that in those last months and weeks of my premiership, while domestic political pressures mounted, I found myself once more at the centre of great international events with renewed ability to influence them in Britain’s interests and in accord with my beliefs.

VISIT TO WASHINGTON IN JULY 1987

On Thursday 16 July 1987 I flew into Washington to see President Reagan. Our political fortunes at this time could not have been more different. I had just won an election with a decisive majority, enhancing my authority in international affairs. By contrast my old friend and his Administration were reeling under the continuing ‘Irangate’ revelations. I found the President hurt and bemused by what was happening. Nancy was spending her time listening to the cruel and contemptuous remarks pouring out from the liberal media commentators and telling him what was being said, which made him still more depressed. Nothing wounds a man of integrity more than to find his basic honesty questioned. It made me very angry. I was determined to do what I could to help President Reagan ride out the storm. It was not just a matter of personal loyalty — though it was that too, of course: he also had eighteen months to serve as leader of the most powerful country in the world and it was in all our interests that his authority be undiminished. So I set about using my interviews and public statements in Washington to get across this message. For example, I told the interviewer on CBS’s Face the Nation:

Our embassy was besieged by telephone calls of congratulation. My remarks also touched another grateful audience. On Monday evening — after I arrived back in London — I received a telephone call from the President who wanted to thank me for what I had said. He was in a Cabinet meeting and at one point he put down the receiver and told me to listen. I heard loud and long applause from the Cabinet members.

My main business in Washington, though, had been to discuss the implications for our future defence of the INF treaty which would be signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev in December. I had always had mixed feelings about the INF ‘zero option’. On the one hand, it was a great success to have forced the Soviets to withdraw their SS-20 missiles by deploying our Cruise and Pershing. But, on the other, the removal of our intermediate-range land-based missiles would have two undesirable effects. First, it threatened precisely what Helmut Schmidt had wanted to avoid when he originally urged NATO to deploy them: namely the decoupling of Europe from NATO. It could then be argued, as in the 1970s, that in the last resort the United States would not use nuclear weapons to deter a conventional Warsaw Pact attack on Europe. This argument would boost the always-present tendency to German neutralism — a tendency which it had been the long-standing Soviet objective to magnify wherever possible. Second, the INF ‘zero option’ also cast doubt on — though as I always argued it did not in fact undermine — the NATO strategy of ‘flexible response’. That strategy depended on the ability of the West to escalate its response to Soviet aggression through each stage of conventional and nuclear weapons. The removal of the intermediate-range missiles might be argued to create a gap in that capability. It followed that NATO must have other nuclear weapons, stationed on German soil, which would be a credible deterrent and that those weapons be modernized and strengthened where necessary. It was this question — the avoidance of another ‘zero’ on Short-Range Nuclear Forces (SNF) — which was to divide the alliance so seriously in 1988–9.

The main points I now made to the President in Washington were the need to allocate submarine-launched Cruise missiles and additional F1-11 aircraft to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe to compensate for the withdrawal of Cruise and Pershing and the need to resist pressure from the Germans for early discussion of reductions of SNF in Europe. I also wanted to see an upgraded and longer-range Follow-On to LANCE missile (FOTL) developed by the Americans and deployed by the mid-1990s, and a Tactical Air to Surface Missile (TASM) to replace our free-fall bombs. On these matters relating to the strengthening of our SNF the President and I saw eye to eye. Where I did agree with the Germans — but found myself unable to convince the Americans — was that I would have liked to retain the old German Pershing 1A ballistic missiles for the rest of their natural life (a few years), not including them as part of the INF package. But it was the future of SNF that to my mind was the most crucial element in our nuclear deterrence; and it certainly proved the most controversial.

DISCUSSIONS WITH MR GORBACHEV IN DECEMBER 1987

Britain’s own security interests were closely bound up with US-Soviet arms negotiations. As regards SNF, these weapons were a vital protection for our troops stationed in Germany. Discussions between the two great powers about strategic nuclear weapons were also of direct interest to us insofar as they affected the position of our Trident nuclear deterrent. More generally, I never ceased to believe in the importance of nuclear weapons as a means of deterring conventional, not just nuclear, war — the one issue on which I knew I could not take the Reagan Administration’s soundness for granted.

So although I had no intention of allowing myself to become a kind of broker between the Americans and the Soviets, I was delighted when Mr Gorbachev accepted my invitation to stop over at Brize Norton on his way to the United States to sign the INF Treaty. This would give me an opportunity to gauge his thinking before his meeting with President Reagan and to tackle him on other issues, such as human rights and regional conflicts, on which I thought I could exert beneficial influence. The Americans had specifically asked me to press Mr Gorbachev on Afghanistan, where it was clear he was trying to find a way of pulling Soviet forces out of that disastrous venture.

Within the Soviet Union there were mixed signs. Mr Gorbachev had brought his ally Mr Yakovlev into the Politburo; but — in a move which was to have enormous long-term consequences — his one-time protégé, Boris Yeltsin, who had been brought in as head of the Moscow Party as an incorruptible radical reformer, had been publicly humiliated. Within the Soviet leadership, apart from Mr Gorbachev himself, it still seemed that probably only Foreign minister Shevardnadze and Mr Yakovlev were fully committed to the Gorbachev reforms.

At the start of our talks I brought out my copy of Mr Gorbachev’s book, Perestroika, which seemed to please him. It prompted a long description of the difficulties he was facing in bringing about the changes he wanted. In the language of the Soviets — faithfully reflected in the language of the western media — the opponents of perestroika were usually called ‘conservatives’. I told him how irritating I found this and said that I wanted nothing to do with Mr Gorbachev’s ‘conservatives’: they could hardly be more different from mine. Then we got down to the detailed discussions on arms control. There was not much to say now about INF and it was the projected START Agreement,[110] which would lead to cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, on which we focused. There were still large differences between the two sides as regards definition and verification. I also repeated my determination to keep nuclear weapons, which Mr Gorbachev described as my preferring to ‘sit on a powder keg rather than an easy chair’. I countered by reminding him of the large superiority which the Soviets enjoyed in conventional and chemical forces. Then I raised Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the human rights issue, suggesting that any action he took on these would be likely to assist the US Administration in overcoming opposition in the Senate to the INF Treaty. But I made no headway: he said that a solution in Afghanistan would be easier if we stopped supplying the rebels with arms and that human rights was a matter for the particular country involved. (It was this sort of attitude which had already created a very bad impression in the United States as a result of Mr Gorbachev’s remarks about human rights in an interview with NBC.) There was nothing I could do on this occasion to change his mind.

I ended our discussion by saying that I hoped that the Gorbachevs would return for a full visit next year and he said that he was keen to accept. In spite of his tetchiness over human rights, it was a vigorous, enjoyable and even rather jolly occasion. We had lunch in the officers’ mess at which we were joined by Ken Baker and Raisa Gorbachev who had been visiting a local school, meeting the children and teachers and watching a Nativity play. On one particular matter, however, the Christmas spirit did not prevail. Biding my time and waiting until the Soviet interpreter was out of earshot, I asked Mr Gorbachev, who had been reciting for me a Russian folk-song in front of the Christmas tree in the foyer, whether he would let Oleg Gordievsky’s family out of the Soviet Union to join him in Britain. He pursed his lips and said nothing: the answer was all too clear.

When I got back to London I telephoned President Reagan to let him know about our discussions. I told him what I had said on Afghanistan and arms control. I also said that though the President must be prepared to tackle Mr Gorbachev on human rights he should also be prepared for a sharp reaction. President Reagan said that he expected some tough sessions with Mr Gorbachev but that I had clearly softened him up. He also asked me if I thought that he should try to get on first name terms with the Soviet leader. I advised him to go carefully on this, because although I found Mr Gorbachev friendly and open he was also quite formal, something which the whole rigid Soviet system encouraged.

NATO SUMMIT IN BRUSSELS, MARCH 1988

In fact, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington was a success. The INF Treaty was agreed and a further summit in Moscow in the first half of 1988 was arranged in principle at which the treaty would be signed and possibly agreement reached on a START Treaty as well. In February 1988 Mr Gorbachev announced that Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in May. We were clearly moving into new territory and it seemed to me the right time to take our bearings at a NATO summit. The first NATO heads of government summit for six years — incidentally, the first attended by a French president for twenty-two years — was scheduled for March in Brussels.

It was clear from the start that the West Germans were likely to be the main source of difficulty. Mr Gorbachev had launched a very successful propaganda drive to win over German opinion to a denuclearized Germany. Within the Federal German Government, I knew that Chancellor Kohl was still fundamentally sound on the need to avoid a ‘third zero’ and denuclearization. Herr Genscher, the Federal Foreign minister, by contrast, was not. Chancellor Kohl insisted on NATO adherence to what was called its ‘comprehensive concept’ — that is, regarding the different elements of defence strategy, of which SNF was one, as a whole. Within this ‘comprehensive concept’ he was prepared to support measures agreed, after proper study by the alliance as necessary, to maintain flexible response; but he had said publicly in Washington that there was no present need to make a decision on SNF modernization. It was possible for the Americans and us to take account of German sensitivities in the NATO communiqué while still maintaining the right stance both on the military doctrine and modernization of nuclear weapons. Consequently, I was not at all displeased by the wording which resulted. The heads of government agreed on: ‘a strategy of deterrence based on an appropriate mix of adequate and effective nuclear and conventional forces which will continue to be kept up to date where necessary’. That was enough.

