Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher ushered in an extraordinary period of diplomacy
During her historic, ground-breaking visit to Moscow in 1987, I interviewed Margaret Thatcher after she had enjoyed five hours of talks with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
“Enjoyed” is the appropriate word. “He is, as I am, combative in argument. He likes arguing,” she told me with relish, speaking in the baroque panelled rooms of the old British Embassy on the banks of the river Moskva, “He regards it, I think, in the same way as I do, as a way of getting the issues analysed and deciding what one is going to do. He does not shrink from it, so we argue in a very direct way. There is no jargon about it and there is no ill feeling at all. We are good friends at the end of it. It is a style which we both have. It is fortuitous and very good that we both like the same way of doing work and getting to the heart of the matter.”
Thatcher’s remarks prompt many thoughts in the week that Gorbachev died at the age of 91, praised in the West as a leader who wanted to make the world a better place while his funeral was snubbed in Russia by President Putin.
The first thought of a much younger colleague familiar with today’s media-evasive politicians on reading the interview transcript was how engaged the Prime Minister was with the questions, ready to give frank answers and to elaborate on her thoughts out loud.
Thatcher’s description of Gorbachev also anticipates much of what has been freshly printed in his obituaries. He was a leader who liked to make his case – determined to talk at length, to other leaders, to the media, and informally on the streets to the Russian people.
I was most struck by the reminder of what an extraordinary period the 1980s was in terms of diplomacy, global politics, and the leaders of the day. Ending the Cold War ultimately demanded a new settlement between the USSR and the West, led by the United States. But at the top level, the requisite warming of relations actually involved three leaders: Gorbachev, US President Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister. Their summits, visits and communications had real consequences, ultimately resulting in the removal of the iron curtain across Europe, and the return of democratic freedoms to millions of people. For once, these meetings were not mere photo-opportunities for vain politicians.
Thatcher made the first moves. The proposed deployment on British soil of a new generation of American intermediate range nuclear forces (INF) caused major controversy in the early 1980s. The plans rekindled CND has a political force and provoked the setting up the women’s peace camp at RAF Greenham Common. The weapons were designed as a defence against attack by the USSR. On a parallel track in pursuit of peace, Thatcher pursued a “strategy of closer relations with… the Soviet Union. Clearly there must be more contact with Soviet leaders. I was keen to invite [them].”
Gorbachev accepted her invitation. He and his wife Raisa drove to Chequers in December 1984. Thatcher was impressed by his openness, charm and his wide-ranging interests including in the British farmland he had passed. Afterwards she famously pronounced that he was “a man with whom I can do business”. A week later, just three days before Christmas, she flew to Camp David to take the same message to President Reagan, who had just been elected to his second term in the White House.
A confidential record of their discussions shows that, in spite of their friendship, this was no cosy meeting of minds. Much to the consternation of the Soviets, Reagan was committed to the so called “Star Wars” missile defence programme. Thatcher told Reagan that she “foresaw grave difficulties with the deployment of ballistic missile defence.” But “President Reagan, speaking with notable intensity, said that he wished to explain personally to the Prime Minister his thinking on the Strategic Defence Initiative.”
Thatcher assured him that she had raised all his concerns with the Soviet leader. She did enough to encourage the President to embark on a series of summits with Gorbachev. There had been no US-USSR Summit since 1979.
They began by meeting on neutral territory in Switzerland in November 1985. The Geneva Summit was largely about confidence building between the two men. It included a private walk during which, Gorbachev later claimed, Reagan asked if the US and USSR could set aside their differences to fight a possible invasion by aliens. There was a two-day news blackout as negotiations continued. We journalists fought for a place at the closing news conference. But the lucky winners were rather less keen when they stumbled out of a discourse by the Soviet leader which lasted almost three hours.
Reagan and Gorbachev next met a year later in Iceland. Allegedly both men had assumed it was also a neutral country and were surprised to find out that it was in fact a NATO member with American troops stationed at its bases. There was not enough accommodation available for the delegations and media. Hotel ships were anchored off Reykjavik, while some of us were billeted as paying guests in local family homes. There was a dramatic moment during late night discussions when Reagan reportedly asked why both sides could not simply abandon their nuclear weapons altogether. But as in Geneva, the Reykjavik summit ended inconclusively.
Mrs Thatcher was greatly alarmed by reports of Reagan’s nuclear disarmament idea and flew to Washington to discuss it privately with the President, who seemed chastened and less engaged after his meeting with Gorbachev. Ever the pragmatist she continued to pursue détente through less spectacular diplomacy. Not that there was any lack of striking pictures of her next gambit, a visit to Russia.
British Prime Ministers have much more flexibility on foreign trips than US Presidents who are tied down by protocol, secret service protection and the need for a 20 car motorcade of vehicles flown in from the US. Mrs Thatcher had a carefully selected new wardrobe from Aquascutum but much of her activities in Russia seemed improvised. Her party commandeered local Zil limousines and, alongside official engagements, careened off to meetings with dissidents, orthodox priests and impromptu walkabouts. She gave an interview on Russian television. Her actions deliberately encouraged Soviet Russians to embrace the perestroika and glasnost – reconstruction and openness – which Gorbachev was advocating.
To some in Britain, the Russia trip looked like campaigning in the run up to what would be Thatcher’s third victory in the 1987 General Election. It coincided with a trip to Washington by the Labour leader Neil Kinnock during which he was cold shouldered by the Reagan Administration.
Once again Thatcher inspired Reagan to press on with his contacts with Gorbachev. That summer he was in Berlin and delivered his prescient “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall speech” which was little noticed at the time. By the end of 1987 the US and USSR had agreed an INF Treaty, removing the need to deploy both star wars and the extra weapons in Europe.
In 1988, his last year in office, Reagan attended a pair of celebratory summits with Gorbachev in Moscow and Washington. Margaret Thatcher was his final guest of honour at the White House. The following year, the Berlin Wall fell just as Thatcher was being forced out of office by Conservative MPs. The Soviet Union itself broke up in 1991, and Gorbachev resigned on 25th December that year.
The three leaders’ achievements may not last forever. But at least as Mrs Thatcher told me back in 1987 “Mr Gorbachev let more people out of prison and out of the Soviet Union than has happened for a very very long time… I believe he will try to be more liberal. I believe it is part of a more open society, but there is nevertheless quite some way to go.”