Prior to the Yom Kippur War, Israel treated Egypt with contempt. That changed on 6 October 1973, when Egyptian forces swarmed across the Suez Canal. They were eventually driven back, but that was immaterial. ‘No matter what happens,’ Anwar Sadat told his people, ‘there has been a victory which cannot be erased . . . Our wounded nation has restored its honor and the political map of the Middle East has been changed.’1
Despite his triumph, Sadat remained in a precarious position. Egyptians grew impatient with undelivered promises of economic prosperity. Violent riots over food prices placed enormous pressure on him to cut his military budget and channel money to the poor. That, however, was only possible if peace with Israel could be forged. Sadat hoped to use Egypt’s new prestige to broker agreement, but Israel proved unwilling in the turmoil following the war. Golda Meir, her reputation damaged, resigned in June 1974. In her place came Yitzhak Rabin, a man disinclined to take risks at a time of oil crisis and world recession. Despite Sadat’s genuine desire to move the peace process forward, the period from December 1973 to January 1977 was characterized by persistent stalemate.
The Sinai I and II agreements allowed the disengagement of forces and the re-opening of the Suez Canal, but that was a far cry from long-term peace. Kissinger tried to forge a settlement based on UN Resolution 242 – the idea that Israel would exchange the occupied territories for peace – but Israel found that distasteful. The biggest stumbling block was the West Bank, where settlements were being established as a calculated snub to Palestinian demands for self-determination.
The situation changed in 1977, when new actors took the stage. The election of Jimmy Carter in November 1976 offered a stark contrast to Kissinger’s cynicism. Carter’s peace credentials were beyond dispute; he was motivated by morality, not opportunism. Less than a month after assuming office, he wrote to Sadat confessing that he would ‘count heavily on your advice as we begin to find ways to make significant progress . . . toward a just and lasting peace’. Sincerity was his strength, but also his weakness, since he could not hide his sympathy for the Palestinians. Trouble erupted when he mentioned the idea of a Palestinian ‘homeland’ to Rabin, who was contemplating a withdrawal to defensible borders. That poor choice of words scuppered further progress.2
Opportunity arose anew when Rabin resigned on 22 April 1977. At the subsequent election, Labour was defeated, with Likud, a coalition led by Menachem Begin, forming the new government. On the surface, Likud’s rigidly ideological foreign policy seemed to rule out compromise with Egypt. The principle of a Jewish homeland was inviolate, with any surrender of occupied territories seen as a betrayal of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust. A central plank in Likud’s campaign had been the right of Jews to settle in the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai.
Begin’s pedigree perfectly embodied Likud ideology. One of his brothers and both parents died in the Holocaust. After the war, he became leader of Irgun, the Zionist terrorists responsible for the King David Hotel bombing in 1946. Personal struggles shaped his view of Israel – adversity was met with relentless aggression and uncompromising belief. ‘From my early youth’, he remarked, ‘I had been taught by my father, who went to his death at Nazi hands voicing his faith in God . . . that we Jews were to return to the land of Israel – not go, travel or come, but return.’ In real terms, this meant that the status of the West Bank and Gaza was non-negotiable. They were part of the ancient realm of King David that Zionists were pledged to recreate – a place not ‘occupied’, but ‘liberated’. Begin insisted on referring to the West Bank by the ancient biblical names, Judea and Samaria. Likud policy was acted out in the new settlements established in the occupied territories. The day after his election victory, Begin visited the Elon Moreh settlement and declared: ‘We stand on the land of liberated Israel. There will be many Elon Morehs. There will be many, many settlements in the coming weeks.’3
Begin derided suggestions that Egypt might formally recognize the existence of Israel, a massive step for an Arab nation. ‘My dear Egyptian friends,’ he replied, ‘we have existed . . . without your recognition for 3,700 years. We never asked your President or government to recognize our right to exist.’ All this suggested that the peace process would be put on hold for the term of Begin’s ministry. Begin, however, delighted in wrong-footing his critics. Discussions were soon opened with Carter and Sadat. It quickly became apparent, however, that Begin’s notions of security and sovereignty remained huge obstacles.4
