Reagan and Thatcher

National Review, May 27, 1991 by Brad Miner

Historians of contemporary events, especially biographers of the living, must struggle with the problem of seduction. Edmund Morris, who will soon publish his history of the Reagan years, recently lamented that the former President is "the most mysterious man I have ever confronted," a statement that cannot but discomfort Random House, which bought the forthcoming book for more than $3 million, a price paid surely on the assumption that Mr. Reagan would be pin-stuck like a prize swallowtail. Speaking of the former President's charm, Mr. Morris said naively: "I was seduced." He now claims to have recovered a more proper journalistic disillusion; no doubt the sort that masquerades as fairness. This supports the usual assumption that historical perspective improves with the passing of decades, even centuries.

But not necessarily, Reagan and Thatcher, by Geoffrey Smith, is an example of a clear-eyed chronicle of recent history. It's a book later historians will treasure, but which they themselves would be unable to write. If Mr. Smith was seduced, it was by his own judgment, but then so is the reader.

That the "special relationship" between America and Britain was closer during the Reagan--Thatcher years than at any other time since World War II cannot be disputed. What Mr. Smith demonstrates is that, while the Roosevelt--Churchill partnership had, as he writes, "the most fateful consequences," the friendship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was "warmer personally and closer ideologically . . . the range of their agreement was broader, embracing domestic as well as international affairs. It stood the test of time better." In some ways (with due respect to Nancy and Denis), it was a perfect marriage, one in which her virtues tended to compensate for his vices, and the other way around. As in most marriages, it was not precisely a union of equals. Is she was often the more aggressive partner, it was because he was arguably the more powerful. And this is not just a description of their personalities (although it fits, loosely); this is the geopolitical reality: Britain may lead only if American follows: America may go its own way.

The future President and future Prime Minister first met in 1975. He was the recently retired governor of California, and she the newly elected leader of the opposition. From the start they felt philosophically and personally akin. Throughout the eight years during which they shared Western leadership that kinship was tested and rarely found wanting. Of course, self-interest, national and individual, and the inevitable quid pro quo of political alliance were hardly banished, and yet the friendship more than once subverted Realpolitik. Over the pragmatic objections of, among others, Jean Kirkpatrick, Mr. Reagan gave Britain active support in the Falklands War. Bypassing consultation with her full Cabinet, Mrs. Thatcher allowed American planes bound for Libya to use British bases for staging. This latter decision was politically dangerous for Mrs. Thatcher (a poll would show overwhelming disapproval in Britain), and it was also personally troubling.

The chapters "The Libyan Gambit" and "Irangate: What Thatcher Knew" demonstrate one of Mr. Smith's literary virtues: the ability to make diplomatic history riverting. The go-ahead for British basing of the anti-terrorist strike was vexing, he explains, because Mrs. Thatcher was aware--more than a year before it became public--that the U.S. was secretly supplying arms to Iran in the hope of liberating Americans held hostage by Lebanese terrorists. A month later, she was with Mr. Reagan at the economic summit in Tokyo listening to him make what the New York Times called "a dramatic and highly personal appeal" on behalf of a proposal to end the export of arms to states that sponsor terrorism. Mr. Smith observes:

Some tongues must have been in cheeks as the signatories completed this charade . . . Reagan may have convinced himself that he was exporting arms to those who were in touch with terrorists, not to those who were sponsoring or supporting them. Thatcher would not have deluded herself with such casuistry. For her to have taken that statement entirely at face value, as if she had no doubts about American conduct, was not an act of complicity. It was, however, an act of deliberate policy.

When the Lebanese magazine Al Shiraa broke the story in November 1986, Mrs. Thatcher still held her tongue. It must have been hard. "Whatever personal sympathy she may have felt for Reagan," Mr. Smith writes, "it is inconceivable that she had any tolerance for the muddled and contradictory policies he had been pursuing . . . The Administration's conduct was absolutely contrary to what he had been saying to his allies and to the principles that she herself believed in." But, Mr. Smith concludes, "What is the use of a friend," she might have said, who supports you only when you are in the right?"

A poignant lesson of Reagan and Thatcher is that leadership, even individually powerful and successfully coordinated, has its limits, both in scope and in time. The fabric of the Reagan Presidency was unraveled by Irangate. The scandal did not undo the accomplishments, but it did signal the end of the Reagan era--more than two years before the election of George Bush. We see to much of our leaders; the pressures upon them are too great; they unwind like clockwork toys. Mrs. Thatcher began uncoiling over the very issue on which she had always been rock steady.