After the Brussels summit officially broke up I met President Reagan to discuss the outcome. I told him that I thought the summit had been a great success because Britain and the United States had stood together. This demonstration of NATO’s unity would be helpful to him when he went to Moscow to meet Mr Gorbachev in May. I regretted that it had not proved possible to get the Germans to accept explicitly that negotiations to reduce shorter-range nuclear weapons in Europe should only take place after parity on conventional weapons and a ban on chemical weapons had been achieved. But I said that it was quite clear to me that these were in fact the only circumstances in which NATO should negotiate on short-range systems. President Reagan said that he entirely agreed and that NATO could not go any further down this road until these conditions had been met. We were equally in accord on the approach to a START Agreement. I said that though I supported START as a goal it was more important to get the right agreement than to have it quickly. The President said that he too was being cautious in his public comments. He did not want people to say that the Moscow summit was a failure if no START Agreement could be signed. He also recognized that the START negotiations would be far more complex than those on INF, particularly as regards verification. I left Brussels reassured that the President and I were at one as we faced up to all the difficult and complicated arms control negotiations which would now ensue.

PRESIDENT REAGAN’S VISIT TO LONDON, JUNE 1988

President Reagan was as good as his word when he went to Moscow. Although the INF Treaty was signed there was tough negotiation and no compromise on START, where the Soviets wanted the United States to have Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles (SLCMs) included in the agreement. But, as with my own visit in 1987, it was the opportunity for President Reagan and the Russian people to meet one another face to face which was probably of greatest importance. He told me when he came to London on Thursday 2 June, on his way back from Moscow, how moved he had been by the huge, welcoming crowds there. The only thing which had upset him was the brutal way in which the KGB had dealt with the people who wanted to approach him. I told him that now the Russians had seen for themselves the sort of person he was it would be that much more difficult for the Soviet authorities to convince them that the United States was a dangerous enemy. He had given high prominence to human rights matters — particularly to freedom of worship — when he was in the Soviet Union and I said how right I thought he had been to do this. The President also told me about the difficult arms control talks. He said he had been determined not to give an inch on SDI and he was not going to be rushed on START. In the meantime, NATO must move ahead with modernization of its short-range nuclear forces and the West Germans must be persuaded to approach this in a positive way. He would continue to insist that a balance had to be achieved in conventional forces in Europe before there could be negotiations to remove short-range nuclear weapons.

The President spoke to a large City and diplomatic audience at Guildhall the next day. It was a vintage performance and one of some significance in the light of later events. He harked back to the speech he had made to Members of Parliament in 1982 in which he had enunciated what came to be called the ‘Reagan Doctrine’.[111] Neither he nor I knew how close we were to its triumphant vindication; but what was clear was that great advances had been made in the ‘crusade for freedom’ we had been fighting. It was now time to restate the cause, which was as much spiritual as political or economic. As the President put it:

VISIT TO POLAND, NOVEMBER 1988

Just five months later — in November 1988 — I visited Poland. If anyone had wanted a demonstration of the value of President Reagan’s vision he would have found it in that country, where Catholic faith, national consciousness and economic frustration had come together to expose the empty sterility of Marxism and shake the foundations of communist rule. I was determined to accept the invitation I had earlier received from General Jaruzelski to go to Poland. I always felt the greatest affection and admiration for this nation of indomitable patriots, whose traditions and distinctive identity the Prussians, Austrians and Russians (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and the Nazis and communists (in the twentieth century) had sought vainly to extinguish. I could not forget the Polish airmen who had fought with the RAF against Nazism, and how a war begun over the freedom of Poland had ended leaving them trapped under tyranny. But, for all that, these were diplomatically treacherous waters I was entering; and I knew it.

My aim in going to Poland was to continue that strategy towards the eastern bloc countries which I had first begun in Hungary in 1984. I wanted to open up these countries — their governments and peoples — to western influence and to exert pressure for respect for human rights and for political and economic reform. But Poland’s recent past demonstrated how dependent events in such countries were on the intentions of the Soviet Union. Whether one regarded General Jaruzelski as a patriot stepping in to prevent worse things befalling his fellow countrymen or just as a Soviet puppet, the circumstances under which martial law was imposed and Solidarity crushed in 1981 were an unforgettable lesson in the reality of power politics. Now the political and economic bankruptcy of the Jaruzelski Government was again apparent and its authority challenged by a revived Solidarity. The role of the West — above all of a visiting western leader — was to give heart to the anti-communists, while urging on them a carefully calculated response to the opportunities they had to improve conditions and increase their influence; and in dealings with the Government it must be to combine straight talking about the need for change with an attitude which avoided outright and counterproductive conflict. It would not be an easy task.

For their part, the authorities were determined to make it harder still. On the eve of my visit the Government announced their intention to close the Lenin Shipyard at Gdansk, the home of Solidarity. It was a trap and one no less dangerous for being clumsy. The communists hoped that I would be forced to welcome the closure of uneconomic plant and to condemn Solidarity’s resistance to it on the grounds of ‘Thatcherite’ economics. Some commentators fully expected me to fall for this. For example, a leader in The Times on the eve of my visit noted:

In fact, even the official published figures suggested that although the Lenin Shipyard was in a very weak economic position it was not making the greatest ‘losses’, which clearly implied that the decision to single it out had been politically not economically motivated. Anyway, since 90 per cent of the work at the shipyard was done for the Soviet Union, its viability depended on little more than the exchange rate between the rouble and the zloty. Where there is no real market there can be no real estimates of ‘profit’ and ‘loss’. But there was far more to it than that. I was convinced that you cannot expect people to shoulder the kind of economic responsibility which would be expected in a western economy unless they are granted the freedoms we expect in a western society.

In the light of these manoeuvrings I was glad that from the beginning I had insisted that there should be an unofficial as well as an official side to my visit. I was not prepared to be prevented from meeting Lech Walesa and the leading opponents of the regime. To his credit, I felt, General Jaruzelski did not raise objections to my doing so. Otherwise, of course, I would indeed have run the risk of unwittingly serving the cause of communist propaganda.

In planning my visit I had consulted the Pope whose own visit there in June 1987 had provided the main impetus for the revival of Solidarity and the pressure for reform. It was clear that the Vatican thought my visit could do good but also that the Church was proceeding with great caution — a caution which was even more evident when on the first day of my visit I had a meeting with Cardinal Glemp.

In preparing my Polish trip there was another matter on which I felt I must consult a wise authority and that was what I should wear. A Polish lady who served me at Aquascutum said that green was the colour which represented hope in Poland. So green was the colour of the suit I chose.

My first official meeting in Warsaw on the evening of Wednesday 2 November was with the recently appointed Polish Prime Minister, Mr Rakowski. He was not an impressive or persuasive advocate of the line the Polish Government was taking about the Lenin Shipyard, though he did his best. He said how much he agreed with my public statements about the need for economic reform and portrayed closure of the shipyard as part of this process. In somewhat forced ‘Thatcherite’ tones he told me that rationalization was the only way to extricate Poland from its crisis and that Poland’s great weakness historically had been lack of consistency, which was something he was determined to change. I replied that going from a centralized economy to one based on private enterprise and competition was immensely difficult. But it was not just a matter of changing economic policies. There had to be personal, political and spiritual change. Under communism, people were like birds in a cage: even when you opened the door, they were afraid to go out. The vital task facing his Government, I said, was to take the Polish people with it in making the changes; and the problem was that there was no political mechanism for consulting them and allowing them to express their views. The difference between the situation I had faced in 1979 and that which confronted Mr Rakowski was that I had been democratically elected — and twice re-elected — to carry out the changes required.

Later that evening I met a number of opponents of the regime and learnt a little more about its shortcomings. I knew that the communists had never managed to achieve the scale of collectivization of agriculture in Poland which they had elsewhere and that this — alongside the influence of the Catholic Church — had given the Poles a degree of independence which was unique in a communist country. I said to those present that since they at least had the land they must be doing quite well. No, they said, this was not so. Did I not realize that the state directed most of the seed, fertilizer, tractors and other equipment — not least spare parts — to the collective farming sector? The authorities also controlled prices and distribution. Under these circumstances the benefits of ownership were limited. In effect, socialism, which is only a less developed form of communism, was doing its usual work of impoverishment and demoralization. I later raised the subject with Mr Rakowski, who did not seriously dispute the facts.