Sadat responded to Begin’s intransigence with an outrageous gamble. On 9 November 1977, he told the Egyptian National Assembly: ‘You heard me saying that I am prepared to go to the ends of the earth if . . . doing so will prevent any of my officers or men being killed or wounded. I really am ready to go to the ends of the earth and Israel will be amazed to hear that . . . I am prepared to go to their very home, to the Knesset itself and discuss things with them.’5
The risks involved in that declaration were too huge for its sincerity to be doubted. At a stroke, Sadat had proven his credentials as a peacemaker. That forced Begin to respond positively, otherwise his peace feelers would have been exposed as fraudulent. Offering an invitation to Sadat nevertheless felt like swallowing poison. ‘We, the Israelis’, he replied, ‘stretch out our hands to you. It is not, as you know a weak hand. If attacked, we shall always defend ourselves . . . But . . . it will be a pleasure to welcome your President.’6
When Begin met Sadat at Ben-Gurion airport on 19 November he combined welcome with warning: ‘I am waiting for you, Mr. President, and all the ministers are waiting for you.’ Sadat began by telling the Knesset that he wanted to save ‘my Egyptian Arab people and the pan-Arab nation from the horrors of . . . destructive wars’. There followed eloquent oration on the theme that ‘no one can build his happiness . . . [on] the misery of others’. That implied a need to abandon old verities. Egypt would offer Israel recognition. ‘I declare it to the whole world, that we accept to live with you in permanent peace based on justice.’ Israelis, however, would have to recognize that ‘you have to give up once and for all the dreams of conquest and give up the belief that force is the best method for dealing with the Arabs’. That meant, specifically, not just an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, but recognition of the rights ‘of the people of Palestine for . . . a state on their land’. Refusing to mince his words, he concluded: ‘You have to face reality bravely, as I have done . . . Peace cannot last if attempts are made to impose fantasy concepts on which the world has turned its back.’7
Sadat’s speech was eloquent and optimistic, Begin’s reply stern and mean-spirited. Balloons of hope were punctured or tethered firmly to earth. If Sadat’s speech suggested a new and promising future, Begin’s evoked a familiar and depressing past. There were inevitable references to the Holocaust and to the bloody struggle for a Jewish homeland – a struggle of ‘few against the many, weak against the strong’. He railed against those who wished ‘to choke and destroy the . . . last hope of the Jewish nation’, reminding Sadat that on four occasions Israel had been forced to fight for her survival. ‘We have sworn an eternal vow, this entire generation . . . We shall never again place our nation in such danger.’ While he did not reject the offer of peace, he emphasized that peace could not compromise security or heritage. He claimed that everything was open to negotiation, but conspicuously omitted mention of Palestine.8
The different tone of the two speeches was subsequently echoed in different approaches to negotiation. Sadat insisted that he was not interested in ‘a partial peace, mainly to terminate the state of belligerency’. Yet Begin sought nothing more. He offered a partial withdrawal from Sinai, but simultaneously encouraged new Jewish settlements there, not to mention in the West Bank and Gaza. His obstinacy put Sadat in a difficult position. As all Egyptians understood, the risk he had taken would be worthwhile only if it produced something sublime, especially since talking to Israel imperilled Arab unity. If nothing wonderful resulted, his detractors would dismiss him as weak – an appeaser, if not a traitor.9
‘It is possible to establish a peace in hours,’ Sadat complained. ‘The only obstacle is Mr. Begin.’ He hinted that unless significant progress was achieved before October 1979, he might cancel the Sinai Disengagement Agreement. The next step, everyone understood, might be another war. That worried Carter, as did the very real possibility that if Sadat failed, an anti-American extremist would take his place. Carter was not prepared to allow the breakthrough achieved at the Knesset to be squandered. ‘It is imperative’, he wrote to Sadat on 3 August 1978, ‘that every effort be made to capitalize on this unprecedented opportunity . . . for a comprehensive and permanent peace agreement.’ An identical letter was sent to Begin. In his own version of the bold move, Carter invited both men to Camp David to ‘search for additional avenues toward peace’.10
The two leaders arrived on 5 September. Camp David was perfectly suited for Carter’s purposes. Since it is, in the fullest sense, a retreat, the summit could be conducted in an atmosphere of isolation, relaxation and informality. While it was impossible for an intruder to get in, it was also difficult for a guest to leave. The best way out was success. For two weeks, Carter politely kept the Israelis and Egyptians captive, in what Begin called an ‘elegant jail’. The unstated premise was that they would stay until they reached agreement.
