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

National Review, July 31, 1995 by Margaret Thatcher

LET ME stress again, however, that it will not come to pass unless America is persuaded to remain the dominant European power militarily and economically. That means we must ensure that American troops remain in Europe for the foreseeable future, and in particular for the next few years, when budgetary pressures will tempt the U.S. to withdraw. In these circumstances, the EU's creeping tendency to establish itself as a separate ``third force'' risks alienating America and sending the legions home. The stakes are high. And to divide the West and move closer to permanent world instability in order that Europe may enjoy a modest increase in status seems to me the most mischievous and irresponsible form of nationalism.

The best service that can be done by those committed to the ideals of freely cooperating nation states which relish free enterprise and welcome free trade is to gather together all those politicians, jurists, economists, writers, and commentators from the different European states to relaunch a movement for transatlantic cooperation including a wider Europe and the Americas. As I urged in my Bruges speech in 1988:

Let us have a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward, and which preserves that Atlantic community -- that Europe on both sides of the Atlantic -- which is our noblest inheritance and our greatest strength.