On Thursday afternoon I had my first real taste of Poland — the Poland which the communists had tried and failed to destroy. I visited the church of St Stanislaw Kostka in the north of Warsaw where Father Jerzy Popieluszko had preached his anti-communist sermons until in 1984 he was abducted and murdered by members of the Polish Security Services. (I also went to talk in their home to Father Popieluszko’s parents, who were grief stricken but immensely proud of their son.) The church itself was overflowing with people of every age who had come out to see me and on my arrival they broke into a Polish hymn. In Father Popieluszko they had evidently found a martyr, and I came away in little doubt that it was his creed rather than that of his murderers which would prevail in Poland.

I said as much to General Jaruzelski when I met him for talks later. The General had spoken for one and three-quarter hours without interruption about his plans for Poland. In this, at least, he was a typical communist. He even said that he admired the trade union reforms I had put through in Britain. When he finished I pointed out that people in Britain did not have to rely on trade unions as a means of expressing their political views because we had free elections. I had just experienced the power of the Solidarity movement in that church in northern Warsaw. I said that, as a politician, all my instincts told me that this was far more than a trade union — it was a political movement whose power could not be denied. The Government was right to recognize that it had to talk to Solidarity and I hoped that the Solidarity leaders would accept its invitation.

The next day, Friday, was one I shall never forget. I flew up to Gdansk in the early morning to join General Jaruzelski in laying a wreath at the Westerplatte, which saw the first fighting between the Poles and the invading Germans in 1939. It was a bleak peninsula above the bay of Gdansk and the wind was bitter; the ceremony lasted half an hour. I was pleased to get aboard and into the cabin of the small naval ship which was to take me down the river to Gdansk itself. I changed out of my black hat and coat into emerald green and then went back up on deck. The scenes at the arrival of our boat at Gdansk shipyard were unbelievable. Every inch of it seemed taken up with shipyard workers waving and cheering.

After a walkabout in old Gdansk itself I was driven to the hotel where Lech Walesa and his colleagues came up to see me in my room. He had a somewhat ambiguous status at this time, being under a sort of liberal house arrest, and had been brought to the hotel, ironically enough, by Polish Security Police. I gave him the present I had brought with me — some fishing tackle, for he was a great fisherman — and we departed again for the shipyard. Again there were thousands of shipyard workers waiting for me, cheering and waving Solidarity banners. I laid flowers on the memorial to shipyard workers shot by the police and army in 1970, and then went to the house of Father Jankowski, Mr Walesa’s confessor and adviser, for a meeting followed by lunch.

The Solidarity leaders were a mixture of workers and intellectuals. Mr Walesa was in the former group, but he had a large physical presence as well as a symbolic importance which allowed him to dominate. He told me that Solidarity was disinclined to accept the Government’s invitation to join in round-table talks, believing — probably rightly — that the purpose was to divide and if possible discredit the opposition. Solidarity’s goal he described as ‘pluralism’, that is a state of affairs in which the Communist Party was not the sole legitimate authority. What struck me, though, was that they did not have a specific plan of action with immediate practical objectives. Indeed, when I said that I thought that Solidarity should attend the talks and submit its own proposals in the form of a detailed agenda with supporting papers my hosts looked quite astonished.

Over lunch — one of the best game stews I have ever tasted — we argued through together what their negotiating stance might be and how in my final discussions with the Polish Government I could help. We decided that the most important point I could make to General Jaruzelski was that Solidarity must be legalized. De facto recognition was not enough. Throughout I was repeatedly impressed by the moderation and eloquence of Mr Walesa and his colleagues. At one point I said: ‘you really must see that the Government hears all this.’ ‘No problem’, replied Mr Walesa, pointing up to the ceiling; ‘our meetings are bugged anyway.’

After lunch it was suggested that I might like to look around the nearby church of St Brygida. To my delighted astonishment, when Mr Walesa and I entered I found the whole church packed with Polish families who rose and sang the Solidarity anthem ‘God give us back our free Poland.’ I could not keep the tears from my eyes. I seemed to have shaken hundreds of hands as I walked around the church. I gave a short emotional speech and Lech Walesa spoke too. As I left there were people in the streets crying with emotion and shouting ‘thank you, thank you’ over and over again. I returned to Warsaw with greater determination than ever to do battle with the communist authorities.

In my final meeting with General Jaruzelski that afternoon I kept my word to Solidarity. I told him that I was grateful that he had put no obstacle in the way of my visit to Gdansk — though it has to be said that the authorities had put on a total news black-out about it both before and afterwards. I said how impressed I had been by Solidarity’s moderation. If they were good enough to attend round-table discussions they were also good enough to be legalized. General Jaruzelski gave no impression of being prepared to budge. I repeated that I did not believe that Solidarity could be ignored, indeed any attempt to ignore them would court disaster. It was a chilly though good-tempered discussion. General Jaruzelski was in any case a slightly awkward interlocutor until you got to know him: his dark glasses and his oddly rigid posture (the result of back trouble) made him seem rather remote. But I did not underrate his intelligence — nor his connections, for I knew that he was close to Mr Gorbachev. The proof that the General was a Pole and not just a communist was that just before my aeroplane was about to leave, in an unscheduled appearance his car screamed to a halt beside the aircraft and the General leapt out with a huge bouquet of flowers. Not even Marxism could suppress Polish gallantry.

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

A fortnight later I was back in Washington as President Reagan’s last official guest. This gave me the chance of discussions with President-elect Bush. Mr Bush was slowly putting his Administration team together. On this occasion I also met Dan Quayle, the Vice-President-elect — who for all the cruel mockery to which he was subject I always found very well briefed and with a good political sense — and also future Secretary of State Jim Baker, whose views I shall mention shortly. Both the outgoing President and the President-elect spoke of the importance of dealing with the US budget deficit which had fallen for four years but which was still a problem. This inevitably raised a question mark over defence, so I was keen to restate to Mr Bush my views about SNF and the great significance I attached to the continuation of the SDI programme.

I had always found Vice-President Bush easy to get on with and I felt that he had performed good service to America in keeping the Reagan Administration in touch with European thinking. He was one of the most decent, honest and patriotic Americans I have met. He had great personal courage, as his past record and his resilience in campaigning showed. But he had never had to think through his beliefs and fight for them when they were hopelessly unfashionable as Ronald Reagan and I had had to do. This meant that much of his time now was taken up with reaching for answers to problems which to me came quite spontaneously, because they sprang from my basic convictions.

I later learned that President Bush was sometimes exasperated by my habit of talking nonstop about issues which fascinated me and felt that he ought to have been leading the discussion. More important than all of this perhaps was the fact that, as President, George Bush felt the need to distance himself from his predecessor: turning his back fairly publicly on the special position I had enjoyed in the Reagan Administration’s counsels and confidence was a way of doing that. This was understandable; and by the time of my last year in office we had established a better relationship. By then I had learned that I had to defer to him in conversation and not to stint the praise. If that was what was necessary to secure Britain’s interests and influence I had no hesitation in eating a little humble pie.

Unfortunately, even then the US State Department continued 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. He was keen for an early NATO summit which would help him push through agreement within his Government on the ‘comprehensive concept’ for arms control. I agreed that the sooner the better. We must take decisions on the modernization of NATO’s nuclear weapons by the middle of the year, in particular on the replacement of LANCE. Chancellor Kohl said that he wanted both of these questions out of the way before the June 1989 European elections.

By the time of the next Anglo-German summit in Frankfurt the political pressure on the German Chancellor had increased further and he had begun to argue that a decision on SNF was not really necessary until 1991–2.

A week before I went to Frankfurt I had talked through the problem with Jim Baker over lunch at Chequers. I told him that I still considered that Chancellor Kohl was a courageous man and a strong supporter of the United States: the problem was Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who normally favoured a softer, more accommodating approach to the Soviets. I predicted that a number of other governments would be inclined to waver on SNF, because the opinion polls showed that people no longer believed in the Soviet threat. It was therefore vital that the United States and Britain should stand firm. Jim Baker said he very much agreed with my line. The Administration needed an assurance on deployment or it would not get funding from Congress to develop a successor to LANCE. But he wondered whether the price of German agreement would have to be the acceptance of vague language on negotiations on SNF. I replied that though there was scope for NATO to make unilateral reductions in its holdings of nuclear artillery, we could not negotiate on SNF without getting trapped into another ‘zero’. Jim Baker was clearly more anxious about handling German sensitivities than I was, but I still believed that we saw things in the same way.

Consequently, when I met Chancellor Kohl in Frankfurt I was quite direct. I said that in putting the case for SNF to his people he should simply ask the fundamental question whether they valued their freedom. Freedom for the German people had started on the day the Second World War had ended and NATO had preserved it for forty years. The Soviet Union continued to represent a military threat. Britain, Germany and the United States represented the real strength of NATO. I understood his difficulties in dealing with German public opinion but I believed that he and I were fundamentally in agreement. NATO had to modernize its weapons, otherwise the United States would sooner or later start to withdraw its troops from Germany. Britain and Germany together should give a lead. In spite of the pressure the Federal Chancellor was under, I came away from Frankfurt feeling that the agreed line on SNF might still hold.