Unlike most high-level negotiations, this one came without a previously agreed script. One American official called it a ‘virginal experience’ – nothing was agreed beforehand because nothing could be agreed. Begin arrived with the confidence of a man who had nothing to lose. He knew that he could return home empty-handed and still earn the admiration of his people, especially since many did not want him to succeed. That confidence encouraged intransigence. ‘We cannot sacrifice our security for the sake of Sadat’s prestige,’ he warned Carter. ‘We leaders of Israel cannot betray our children.’11
Since Begin had something concrete to offer, namely land, he had immense power. Sadat, in contrast, could offer only ethereal promises of peace. Unlike Begin, he faced ignominy if he went home empty-handed. Carter was likewise in a precarious position. The summit, he admitted, was ‘a very high-risk thing for me politically’. Widely seen as a lightweight, he desperately needed a success to bolster his lacklustre presidency. Beyond Carter’s personal risk, failure threatened to destroy America’s prestige with Arab nations, which was built on the shaky premise that she alone could influence Israeli policy.12
Two basic issues were at stake. The first was peace between Israel and Egypt. That hinged on the Sinai question. The second issue was the broader matter of a Middle East peace, which pivoted on Palestine. The status of Palestine was the glue holding Arab states together – a collective responsibility. The nature of the peace was therefore wholly dependent on that issue, yet settling it was virtually impossible. Begin would not budge on the right of Jews to live on their ‘sacred lands’. The solution that gradually evolved was to decouple Palestine from the more finite aim of peace between Israel and Egypt. That meant dismantling the notion of a single Arab nation.
After customary pleasantries on the first day, the delegations got down to business on the 6th with Begin and Sadat carefully setting out their stalls. Disagreements, though apparent, did not erupt. On the 7th, however, the knives came out. Sadat insisted that the Israelis withdraw from the Sinai, and Begin flatly refused. ‘Jimmy . . . said the meeting was mean,’ Rosalynn Carter noted. ‘I had heard raised voices from the bedroom where I was working. They were brutal with each other, personal, and he had had to break into arguments . . . when their words became too heated.’13
Begin’s intransigence over the land issue nearly caused the talks to collapse. ‘Sadat announced angrily that a stalemate had been reached,’ Carter recalled. ‘He saw no reason for the discussions to continue.’ As Begin and Sadat made for the door, ‘I got in front of them to partially block the way. I urged them not to break off their talks . . . Begin agreed . . . Sadat nodded his head. They left without speaking to each other.’ The same stalemate was apparent the following day. ‘Begin is not ready for peace,’ Sadat complained. In his diary, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser, noted: ‘Carter doubtless agreed with Sadat, but he admirably maintained his position as a conciliator.’14
Like a disappointed schoolmaster, Carter scolded his charges: ‘The atmosphere between the two of you is not conducive to any agreement.’ Abandoning three-way discussions, he decided instead to act as go-between. By working out a proposal with one leader and then taking it to the other for amendment, he tried to assemble an accord from ‘bite-size’ agreements. Some progress was made, but Begin remained firmly entrenched on key issues. ‘My right eye will fall out, my right hand will fall off before I ever agree to the dismantling of a single Jewish settlement,’ he declared. An angry Carter countered that Begin was throwing away peace for ‘a few illegal settlers on Egyptian land’. With no prospect of breaking the stalemate, Sadat announced on the 15th: ‘We can go no further.’ He requested a helicopter out. Carter’s response laced flattery with threat: ‘I explained . . . the extremely serious consequences . . . that his action would harm the relationship between Egypt and the United States, he would be violating his personal promise to me . . . [and] damage one of my most precious possessions – his friendship and our mutual trust.’ Decoded, that meant that American aid to Egypt would be cut if Sadat left.15
