Why America must remain number one - Defense & Technology - Column

National Review, July 31, 1995 by Margaret Thatcher

ONCE a politician is given a public image by the media, it is almost impossible for him to shed it. At every important stage of his career, it steps between him and the public so that people seem to see and hear not the man himself but the invented personality to which he has been reduced.

My public image was on the whole not a disadvantageous one; I was ``the Iron Lady,'' ``Battling Maggie,'' ``Attila the Hen,'' etc. Since these generally gave opponents the impression I was a hard nut to crack, I was glad to be so portrayed, even though no real person could be so single-mindedly tough. In one respect, however, I suffered: whenever the topic of Europe arose, I was usually depicted as a narrow, nostalgic nationalist who could not bear to see the feudal trappings of Britain's ancien regime crumble into dust like Miss Havisham's wedding cake, when the sunlight of Europe's rational modernity was turned upon them. I was ``isolated,'' ``backward-looking,'' ``rooted in the past,'' ``clinging to the wreckage of Empire,'' and ``obsessed with the outdated notion of sovereignty.'' And virtually all my statements on Europe were read in that light.

In fact, of the three underlying reasons for my skepticism about European federalism, the most important was that the European Union was an obstacle to fruitful internationalism. (The other two were that Britain showed that established and ``satisfied'' nationalisms were the best building-blocks for international cooperation; and that democracy cannot function in a federal superstate where the multiplicity of languages makes democratic debate and democratic accountability mere slogans.) The European federalists are in fact ``narrow internationalists,'' ``little Europeans'' who consistently place the interests of the Community above the common interests of the wider international community. The EU came near to sabotaging GATT; it has sparked a series of trade disputes across the Atlantic; it has prolonged the instability of Central and Eastern Europe by maintaining absurdly high trade barriers on their infant export industries; and it threatens to divide NATO with premature and militarily incomprehensible plans to establish a ``European pillar'' or ``European defense identity.'' And most of these obstructive initiatives make no sense in their own terms; they are launched solely in order to bring nearer the day when ``Europe'' will be a fully fledged state with its own flag, anthem, army, parliament, government, currency, and eventually, one supposes, people.

I am not alone in warning that this could stimulate both the United States and Japan to safeguard themselves by forming similar protectionist empires. The world might then drift toward an Orwellian future of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia -- three mercantilist world empires on increasingly hostile terms. In the process the postwar international institutions that have served us well, like NATO and GATT, would be weakened, pushed aside and eventually made irrelevant. That prospect is still alive and should worry us.

IF WE look ahead still further, to the end of the twenty-first century, an even more alarming (because more unstable) future is on the cards. Consider the number of medium-to-large states that now stand poised on the edge of a free-market revolution: India, China, Brazil, possibly Russia. Add to these the present economic great powers: the United States, Japan, the European Union (or, with only a slight amendment of the scenario, a Franco-German ``fast lane'' bloc). What we are possibly looking at in 2095 is an unstable world in which there are more than half a dozen ``great powers,'' each with its own clients, all vulnerable if they stand alone, all capable of increasing their power and influence if they form the right kind of alliance, and all engaged willy-nilly in perpetual diplomatic maneuvers to ensure that their relative positions improve rather than deteriorate. In other words, 2095 might look like 1914 played on a somewhat larger stage.

Whether your favorite nightmare is Orwell's tripartite division of the spoils or this vision of 1914 revisited, the key to avoiding it is the same. Neither need come to pass if the Atlantic Alliance remains, in essence, America as the dominant power surrounded by allies which, in their own long-term interest, generally follow its lead. Such are the realities of population, resources, technology, and capital that if America remains the dominant partner in a united West, then the West can continue to be the dominant power in the world as a whole. And since collective security can only really be provided if there is a superpower of last resort, the rest of the world (apart from ``rogue states'' and terrorist groups) would generally support, or at least acquiesce in, such an international structure.

Britain's role in such a structure would, I believe, be a disproportionately influential one. That is not, however, my principal reason for supporting it. My reason is that such a world best meets the needs of international peace and collective prosperity. It would also be a liberal world -- politically, economically, and culturally -- and far more so than a world dominated by either Asian or Eurasian blocs, remarkable though their achievements have been.