Force of arms
Mrs Thatcher's visit to the United States was successful in that she and President Reagan clearly established a friendly working relationship. They think in much the same way, their outlook on their domestic problems and on the world is broadly similar and they enjoy each other's company. We can expect dealings between our country and the United States to be close and amicable in the immediate future, and it is more than likely that President Reagan will turn to London should he seek advice and counsel outside Washington. This is particularly likely in foreign affairs, where the combination of Mrs Thatcher's Iron Lady attitude towards the Soviet Union and Lord Carrington's diplomatic abilities produce a team which President Reagan and Secretary of State General Haig find much more congenial than any others to hand. Had Mrs Thatcher's economic Policies been proving themselves successful, she would have also been welcomed in Washington as the shining example of a right-winger who had got things right.As it is, much of the authority which she might have possessed and exercised in America was destroyed in advance of her visit by the failure of her policies here thus far to get the economy successfully turned round. Instead of hearing how Britain under her administration had at last managed to get things right, she had to listen to people citing Britain as an example of how even the best laid schemes could end up going wrong. This led to some embarrassments during her trip, and these were magnified by some of the more Purple passages in her speeches. It does not do to speak too much of our staunchness and loyalty as an ally.
The most tricky part of the Washington talks concerns the rapid deployment force. Mrs Thatcher's ready support for it and eager promise of a British contribution towards it immediately ran her into trouble in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf states took offence at the suggestion of any interference from such a force in their affairs. Back in London Mrs Thatcher has kept on explaining that a rapid deployment force would be available for use in any part of the world, not necessarily in the Middle East. But the fact is that it is in the context of oil that the rapid deployment force is being discussed, as Mrs Thatcher herself made clear in Iler remarks in the Commons following her return from Washington: The President and I discussed the threat to the stability of the Gulf and South-West Asia following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I said that Britain shared the determination of the United States, and of our other allies, `to prevent Soviet encroachment in this region. We discussed the creation of a rapid deployment force which would be available for use, if necessary, in an emergency in this or other areas of the world.' It is all too easy to express alarm at the very idea of a rapid deployment force crashing around the world making matters worse rather than better, and Mr Michael Foot's strictures will find much wider acceptance than most of what he has to say. He asked Mrs Thatcher whether she did not appreciate 'that some of the greatest dangers to the United States would be to intervene at the wrong time in the wrong place on the wrong side?' There would indeed be considerable alarm about the uses of a rapid deployment force if such a force were to be composed of only American troops and to be under sole American control. To have such a force thrust, without consultation among America's allies into, say, the Gulf, would be an appalling risk. At the same time, not to have such a force means, as we have seen and are seeing, that the West is without any adequate means of meeting Soviet encroachments.
In New York Mrs Thatcher said that Western strength was a necessary precondition for negotiating with the Russians. Her remarks stung Mr Leonid Zamyatin, the official Soviet spokesman, to reply, saying that any peace built on 'piles of arms' would not be durable. The post-1945 peace was built essentially on piles of American arms and now endures of a rough balance between the Warsaw Pact's piles of arms and NATO's. President Reagan's tough stance towards the Soviet Union has elicited Mr Brezhnev's plea for a summit. The Russians say they have followed Mrs Thatcher's visit to America with great attention. All the evidence supports the view that the Soviet Union responds to strength and that only a peace based on arms can endure. The West looks to be belatedly strengthening itself. To this slow and cumbersome process, Mrs Thatcher's American trip has made a useful contribution.
Previous page