Somehow, the logjam broke. After securing Sadat’s agreement to stay, Carter offered to build new airfields for the Israelis and guaranteed them access to oilfields on the peninsula. In exchange, Begin would be required to relent on the settlements. He continued to protest, but finally agreed to submit the question to the Knesset. That, for the time being, proved acceptable to Sadat. On 17 September, the Camp David Accords were signed. On the following day, Kissinger telephoned with a simple message for Carter: ‘Hate to say: “You’ve not only done as well as I could have – but better.”’16
A limited deal had been struck: Israel and Egypt agreed on the principle of land for peace, with the details to be worked out later. While there is no doubting the importance of the agreement, the Accords are measured by what they neglected, namely Palestine. A ‘transfer of authority’ was mentioned, and the possibility of a ‘self-governing authority . . . in the West Bank and Gaza’ mooted, but this was simply verbiage. ‘Camp David is a dirty deal,’ the PLO leader Yasser Arafat shouted. As the weeks passed, events proved that assessment correct. Both Carter and Sadat thought that Begin had promised that no more settlements would be built on the West Bank during the five-year transition period set aside for the negotiation of Palestine’s future. Begin, however, insisted that no such moratorium had been established. Before long, new settlements were being built, with his enthusiastic encouragement.17
The other neglected issue was Jerusalem. Sadat insisted that ‘Legal and historical Arab rights in the city must be respected and restored.’ He wanted East Jerusalem to be under Arab sovereignty and insisted that the city’s holy places should be administered by their respective religious groups. Begin vetoed all that, arguing that ‘Jerusalem is one city indivisible, the capital of the State of Israel’. The issue was resolved by ignoring it – Jerusalem was absent from the agreement.18
On 27 September, after strident debate, the Knesset approved the Accords by a vote of 84 to 19, with 17 abstentions. Seven months and much argument later, the details of a settlement were finally resolved. Israel agreed to a staged withdrawal from 80 per cent of Sinai, which meant abandoning settlements. For that sacrifice, she received an Egyptian pledge to peace and a UN commitment to buttress the newly agreed borders, not to mention a lot of American money. The agreement was formally signed at the White House on 26 March 1979. Carter predicted that it would become ‘the cornerstone of a comprehensive settlement, one that can bless with peace all the peoples who have suffered from the conflict in the Middle East’. For their efforts, Begin and Sadat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. Sadat openly regretted that Carter had not also been honoured, since ‘It was [his] patience, persistence, and understanding which have made possible the progress thus far achieved.’19
Begin fared well as a result of the Accords. Some conservatives objected to the abandonment of Sinai settlements, but on the whole Israelis welcomed the step toward peace and the international approval that went with it. To those of a pragmatic bent, the fact that Israel’s southern frontier was now secure made it easier to deal with problems in the north. The invasion of the Lebanon in 1982 might not have occurred had the Israelis had to worry about Egypt. Likewise, Israeli actions against the PLO did not provoke a meaningful response from Cairo. Egypt looked the other way as Israel consolidated her hold upon the West Bank and Golan Heights through the relentless establishment of settlements.
‘This is certainly one of the happiest moments of my life,’ Sadat confessed on 26 March 1979. In contrast to Begin, however, he gained little from his gamble. Peace proved lonely. Arabs everywhere condemned the abandonment of the Palestinians. Syrians lambasted ‘Sadat the traitor’, while their president, Hafez Assad, argued that ‘Time will prove that the Middle East will still be in a state of war.’ Al Thawra, Iraq’s government paper, condemned Sadat for ‘continuing his cooperation in imperialist-Zionist plans’ and immediately called for ‘punishment’ in the form of an economic boycott. Eventually, eighteen Arab nations imposed sanctions and Egypt was expelled from the Arab League.20
The peace dividend never really materialized, despite an increased flow of American aid. Feeling cheated, Egyptians took their anger into the streets. Unrest was met with a combination of concession and repression, with the balance tilting increasingly toward the latter. Admired abroad, Sadat was despised at home. In September 1981, when a coup threatened, he arrested over 1,000 of his political enemies. The next month, during a parade to celebrate the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, he was assassinated by a Muslim extremist.
