When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, many in the West
had come to believe that the Cold War could not and should not be
won, that anti-Communism was morally wrong, and that the future lay
in détente between the superpowers and the evolution of
democracy into ever-deepening state socialism. By the time she left
office, the Berlin Wall had fallen and Eastern Europe was
liberated. A year later, the Soviet Union crumbled into the dustbin
of history. Democracy and freedom were on the advance.
Prime Minister Thatcher's contributions to this victory were
profound. Together with the firm vision of her close friend
President Ronald Reagan, the inspiration of Pope John Paul II, and
the determination of the oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe and
Russia, her courage and leadership were instrumental to democracy's
defeat of Communism.
Even before 1979, the Soviet Union derisively described her as
the Iron Lady. She proved that, for once, the Communists spoke the
truth, turning what was intended as an insult into an honor hailed
around the world. As the liberated nations and their friends and
allies commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989, her part in this great victory must be remembered
with gratitude.
Margaret Thatcher's Vision of "A Real
Détente"
Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party in
February 1975. In a major speech to the Chelsea Conservative
Association that July, she set out her vision for British foreign
policy and the unity of the West. She expressed her support for "a
real détente" but pointed out that when Leonid Brezhnev, the
Soviet leader, lectured his population on peaceful co-existence, he
proclaimed that this "in no way implies the possibility of relaxing
the ideological struggle."
Even more vitally, as Thatcher put it, "throughout this decade
of détente, the armed forces of the Soviet Union have
increased, are increasing, and show no signs of diminishing." A
real détente would be one that "Russia supports in actions
as well as words." Instead, the U.S.S.R. was arming while
simultaneously deepening its domestic repression. Moscow's behavior
had consequences for the policy of the West, because "a nation that
denies those freedoms to its own people will have few scruples in
denying them to others." Free Europe needed to stand united, field
a military strong enough to deter aggression, and work--through
NATO--with the United States if it was to prevail in its common
purpose: the "pursuit and preservation of liberty."[1]
These were the themes that dominated Thatcher's public life,
both in opposition and in government, for the next 15 years. She
insisted on speaking the truth about the Soviet Union. This was
deeply unpopular in many circles, both at home and abroad, where
her honesty was regarded as dangerous to the effort to develop
closer relations with the U.S.S.R. But Thatcher, in keeping with
the conviction she had held since her youth, believed that what was
truly dangerous was to indulge the worship of the state that had
created a tyranny in the U.S.S.R. and a suffocating socialism in
Britain itself.
She coupled this clarity of moral vision with a belief in the
essential unity of the West, including the U.S., Britain, and
Western Europe, and of the vital importance of Western armed
strength to peace and security. But her vision was not one of
eternal stalemate. Rather, precisely because she believed that the
U.S.S.R's foundations were faulty, she argued that, if it was
contained by the West's arms and confronted by its superior, free
economies and the reality of its liberties, the Communist state
would eventually be forced to recognize its own failure.
Courage and Leadership, at Home and
Abroad
Thatcher took office after the Conservative Party won a smashing
victory in the May 1979 general election. The challenges she faced
were vast, though Ronald Reagan's 1980 U.S. electoral victory was a
vital source of strength. Reagan had first met Thatcher in 1975,
and both leaders had immediately recognized that they shared
fundamental principles. As leaders of great and independent nations
they acted not in union but in concert, ultimately agreeing on the
major challenges of the 1980s.
The first such challenge was to redress the strategic balance
between the Soviet Union and the West. On December 12, 1979, the
NATO alliance decided to deploy cruise and Pershing II missiles in
Western Europe to counter the Soviet SS-20 mobile system. This
decision was unpopular with many, and it led to years of
contentious protests. But with Thatcher's full and courageous
support, the deployment proceeded. Eight years later, the U.S. and
the U.S.S.R. signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty,
which marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War in Europe and
vindicated Thatcher's belief in NATO, in the Anglo-American
alliance, and in the importance of peace through strength.
The second challenge was to convince democracy's enemies
throughout the world that the West had recovered its will not just
to defend itself but to resist aggression with force. When in 1982
an authoritarian Argentine junta invaded the Falkland Islands,
Thatcher immediately recognized that Britain had to fight back. To
surrender the Falklands would be to give in to aggression and to
encourage it around the world. Under her inspiring leadership,
Britain retook the Islands. This decisive action stunned the
Soviets, who never believed the British would resist, and brought
democracy to Argentina by destroying the reputation of the junta.
The great wave of democratization around the world in the 1980s was
launched in part by Thatcher's actions during the Falkland
crisis.
The third challenge was to restore economic liberty in the West
and to break the perception that Western societies were slowly and
inevitably moving toward sluggish bureaucratic socialism. As long
as this perception persisted, the Soviet Union could believe that
to triumph, it needed only to endure. This problem was especially
acute in Britain, which had acquired a terrible reputation as a
declining, ungovernable nation dominated by far-left trade unions.
By defeating the effort of the coal miners union to bring the
nation to its knees in 1984-85 and by launching a far-reaching
program of denationalization, she rewrote the narrative of British
decline and led the Western economic revival of the 1980s that
destroyed the Soviets' last hope.
"I Spotted Him": Thatcher's Vision
Vindicated
Like Reagan's, Thatcher's vision was one of hope. Precisely
because of her faith in the West, she believed that the Cold War
could be won and that the Soviet Union would not last forever--the
inhumanity of its system would be its downfall. Even more eagerly
than Reagan, she looked for a Soviet leader who recognized that the
Soviet system, if confronted by a strong and united West, could
never win. She found him in Mikhail Gorbachev. As she wrote:
I always believed that our western system would ultimately
triumph, if we did not throw our advantages away, because it rested
on the unique, almost limitless, creativity and vitality of
individuals. Even a system like that of the Soviets, which set out
to crush the individual, could never totally succeed in doing so.
... This also implied that at some time the right individual could
challenge even the system which he had used to attain power. ...
That is why those who subsequently considered that I was led astray
from my original approach to the Soviet Union because I was dazzled
by Mr Gorbachev were wrong. I spotted him because I was searching
for someone like him.[2]
Gorbachev wanted to reform the Communist system, not end it. But
as Thatcher and Reagan recognized, once Communism began to
liberalize, it was doomed. Their faith in liberty brought strength
to the West, destruction to the totalitarians, and a peaceful
victory in the Cold War.
The Iron Lady
The Soviet leaders recognized Margaret Thatcher as a worthy
opponent because she spoke the truth about them. They were right to
do so, and their enmity honored her, as it honored all the Western
leaders and Eastern dissidents who resisted Communism. But the
steadfastness of the dissidents had to be matched with courage and
leadership in the West. It was liberty's fortune that, in Ronald
Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the world found leaders who shared a
vital faith in freedom.
The West must remember how Margaret Thatcher helped to end the
Cold War, for her principles are as vital now as they were thirty
years ago:
- Seek peace through strength,
- Resist aggression without fear, and
- Believe that any state that limits freedom destroys its own
future.
Those are the lessons the West must learn from the Iron
Lady.
Ted R.
Bromund, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in the Margaret
Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby
Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage
Foundation.