Certainly, the Soviets were in no doubt about the strategic importance of the decisions which would have to be made about SNF. Mr and Mrs Gorbachev arrived at 11 o’clock at night on Wednesday 5 April in London for the visit which had had to be postponed the previous December as a result of an earthquake in Armenia. I met them at the airport and returned to the Soviet Embassy where the number of toasts drunk suggested that the Soviet leader’s early crackdown on vodka was not universally applicable. In my talks with Mr Gorbachev I found him frustrated by — and surprisingly suspicious of — the Bush Administration. I defended the new President’s performance and stressed the continuity with the Reagan Administration. But the real substance of our discussions related to arms control. I raised directly with Mr Gorbachev the evidence which we had that the Soviets had not been telling us the truth about the quantity and types of chemical weapons which they held. He stoutly maintained that they had. He then brought up the issue of SNF modernization. I said that obsolete weapons did not deter and that NATO’s SNF would certainly have to be modernized. The forthcoming NATO summit would confirm this intention. Mr Gorbachev returned to the subject in his speech at Guildhall which contained a somewhat menacing section about the effect on East-West relations and arms control talks more generally if NATO went ahead with SNF modernization.

All this pressure was by now having an effect. In particular, Chancellor Kohl was retreating. In April a new German position on SNF modernization and negotiation was extensively leaked before any of the allies — other than the Americans — were informed. The German position paper did not rule out a ‘third zero’, did not call on the Soviet Union unilaterally to reduce its SNF levels to those of NATO and cast doubt on SNF modernization.

I had acrimonious discussions with Chancellor Kohl behind the stage-managed friendliness of our meeting at Deidesheim at the end of April.[112] Chancellor Kohl gave a lengthy justification for Germany’s recent conduct. He wanted NATO to discuss a mandate for negotiations on SNF, though he said he was absolutely opposed to a ‘third zero’. He said that it was simply not sustainable politically in Germany to argue that those nuclear weapons which most directly affected Germany should be the only category not subject to negotiation.

I said that I would begin by reminding Chancellor Kohl of some of the background. He had been the one who had originally proposed that there should be an early NATO summit to take the decision on modernization and I had supported him. I read out to him the joint statement which we had issued at Frankfurt. We had not been informed of the German Government’s new position until several days after it had been leaked to the press. NATO had to have SNF and they must be modernized, as he himself had agreed recently. We could not become embroiled in SNF negotiations which would lead inexorably to a ‘third zero’. I told Chancellor Kohl about the reports we had been getting of the Soviet Union’s real views and intentions. They were delighted that they had gained an advantage with the modernization of their own SNF and that we were delaying ours. They were also confident that they could influence opinion in West Germany in favour of SNF negotiations. I repeated that Britain and the United States were absolutely opposed to negotiations on SNF and would remain so. Our present forces were an irreducible minimum if we were to sustain the strategy of flexible response and they would in due course have to be modernized. Even if a decision to deploy the Follow-On to LANCE (FOTL) were postponed, there must be clear evidence at the forthcoming summit of NATO support for the US development programme. In fact, the German Government’s actions had put NATO under severe strain.

Chancellor Kohl began to get agitated. He said he did not need any lectures about NATO, that he believed in flexible response and repeated his opposition to a ‘third zero’. But the fact was that Germany was more affected than anyone else by SNF and that therefore German interests should be given priority. I retorted that, contrary to what he said, SNF did not affect only Germany. Our troops were on German soil. It had never been possible to rely on all the NATO allies; there were always weak links. But hitherto the United States, Britain and Germany had constituted the real strength of NATO.

At this Chancellor Kohl became still more worked up. He said that for years he had been attacked as the vassal of the Americans. Now he was suddenly being branded a traitor. He repeated that he did not believe that once the INF agreement had been reached you could resist negotiations on SNF. But he would think again about what I had said and would be in touch with the Americans about it. I reported on our discussion in a message to President Bush, concluding that ‘provided Britain and the United States remain absolutely firm, we can still achieve a satisfactory outcome at the [NATO] summit’.

In the run up to the NATO summit the newspapers continued to focus on splits in the alliance. This was particularly galling because we should have been celebrating NATO’s fortieth anniversary and highlighting the success of our strategy of securing peace through strength. Apart from the Americans only the French fully agreed with my line on SNF and in any case, not being part of the NATO integrated command structure, they would not be of great importance in the final decision. I minuted on Tuesday 16 May: ‘if we get a “no negotiations” SNF section this will be reasonable, combined with a supportive piece on SNF research.’ I was still quite optimistic.

Then on Friday 19 May I suddenly learnt that the American line had shifted. They were now prepared to concede the principle of negotiations on SNF. Jim Baker claimed in public that we had been consulted about this US change of tack, but in fact we had not. Without in any way endorsing the American text, which I considered wrong-headed, I sent two main comments to the Americans. It should be amended to make the opening of SNF negotiations dependent upon a decision to deploy a successor to LANCE. It should include a requirement of substantial reductions in Soviet SNF towards NATO levels. Jim Baker replied that he doubted whether the Germans would accept this. The attitude of Brent Scowcroft — the President’s National Security Adviser — was sounder. But I could not tell what the President’s own view would be. In any case, I now found myself going to Brussels as the odd man out. Everyone else accepted the principle of SNF negotiations, and the differences between them existed only on the conditions to be met before these were held. I did not want any negotiations at all. And, if there had to be any, I wanted tougher conditions than those in the American text. Above all there must be no fudged language on the ‘third zero’.

This was not like a European Council: it was important that we demonstrated the unity of NATO if it was to be effective and so I felt that compromise in some circumstances was a moral duty rather than a matter of weakness. However, I put my case very strongly in the speech I made. I said that I was profoundly sceptical whether negotiations on SNF could possibly be to NATO’s benefit. I was prepared to consider a text which would envisage such negotiations, but only after an agreement for the reduction of conventional forces had been reached and partially implemented. This, moreover, could only be on the basis that another ‘zero’ was excluded.

In fact, at the last minute the Americans brought forward proposals calling for conventional forces reductions and for not just further deep cuts but accelerated progress in the CFE talks in Vienna, so that those reductions could be accomplished by 1992 or 1993. This sleight of hand permitted a compromise on SNF by enabling the Germans to argue that the prospect of ‘early’ SNF negotiations was preserved. However, I emphasized in my subsequent statement to the House of Commons the fact that only after agreement had been reached on conventional force reductions, and implementation of that agreement was under way, would the United States be authorized to enter into negotiations to achieve partial reductions in Short-Range Missiles. No reductions would be made in NATO’s SNF until after the agreement on conventional force reductions had been fully implemented.

I felt that I had done as much as was humanly possible — without firm support from the United States for the line I really wanted — to stop our sliding into another ‘zero’. I could live with the text which resulted from the tough negotiations which took place in Brussels. But I had seen for myself that the new American approach was to subordinate clear statements of intention about the alliance’s defence to the political sensibilities of the Germans. I did not think that this boded well.

President Bush’s remarks in his speech in Mainz on 31 May 1989 about the Germans as ‘partners in leadership’ confirmed the way American thinking about Europe was going. When the President came to London he sought to deal with the problems those remarks had caused by saying that we too were partners in leadership. But the damage had been done. Now, as 1989 wore on, the march of events in eastern Europe and the prospect of German reunification added a new element, inclining the United States to take German issues still more seriously.

THE FALL OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE IN 1989 AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

In the late summer of 1989 the first signs appeared of the imminent collapse of communism in eastern Europe. Solidarity won the elections in early June in Poland and General Jaruzelski accepted the result: I congratulated him on this when he came to London a few days later. Liberalization proceeded in Hungary, which opened its borders to Austria in September across which flooded East German refugees. The haemorrhage of population from East Germany and demonstrations at the beginning of October in Leipzig led to the fall of Erich Honecker. The demolition of the Berlin Wall began on 10 November. The following month it was the turn of Czechoslovakia. By the end of the year Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who had been gaoled in February, had been elected President of Czechoslovakia and the evil Ceauşescus had been overthrown in Romania.

These events marked the most welcome political change of my lifetime. But no matter how much I rejoiced at the overthrow of communism in eastern and central Europe I was not going to allow euphoria to extinguish either reason or prudence. I did not believe that it would be easy or painless to entrench democracy and free enterprise. Some of the liberalizing and liberated countries had stronger traditions of freedom to draw upon than others. But it was too soon to be sure precisely what sort of regimes would emerge. Moreover, central and eastern Europe — still more the Soviet Union — was a complicated patchwork of nations. Political freedom would also bring ethnic disputes and challenges to frontiers, which might have moved several times in living memory. War could not be ruled out.

