Margaret Thatcher took office in the final decade of the Cold War and became closely aligned with the policies of United States President Ronald Reagan, based on their mutual distrust of Communism,[85] although she strongly opposed Reagan's October 1983 invasion of Grenada.[86]During her first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclearcruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe,[85] and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.[85] She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces[87] at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices).[88] Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of January 1986, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.[89]
On 2 April 1982 the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering theFalklands War.[90] The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of her [Thatcher's] premiership".[91] At the suggestion of Harold Macmillanand Robert Armstrong,[91] she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the war,[92] which by 5–6 April had authorised and despatched a naval task force to retake the islands.[93] Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentinian deaths totalled 649, half of them after the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror torpedoed and sank the cruiser ARA General Belgrano on 2 May.[94] Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and notably by Tam Dalyell in parliament for the decision to sink the Belgrano, but overall she was considered a highly talented and committed war leader.[95] The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided Labour opposition contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.[96]
The Thatcher government supported the Khmer Rouge keeping their seat in the UN after they were ousted from power in Cambodia by theCambodian–Vietnamese War.Although denying it at the time they also sent the SAS to train the Khmer Rouge alliance to fight against the Vietnamese backed People's Republic of Kampuchea government.[97][98][99]
Thatcher's antipathy towards European integration became more pronounced during her premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. During a 1988 speech in Bruges she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community (EC), forerunner of theEuropean Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision making.[100] She had supported British membership of the EC, despite believing that the role of the organisation should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC's approach was at odds with her views on smaller government and deregulation;[101] in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels".[101] Thatcher was firmly opposed to the UK's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary union, believing that it would constrain the British economy,[102] despite the urging of her Chancellor of the ExchequerNigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe,[103] but she was persuaded by John Major to join in October 1990, at what proved to be too high a rate.[104]
In April 1986 Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque,[105] citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.[106][nb 3] Polls suggested that less than one in three British citizens approved of Thatcher's decision.[108] She was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader Saddam Husseininvaded neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990.[109] During her talks with US President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention,[109] and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.[110] Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to go wobbly!"[111] Thatcher's government provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.
Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was".[112] She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984, and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers.[113] Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.[114] In contrast she was an advocate of Croatian and Slovenianindependence.[115] In a 1991 interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher commented on the Yugoslav Wars; she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states and supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army attacked.[116]
Source: wikipedia.org