The welcome changes which were happening had come about because the West had remained strong and resolute — but also because Mr Gorbachev and the Soviet Union had renounced the Brezhnev doctrine. On the continued survival of a moderate, reforming Government in the USSR would depend the future of the new democracies. We had seen in the past — in 1956 in Hungary and 1968 in Czechoslovakia — what happened when democrats took to the streets believing that the West would ultimately step in to help them against the Soviets and then found themselves abandoned. It was too early to assume that the captive nations were permanently free from captivity: their Soviet captors could still turn ugly. It was therefore essential to go carefully and avoid actions which would be deemed provocative by either the Soviet political leadership or the military.

This led directly on to the third consideration — the future of Germany. For nothing was more likely to stir up old fears in the Soviet Union — fears which the hardliners would be anxious to exploit — than the prospect of a reunited, powerful Germany, possibly with renewed ambitions on its eastern flank.

THE GERMAN PROBLEM AND THE BALANCE OF POWER

There was — and still is — a tendency to regard the ‘German problem’ as something too delicate for well-brought-up politicians to discuss. This always seemed to me a mistake. The problem had several elements which could only be addressed if non-Germans considered them openly and constructively. I do not believe in collective guilt: it is individuals who are morally accountable for their actions. But I do believe in national character, which is moulded by a range of complex factors: the fact that national caricatures are often absurd and inaccurate does not detract from that. Since the unification of Germany under Bismarck — perhaps partly because national unification came so late — Germany has veered unpredictably between aggression and self-doubt. Germany’s immediate neighbours, such as the French and the Poles, are more deeply aware of this than the British, let alone the Americans; though the same concern often leads Germany’s immediate neighbours to refrain from comments which might appear insensitive. The Russians are acutely conscious of all this too, though in their case the need for German credit and investment has so far had a quiescent effect. But perhaps the first people to recognize the ‘German problem’ are the modern Germans, the vast majority of whom are determined that Germany should not be a great power able to exert itself at others’ expense. The true origin of German angst is the agony of self-knowledge.

As I have already argued, that is one reason why so many Germans genuinely — I believe wrongly — want to see Germany locked in to a federal Europe. In fact, Germany is more rather than less likely to dominate within that framework; for a reunited Germany is simply too big and powerful to be just another player within Europe. Moreover, Germany has always looked east as well as west, though it is economic expansion rather than territorial aggression which is the modern manifestation of this tendency. Germany is thus by its very nature a destabilizing rather than a stabilizing force in Europe. Only the military and political engagement of the United States in Europe and close relations between the other two strongest sovereign states in Europe — Britain and France — are sufficient to balance German power: and nothing of the sort would be possible within a European super-state.

One obstacle to achieving such a balance of power when I was in office was the refusal of France under President Mitterrand to follow his and French instincts and challenge German interests. This would have required abandoning the Franco-German axis on which he had been relying and, as I shall describe, the wrench proved just too difficult for him.

GERMAN REUNIFICATION

Initially, it also seemed likely that the Soviets would be strongly opposed to the re-emergence of a powerful Germany, particularly one reunited on the West’s terms and accompanied by the discrediting of communism. Of course, the Soviets might have calculated that a reunited Germany would return a left-of-centre government which would achieve their long-term objective of neutralizing and denuclearizing West Germany. (As it turned out — and perhaps with a clearer idea than we had of the true feelings of the East German people — the Soviets were prepared to sell reunification for a modest financial boost from Germany to their crumbling economy.)

These matters were at the forefront of my mind when I decided to arrange a stop-over visit in Moscow for talks with Mr Gorbachev on my way back from the IDU Conference in Tokyo in September 1989. In fact, my VC10 stopped first for refuelling in the Siberian town of Bratsk. I had two hours of conversation with the local Communist Party leaders over coffee in a chilly barn-like building. They seemed enthusiastic about perestroika, but I found the conversation flagging after an hour had been spent on the subject of the local beetroot crop. Stardom came to the rescue. John Whittingdale came in to ask if Oleg, the KGB guard outside the door, could have a signed photograph. I at once obliged. My hosts conferred in rapid Russian and then said that they too wanted signed photographs. The ice was broken.

In Moscow the following morning and over lunch Mr Gorbachev and I talked frankly about Germany. I explained to him that although NATO had traditionally made statements supporting Germany’s aspiration to be reunited, in practice we were rather apprehensive. Nor was I speaking for myself alone — I had discussed it with at least one other western leader, meaning but not mentioning President Mitterrand. Mr Gorbachev confirmed that the Soviet Union did not want German reunification either. This reinforced me in my resolve to slow up the already heady pace of developments. Of course, I did not want East Germans — any more than I would have wanted anyone else — to have to live under communism. But it seemed to me that a truly democratic East Germany would soon emerge and that the question of reunification was a separate one, on which the wishes and interests of Germany’s neighbours and other powers must be fully taken into account.

To begin with the West Germans seemed to be willing to do this. Chancellor Kohl telephoned me on the evening of Friday 10 November after his visit to Berlin and as demolition of the Berlin Wall began. He was clearly buoyed up by the scenes he had witnessed: what German would not have been? I advised him to keep in touch with Mr Gorbachev who would obviously be very concerned with what was happening. He promised to do so. Later that night the Soviet Ambassador came to see me with a message from Mr Gorbachev who was worried that there might occur some incident — perhaps an attack on Soviet soldiers in East Germany or Berlin — which could have momentous consequences.

However, instead of seeking to rein back expectations, Chancellor Kohl was soon busily raising them. In a statement to the Bundestag he said that the core of the German question was freedom and that the people of East Germany must be given the chance to decide their own future and needed no advice from others. That went for the ‘question of reunification and for German unity too’. The tone had already begun to change and it would change further — though in private Foreign minister Genscher was still assuring Douglas Hurd that the Germans wanted to avoid talk of reunification.

This was the background to President Mitterrand’s calling a special meeting of Community heads of government in Paris[113] to consider what was happening in Germany — where Egon Krenz, the new East German leader who was, the Soviets had told me, a protégé of Mr Gorbachev, was looking precarious. Before I went I sent a message to President Bush reiterating my view that the priority should be to see genuine democracy established in East Germany and that German reunification was not something to be addressed at present. The President later telephoned me to thank me for my message with which he agreed and to say how much he was looking forward to the two of us ‘putting our feet up at Camp David for a really good talk’.

Almost equally amiable was the Paris meeting on the evening of Saturday 18 November. President Mitterrand opened by posing a number of questions, including whether the issue of borders in Europe should be open for discussion. Then Chancellor Kohl began. He said that people wanted ‘to hear Europe’s voice’. He then obliged by speaking for forty minutes. He concluded by saying that there should be no discussion of borders but that the people of Germany must be allowed to decide their future for themselves and that self-determination was paramount. After Sr. Gonzalez had intervened to no great effect, I spoke.

I said that though the changes taking place were historic we must not succumb to euphoria. The changes were only just beginning and it would take several years to get genuine democracy and economic reform in eastern Europe. There must be no question of changing borders. The Helsinki Final Act must apply.[114] Any attempt to talk about either border changes or German reunification would undermine Mr Gorbachev and also open up a Pandora’s box of border claims right through central Europe. I said that we must keep both NATO and the Warsaw Pact intact to create a background of stability. Whatever reservations Chancellor Kohl may have had were not voiced. Whether he had already decided on his next move to accelerate the process of reunification I do not know.

The following Friday — 24 November — I was discussing the same issues at Camp David with President Bush — though not exactly ‘with my feet up’. Although friendly enough, the President seemed distracted and uneasy. I was very keen to persuade him of the Tightness of my approach to what was happening in the crumbling communist bloc. I reiterated much of what I had said in Paris about borders and reunification and of the need to support the Soviet leader on whose continuance in power so much depended. The President did not challenge what I said directly but he asked me pointedly whether my line had given rise to difficulties with Chancellor Kohl and about my attitude to the European Community. It was also clear that we differed on the priority which still needed to be given to defence spending. The President told me about the budgetary difficulties he faced and argued that if conditions in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had really changed, there must surely be scope for the West to cut its defence spending. I said that there would always remain the unknown threat which must be guarded against. Defence spending was like home insurance in this respect. You did not stop paying the premiums because your street was free from burglaries for a time. I thought that the US defence budget should be driven not by Mr Gorbachev and his initiatives but by the United States’ defence interests. Perhaps I was insensitive to his difficulties with Congress. In any case, the atmosphere did not improve as a result of our discussions.

Shortly after my return to Britain I learned that without any previous consultation with his allies and in clear breach of at least the spirit of the Paris summit Chancellor Kohl had set out in a speech to the Bundestag a ‘ten-point’ plan about Germany’s future. The fifth point was the proposal of the development of ‘confederative structures between the two states in Germany with the goal of creating a federation’. The tenth point was that his Government was working towards ‘unity, reunification, the reattainment of German state unity’.

The real question now was how the Americans would react. I did not have to wait long to find out. In a press conference briefing Jim Baker spelt out the American approach to German reunification which, he said, would be based on four principles. Self-determination would be pursued ‘without prejudice to its outcome’. Another element was that Germany should not only remain in NATO — with which I heartily agreed — but that it should be part of ‘an increasingly integrated European Community’ — with which I did not. The third point was that moves to unification should be peaceful, gradual and part of a step-by-step process, which was fair enough. I entirely agreed with the final point — that the principles of the Helsinki Final Act particularly as they related to borders must be supported. What remained to be seen, however, was whether the Americans were going to give most weight to the notion of Germany’s future in an ‘integrated’ Europe or to the thought that reunification must only come about slowly and gradually.

It was left to President Bush himself to provide the answer in his speech at the NATO heads of government meeting staged at Brussels in early December to hear his report on his talks with Mr Gorbachev in Malta. He made an obviously carefully prepared statement on Europe’s ‘future architecture’, calling for a ‘new, more mature relationship’ with Europe. He also restated the principles Jim Baker had laid out as regards reunification. But the fact that the President placed such emphasis on ‘European integration’ at a predominantly European meeting in Brussels was immediately taken as a signal — which was perhaps not far from the truth — that he was aligning America with the federalist rather than my ‘Bruges’ goal of European development. There was no reason for journalists, who knew perfectly well of the direction of State Department background briefing, to take the President’s remarks otherwise. The President telephoned me to explain his remarks and say that they just related to the Single Market rather than wider political integration. I hoped that they did — or that at least from now on they would. The fact remained that there was nothing I could expect from the Americans as regards slowing down German reunification — and possibly much I would wish to avoid as regards the drive towards European unity.

AN ANGLO-FRENCH AXIS?

If there was any hope now of stopping or slowing down reunification it would only come from an Anglo-French initiative. Yet even were President Mitterrand to try to give practical effect to what I knew were his secret fears, we would not find many ways open to us. Once it was decided that East Germany could join the European Community without detailed negotiations — and I was resisting for my own reasons treaty amendment and any European Community aid — there was little we could do to slow down reunification via the Community’s institutions. I placed some hopes in the framework offered by the ‘Four Powers’ — Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union — which were responsible for the security of Berlin. But with the United States — and soon the Soviets too — ceasing to regard this as anything other than a talking shop for discussion of the details of reunification, this framework too was of limited use. The CSCE — on which I was to develop my ideas the following year — would provide a basis for restricting any unwelcome attempts to change borders in eastern Europe as a whole; but it would not stand in the way of German reunification. So the last and best hope seemed the creation of a solid Anglo-French political axis which would ensure that at each stage of reunification — and in future economic and political developments — the Germans did not have things all their own way.

At the Strasbourg European Council in December 1989 President Mitterrand and I — at his suggestion — had two private meetings to discuss the German problem and our reaction to it. He was still more concerned than I was. He was very critical of Chancellor Kohl’s ‘ten-point’ plan. He observed that in history the Germans were a people in constant movement and flux. At this I produced from my handbag a map showing the various configurations of Germany in the past, which were not altogether reassuring about the future. We talked through what precisely we might do. I said that at the meeting he had chaired in Paris we had come up with the right answer on borders and reunification. But President Mitterrand observed that Chancellor Kohl had already gone far beyond that. He said that at moments of great danger in the past France had always established special relations with Britain and he felt that such a time had come again. We must draw together and stay in touch. It seemed to me that although we had not discovered the means, at least we both had the will to check the German juggernaut. That was a start.

Discussion at the official meetings of the Strasbourg Council was of course very different in tone, although the Dutch Prime Minister Mr Lubbers said at the heads of government dinner that he thought Chancellor Kohl’s ‘ten-point’ plan would encourage reunification, that there were dangers in talking about self-determination and that it was better not to refer to one ‘German people’. This required some courage. But it hardly deflected Chancellor Kohl, who said that Germany had paid for the last war by losing one-third of its territory. He was vague about the question of borders — too vague for my liking — arguing that the Oder-Neisse line, which marked the border with Poland, should not become a legal issue. He did not seem now or later to understand the Polish fears and sensitivities.

I was due to meet President Mitterrand in January 1990 and I asked for papers to be drawn up showing ways in which we could strengthen Anglo-French co-operation. The French President had been to East Berlin shortly before Christmas in order to assert France’s interests in the future of Germany. But his public attitude hardly betrayed his private thoughts and at his press conference there he claimed that he was not ‘one of those who were putting on the brakes’. I hoped that my forthcoming meeting with him might overcome this tendency to schizophrenia.

Almost all the discussion I had with President Mitterrand at the Elysée Palace on Saturday 20 January concerned Germany. Picking up the President’s remarks in the margins of Strasbourg I said that it was very important for Britain and France to work out jointly how to handle what was happening in Germany. East Germany seemed close to collapse and it was by no means impossible that we would be confronted in the course of this year with the decision in principle in favour of reunification. The President was clearly irked by German attitudes and behaviour. He accepted that the Germans had the right to self-determination but they did not have the right to upset the political realities of Europe; nor could he accept that German reunification should take priority over everything else. He complained that the Germans treated any talk of caution as criticism of themselves. Unless you were whole-heartedly for reunification, you were described as an enemy of Germany. The trouble was that in reality there was no force in Europe which could stop reunification happening. He agreed with my analysis of the problems but he said he was at a loss as to what we could do. I was not so pessimistic. I argued that we should at least make use of all the means available to slow down reunification. The trouble was that other governments were not ready to speak up openly — nor, I might have added but did not, were the French. President Mitterrand went on to say that he shared my worries about the Germans’ so-called ‘mission’ in central Europe. The Czechs, Poles and Hungarians would not want to be under Germany’s exclusive influence, but they would need German aid and investment. I said that we must not just accept that the Germans had a particular hold over these countries, but rather do everything possible to expand our own links there. At the end of the meeting we agreed that our Foreign and Defence ministers should get together to talk over the issue of reunification and also examine the scope for closer Franco-British defence co-operation.

The fact that little or nothing in practical terms came of these discussions between me and President Mitterrand about the German problem reflected his basic unwillingness to change the direction of his whole foreign policy. Essentially, he had a choice between moving ahead faster towards a federal Europe in order to tie down the German giant or to abandon this approach and return to that associated with General de Gaulle — the defence of French sovereignty and the striking up of alliances to secure French interests. He made the wrong decision for France. Moreover, his failure to match private words with public deeds also increased my difficulties. But it must be said that his judgement that there was nothing we could do to halt German reunification turned out to be right.

In February Chancellor Kohl — again without any consultation with his allies — went to Moscow and won from Mr Gorbachev agreement that ‘the unity of the German nation must be decided by the Germans themselves.’ (The quid pro quo would soon become clear. In July at a meeting in the Crimea the West German Chancellor agreed to provide what must have seemed to the Soviets a huge sum, though they could in fact have extracted much more, to cover the costs of providing for the Soviet troops who would be withdrawn from East Germany. For his part, Mr Gorbachev now finally agreed in public that the reunified Germany should be part of NATO.)

On Saturday 24 February I had a three-quarters-of-an-hour telephone conversation with President Bush. I broke with my usual habit of trying to avoid detailed factual discussions over the telephone and tried to explain to the President how I thought we should be thinking about the future of a western alliance and a Europe which contained a reunified Germany. I stressed the importance of ensuring that a united Germany stayed within NATO and that United States troops remained there. However, if all Soviet forces had to leave East Germany that would cause difficulties for Mr Gorbachev and I thought it best to allow some to stay for a transitional period without any specific terminal date. I also said that we must strengthen the CSCE framework, which would not only help avoid Soviet isolation but would help balance German dominance in Europe. One had to remember that Germany was surrounded by countries most of which it had attacked or occupied on mainland Europe in the course of this century. Looking well into the future, only the Soviet Union — or its successor — could provide such a balance. President Bush, as I afterwards learnt, failed to understand that I was discussing a long-term balance of power in Europe rather than proposing an alternative alliance to NATO. It was the last time that I relied on a telephone conversation to explain such matters.

Chancellor Kohl had managed to convey the worst possible impression by his unwillingness to have a proper treaty to settle Germany’s border with Poland. Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, whom I had first met in very different circumstances in Gdansk in November 1988, discussed his fears with me when he came to London in February 1990. I pressed the matter — though I received no real response — when I met Chancellor Kohl at the start of an Anglo-German summit in London at the end of March. I also ensured that the Poles received special status at the talks of the ‘two-plus-four’ (or as I preferred to call it the ‘four-plus-two’ — that is the Berlin Four Powers and the Two Germanies). Finally, and after much pressure, Chancellor Kohl did agree to settle Germany’s border with Poland by a special treaty signed in November 1990.

THE CSCE AND THE ‘ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY’

One minor benefit which did come out of the saga of German reunification was an enhanced role for the CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe). I had begun by being very sceptical of the whole Helsinki process. But whatever its shortcomings at the height of the Cold War, it now provided a useful framework within which at least some of the problems arising in the new democratic Europe might be tackled. It could never take the place of NATO which must remain the basis of our defence, whatever changes in its strategy and priorities were required; though it did provide the framework for the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) arms negotiations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact which would lead to the CFE agreement, signed at what turned out to be my final summit in Paris in November 1990. The CSCE could not give the new democracies the assurance of security which they wanted: they continued to hanker after some sort of association agreement with NATO.

But the CSCE did have three important advantages. First, it involved both the Americans and the Soviet Union in Europe’s future. Europe could never be stable without an American presence and commitment. Second, the CSCE was well suited to be the forum for any discussions of border disputes, although it would not be able to go beyond conciliation to enforcement. (Enforcement should be a matter for NATO, the UN or if necessary one or more countries under the inevitable lead of the United States.) Third, I envisaged that, building on the human rights content of the Helsinki principles, we should add the complementary principles of private property and free markets. We should use the CSCE summit in November to create the basis of a ‘great alliance for democracy [stretching] from the Atlantic to the Urals and beyond’ — as I described it in my speech to the Anglo-German Königswinter Conference in Cambridge in March.

I returned to the theme in my speech at Aspen, Colorado on Sunday 5 August. At Aspen I set out what I described as the ‘fundamental tenets of true democracy’. These were not just related to suffrage: I pointed out that Britain was free long before a majority of the population had the vote. Democracy, I contended, required the limitation of the powers of government, a market economy, private property — and the sense of personal responsibility without which no such system could be sustained. I called for the CSCE summit to agree on what I called a ‘European Magna Carta’ which would enshrine all these basic rights, including the right to maintain one’s nationhood. I urged closer association between east and west Europe. I also called for the Soviet Union to be brought into the western economic system. (These ideas were the basis of the Charter of Paris which I signed the morning after I learned that I had failed to secure the size of majority I needed in the first round of the Conservative Party leadership election.)

THE SOVIET UNION — 1989–90

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 by instinct 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 by those with whom one has to do business: 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 — indeed I wanted to see it not just in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union but in every corner of the globe — 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 break-up of the Soviet Union. Throughout the summer of 1990 there were disturbing reports of possible rebellious activities within the Soviet military. Their authenticity was never certain but they carried some credibility. 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 emigrés. 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 had a long-standing interest in their future, having voted in 1967 against an agreement between the then Labour Government and the Soviet Union to use the Baltic States’ gold reserves — frozen in the Bank of England since the Soviets invaded them in 1940 — to settle outstanding financial claims.) 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 London 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 case of the other republics was less clear cut. Ukraine and Byelorussia — by an ill-judged concession to Stalin in 1945 — were actually members of the United Nations so they could perhaps claim a somewhat different status too. I did not share the apparently hard-headed but in fact economically illiterate view that a state had to have a certain population, or GDP, or range of natural resources to be ‘viable’: it was the spirit of the people and the general economic framework created in order to harness it which would determine such matters. Nor, in general, was I happy with the argument that it was for us in the West to determine the future shape — or even existence — of the USSR. Our duty lay in thinking about the consequences of future developments there upon our own security. And it was this last consideration which led me to go very cautiously. It is one thing to expect a military super-power — even a sickly one like the Soviet Union — to change its internal and external policies in order to survive: it is quite another to expect it peacefully to commit hara-kiri. When I was in Paris in November for the CSCE summit at a lunch for heads of government I had been saying to President Iliescu of Romania that in working out a negotiating position you must always be clear on the stopping point — the point you would never concede. Mr Gorbachev, who had been listening, leant across the table and said that he agreed: his stopping point was the external perimeter of the Soviet Union. I did not accept this — and, as I have mentioned, had challenged the same view when relayed by M. Delors in Rome[115] — but I took it seriously all the same.

The whole question of the future of the republics within the Soviet Union had by 1990 become the main source of controversy in Soviet political affairs. It was one of the subjects I had discussed with Mr Gorbachev on my stop-over visit in Moscow the previous September. He had just held a plenum on the nationalities question. There had also been some significant changes in the Politburo. The long-time communist leader in Ukraine, Mr Shcherbitsky, had left its ranks. Mr Pugo, previously the Latvian Party Chief- and one of the future coup leaders of 1991 — had been promoted to candidate membership of the Politburo. Mr Kryuchkov, Chairman of the KGB — also a coup leader — had been promoted to full membership. Mr Ryzhkov, with whom Mr Gorbachev was on close personal terms but who was quite out of his depth in dealing with the economy, remained as Prime Minister. Over lunch in the Kremlin Mr Gorbachev had recalled how General de Gaulle had once complained about the difficulties of ruling a country which had 200 cheeses: how much more difficult it was to rule one with 120 nationalities. ‘Especially when there is a shortage of cheese,’ chipped in Mr Albakin, the Deputy Prime Minister. And indeed frustrations at the failure of economic reform were increasingly expressed in national dissent as the months went by.

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 — if such it can be called — 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. The briefing I had received about Mr Yeltsin sums up the attitude which was then prevalent. In this he was described as ‘a controversial figure’ because he had been the only member of the Party Central Committee to vote against the Draft Platform, arguing that it was the Communist Party’s long monopoly of power which had brought the USSR to its present crisis and driven tens of millions into poverty. He had said that democratic centralism should be rejected and replaced by genuine democracy and had called for a law on parties ending the Communist Party’s special status. Three cheers, I thought. My briefing went on to say — with less than complete perspicacity — that ‘some pundits even suggest that if [Mr Yeltsin] is elected as President of the Russian Federation he may end up with a more important job than Gorbachev’s presidency of a crumbling Union. This is an exaggeration.’

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. They were essentially agents — though frequently incompetent and corrupt agents — of central decisions. He said that they must now be given proper budgets and the power to decide how to spend them. Each republic should have its own laws and constitution. He argued that it was the failure to grapple with the issue of decentralization which had led to the present troubles. With so vast a country it was simply not possible to run everything from the centre. 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.

VISIT TO THE SOVIET UNION, JUNE 1990

On my visit to the Soviet Union in June 1990 I was to encounter all the different elements which constituted Soviet politics at this time — not just President Gorbachev, but also more radical reformers, nationalists and those who posed the greatest potential threat to reform, that is the military. I flew into Moscow on the night of Thursday 7 June to be met by Prime Minister Ryzhkov. The following morning I met the reforming Mayor of Moscow, Mr Gavriil Popov. I had never met a Russian like Mr Popov. He was the complete opposite of the staid Soviet bureaucrat — informal, slightly scruffy and (as I was subsequently told) probably wearing a tie for the very first time, in honour of my visit.

I found him a devotee of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. He had grasped the crucial point that you could not create a market economy in Moscow — or anywhere else for that matter — without both private property and a clear framework of law. It was the fact that the distribution of property was lagging far behind the other reforms which he saw as at the root of the current political turmoil. So he wanted people to be encouraged to own their own flats and shops and he wanted the service industries to be transferred to private ownership.

I went on to talks and a working lunch with President Gorbachev. I found him rather less ebullient than usual but equable and good-humoured. I took the opportunity to tell him that I continued to believe passionately in what he was trying to achieve in the Soviet Union. Many commentators and journalists had become blasé about how much had already changed. I assured him that he would have my full support both privately and publicly. As regards the changes which were taking place in central and eastern Europe, I tried to convince him that it was in the Soviet Union’s own interests that a unified Germany should be part of NATO, because otherwise there would be no justification for the presence of US forces in Europe. It was this presence which was the crucial condition for European peace and stability. I also described to him my ideas about the development of the CSCE. Slightly to my surprise, I noted that at no stage did he say that a united Germany in NATO was unacceptable; so I felt on this matter at least I was making progress. The only significant differences between us were over Lithuania — as I have mentioned earlier — and my decision to raise with him the evidence which we had gleaned that the Soviet Union was doing research into biological weapons — something which he emphatically denied, but nonetheless promised to investigate.

That afternoon I had an hour’s discussion with the Soviet military leadership. I had decided that I wanted to see how they were thinking and also let them know precisely what my own views were. Marshal Yazov, the Soviet Defence minister, was very much in charge and the others — including Marshal Moiseev, whose interventions and demeanour marked him out as someone of unusual intelligence and strength of character, only spoke when the Defence minister had nothing to say. This was a pity because what Marshal Yazov did say was conventional and predictable. I quickly turned the conversation to the subject of East-West relations. I said that it was good that we were entering a new period of better relations but that we should each of us understand the need for strong defence. There was scope for reducing conventional forces and nuclear weapons and for modifying our strategy to new circumstances. But we would continue to need some nuclear weapons which were the only effective deterrent. Marshal Yazov took up the line that I had heard so many times from the Soviets before about the need to do away with nuclear weapons altogether. I said that I took leave to doubt whether the views of Marshal Yazov and his colleagues on nuclear weapons were really very different from mine. After all, they did have an awful lot of them and presumably for some purpose. Unlike President Gorbachev, Marshal Yazov stated that the Soviets would simply not accept a united Germany in NATO. But whether this was because his views were genuinely different from the Soviet leadership or because he expressed them less subtly I could not fathom.

The following morning I flew to Kiev. My main purpose was to attend the ‘British Days’ Exhibition which was the return leg of an exchange which had opened with a ‘Soviet Month’ in Birmingham in 1988. When the idea of my going had first been mooted I had made enquiries with the Foreign Office about how much was being spent on the exhibition and — as usual — found that it had been subject to some penny pinching. Partly as a result of my pressure, the Kiev Exhibition turned out to be very good indeed. The intention was to portray a typical street in a typical British northern town showing shops and, in particular, the house of an ordinary working-class British family. When the local people looked around at the hi-fi and other domestic gadgets and luxuries and the car standing in the garage at first they could not believe their eyes. As I went round, they asked me whether this could really be true; did ordinary British people really live like this? I said that indeed they did. Well, came the reply, all we have been told was a lie and this proves it. In fact, everything in that house was typical, even down to the teenager’s bedroom which — like most teenagers’ bedrooms — had clothes and other possessions strewn about it. My immediate reaction was that it should all have been tidied up, but I was eventually persuaded that this was more authentic.

But if the Ukrainians had not been prepared for what life was like in Britain, I found that I had not been properly briefed on the situation in Ukraine. Everywhere I went I found blue and yellow bunting and flags (the colours of pre-Soviet Ukraine) and signs demanding Ukrainian independence. This put me into something of a quandary. Much as I admired General de Gaulle, I was not going to outrage my Soviet hosts by proclaiming the Ukrainian equivalent of ‘Vive le Quebec Libre’. It was not just that I was convinced that Mr Gorbachev was never going to let Ukraine out of the Soviet Union without a struggle. That not just the USSR but even Russia would be threatened by the emergence of a separate Ukraine was a view that non-communist Russians as well as communists held. (In fact, since the break-up of the USSR, the emergence of an independent Ukraine has proved to be strategically advantageous for Europe and the West and much still rides on its economic and political stability and success.)

Any hope that I could avoid saying something which would be misinterpreted by one side or the other quickly evaporated. The recently appointed First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Mr Ivashko, said that it was a pity that I had made no time in my schedule to meet members of the newly elected Ukrainian Supreme Soviet. Would I be prepared to do so? I agreed. I imagined that this would be a modest and informal reception. I entered the Parliament building and then went through the door into the Chamber to find, to my horror, that the whole hemi-cycle was full. I had no prepared speech and it was clear that they were expecting one. I thought that at least I would be able to think up something to say while I was being introduced. But Mr Ivashko simply welcomed me and then asked me to speak. I managed well enough, as I always do. But then came questions. One of the questioners told me that there were ten deputies present who used to be political prisoners. He said that he knew that it was due to my efforts and the efforts of President Reagan that he was there as a deputy able to see me today and not still a prisoner. But what I could not do was to agree to set up an embassy in Kiev; nor could I put Ukraine in the same category as the Baltic States. I felt that I disappointed them. But I went away understanding just how fundamental the whole problem of nationality was becoming and doubtful about whether the Soviet Union could — or should — ultimately be kept together.

The final leg of my visit to the USSR was Leninakan in Armenia, where I was to open a school built with British aid after the earthquake of 1988. It was another politically sensitive occasion for there had been fierce fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Soviets were very jittery about security. The school itself was one of the few buildings which had been reconstructed: the general Soviet performance of rebuilding the area had been lamentable. I found myself engulfed in huge, enthusiastic crowds — to such an extent, indeed, that I was turned back by the security people from my original route. Though I had to cut short my visit I came away with no more doubt than in the Ukraine of the immense national fervour of the people around me.

VISIT TO CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND HUNGARY IN SEPTEMBER 1990

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 (now Czech Prime 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. I spent most of my time in Prague — a city which I did not know but where all my surroundings reminded me that I was genuinely at the heart of Europe. But I also visited Bratislava, whose economy and built environment bore many more scars of communist vandalism. The Slovakian Prime Minister, Mr Meciar, assured me that Czechoslovakia would remain a federal state and this seemed to me sensible until more economic progress had been made. But it was not to be.

Back in Prague I had discussions with President Havel. I had met him before when he came to Britain and though his politics were to the left of mine it was impossible to avoid liking and admiring him. He for his part shared my views about the need to have the eastern European countries in the Community as soon as that was practically possible. He also liked my ideas about a European Magna Carta and the development of the CSCE. I felt that he would be an ally in the course on which I had embarked in Europe.

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. I had met Mr Antall on several previous occasions and 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 once and for all 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.

Another problem which the Hungarians, Czechs and Poles faced was that their security services were deeply penetrated by the KGB and this was a major obstacle to their taking a full role in intelligence co-operation with the West. In Czechoslovakia the Government had expelled Communist Party members from the old Intelligence Service altogether. My discussion with Mr Antall in his office in the Parliament building — which I was delighted now to see used for its intended purpose, unlike the time of my visit in 1984 — illustrated just how careful they had to be. At one point he pointed across to a statue presented to his liberal communist predecessor, Mr Nemeth, by the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr Ryzhkov. Apparently, on close examination it had turned out to be bugged. I said that I hoped it was still being monitored. On further inspection it seemed so ugly that I suggested he throw it away altogether. If only disposing of the rest of communism’s legacy were so easy.

RESHAPING NATO

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 — partly personal chemistry and partly genuine differences of policy — 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 which my earlier telephone conversation about the CSCE and the reasons for retaining the Warsaw Pact had apparently somewhat scrambled. 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 opposed to just military planning, 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 unwieldly 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.

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:

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 a foreign policy I pursued met with unambiguous failure, it was my policy on German reunification. This policy was to encourage democracy in East Germany while slowing down the country’s reunification with West Germany. With the first half of that policy no one disagrees. Nor at the time did everyone disagree with the second, to which indeed frequent lip service was paid. Most observers were unaware of the nationalist passion for German unity that burned in the East. Indeed, even the dissident leaders of the East German demonstrations that led to freedom were themselves unaware of it, being in favour of a free, reformed, independent East Germany, rather than a larger Federal Republic. And Germany’s neighbours all hoped to avoid this latter outcome because they saw it as destabilizing an already unsettled continent.

In the event, the desire for unity among Germans on both sides of the Elbe proved irresistible. So the policy failed.

But was the policy wrong? That is a more complex question requiring a more nuanced reply. Look first at the consequences of the rapid reunification as they worked themselves out. West Germany’s absorption of its next-door relation has been economically disastrous, and that disaster has spread to the rest of the European Community via the Bundesbank’s high interest rates and the ERM. We have all paid the price in unemployment and recession. East German political immaturity has affected the whole country in the form of a revived (though containable) neo-Nazi and xenophobic extremism. Internationally, it has created a German state so large and dominant that it cannot be easily fitted into the new architecture of Europe.

Look also at the incidental benefits that the policy brought about. It forced the German Government to clarify the border question with its eastern neighbours. More generally, it provided the occasion whereby the CSCE framework was established to ensure that existing borders would not be changed by unilateral action or without general agreement. It strengthened the relationship between Britain and the other countries of central and eastern Europe who now, to some extent, see us as attentive guardians of their interests. But the fundamental argument for slowing German reunification was to create a breathing space in which a new architecture of Europe could be devised where a united Germany would not be a destabilizing influence/over-mighty subject/bull in a china shop. Arriving prematurely as it did, a united Germany has tended to encourage three unwelcome developments: the rush to European federalism as a way of tying down Gulliver; the maintenance of a Franco-German bloc for the same purpose; and the gradual withdrawal of the US from Europe on the assumption that a German-led federal Europe will be both stable and capable of looking after its own defence.

I will not reiterate here all the reasons I have given earlier for believing these developments to be damaging. But I will hazard the forecast that a federal Europe would be both unstable internally and an obstacle to harmonious arrangements — in trade, politics and defence — with America externally; that the Franco-German bloc would increasingly mean a German bloc (in economics, a deutschmark bloc) with France as very much a junior partner; and that as a result America would, first bring its legions home, and subsequently find itself at odds with the new European player in world politics.

These developments are not inevitable. One revelation that emerged from the failure of Britain’s German policy was the evident anxiety of France in relation to German power and ambition. It should not be beyond the capacity of a future British prime minister to rebuild an Anglo-French entente as a counter-balance to German influence. Nor, as part of this policy, to shift the emphasis in Europe back towards the original Gaullist idea of a Europe des Patries. What these new approaches will require, however, is a recognition from the French political élite that any stable European balance of power will require the more or less permanent presence of the United States in Europe. And that is a recognition that so far French presidents have been prepared to grant only in private.