For Carter, Camp David was a lonely triumph in a presidency crowded with failure. ‘We have won, at least, the first step of peace – a first step on a long and difficult road,’ he remarked at the White House signing ceremony. He accepted that ‘Differences still separate the signatories to this treaty from each other and also from some of their neighbors who fear what they have done.’ But the important point was that peace had replaced war. ‘The soil of the two lands is not drenched with young blood. The countrysides of both lands are free from the litter and carnage of a wasteful war. Mothers in Egypt and Israel are not weeping today for their children fallen in senseless battle . . . Peace has come.’21 For Carter, it was a triumph achieved because of qualities personal to him. ‘Carter’s control of the environment so that his special dimensions of personality and persuasion were most effective was masterly,’ wrote the highly respected journalist Hugh Sidey. ‘He did not sermonize or drop new proposals like bombs. He took ideas from both men, combined them with his own, then carried them back as if they were the inspirations of his guests. Such subtle flattery got him almost everything.’ For a brief moment, Carter’s goodness unravelled bitterness and distrust.22
The peace was popular in the West because it seemed the product of goodness. For that reason, too, Sadat was widely admired. Within that admiration, however, lies a clue to the limitations of what had been achieved. The West admired him because he did not act according to type. He was not a typical Arab, whatever that was supposed to be. His ability to cross cultures seemed reason for optimism in a desert otherwise devoid of hope. But that which made him a hero in the West made him a traitor in the Middle East. A comprehensive and meaningful peace could not be built on the expectation that other Arab leaders would be willing to sacrifice their reputations and abandon so much in order to satisfy the West.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 seemed proof that nuclear deterrence worked. John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, faced with Armageddon, backed away from confrontation. In consequence, the world learned to stop worrying, even if it did not love the bomb. That sense of well-being was, however, based on the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, in which security rested on the ability to destroy an enemy many times over. By 1969 the US and USSR were together spending more than $50 million a day on nuclear armaments. Eventually, both powers had more weapons than they had targets. Russian shoe factories were included on the American target list, on the grounds that Russians need shoes. The guiding principle, one analyst confessed, was to ‘go . . . after what the adversary values. If he values his grandma, we . . . target grandmas.’23
Though arsenals continued to grow, so too did a willingness to negotiate. The Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963) was followed closely by the Hotline Agreement (1963), the Outer Space Treaty (1967) and the Sea Bed Treaty (1971). None of these affected the size of arsenals, but they did underline that the superpowers were talking. Détente was buttressed by essentially meaningless agreements.
MAD did not mean parity. While both superpowers expanded arsenals during the 1960s and early 1970s, the US stayed comfortably ahead. That lead did not, however, provide much advantage, since America did not possess a first-strike capability – in other words, the ability to deliver instantaneous destruction of a magnitude ruling out retaliation. Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s secretary of defense and originator of the MAD idea, learned that supremacy was essentially worthless in the nuclear age. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he reflected,
The United States . . . had approximately five thousand strategic warheads, compared to the Soviet’s three hundred. Despite an advantage of seventeen to one in our favor, President Kennedy and I were deterred from even considering a nuclear attack on the USSR by the knowledge that, although such a strike would destroy the Soviet Union, tens of their weapons would survive to be launched against the United States. These would kill millions of Americans. No responsible political leader would expose his nation to such a catastrophe.
That realization did not, however, prevent arsenals from expanding. In 1968, McNamara admitted that American nuclear superiority was ‘both greater than we had originally planned and more than we require’. This had happened because caution always ruled: ‘a strategic planner . . . must prepare for the worst plausible case and not be content to hope and prepare for the most probable’. America’s consistent lead unsettled the Soviets, who genuinely feared that the US sought a first-strike capability. That fear caused the USSR to expand its arsenal, so as to retain a second-strike capability. ‘Clearly the Soviet buildup is in part a reaction to our own buildup since the beginning of the 1960s,’ McNamara admitted. Soviet expansion in turn prompted American response. And so on, and so on.24
In 1969, Kissinger told Congress that the Nixon administration had no desire to expand the American nuclear arsenal, because there was no need. Kissinger, like McNamara, took comfort in MADness. ‘With no advantage to be gained by striking first and no disadvantage to be suffered by striking second,’ he explained, ‘there will be no motive for surprise or pre-emptive attack. Mutual invulnerability means mutual deterrence. It is the most stable position.’ The number of weapons was not, however, the only factor in the security equation. New methods of delivery could upset the apple cart. Thus, even though Kissinger was happy with his arsenal when Nixon entered office, there was little likelihood he would remain so. The US and the USSR were two greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit called security they could never possibly catch.25
MAD presumed that an attack would always succeed, that nothing could prevent warheads from hitting targets. An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, however, upset that presumption. ‘We can hit a fly in space,’ Khrushchev boasted. While that boast was entirely hot air, nuclear planners never gamble – as McNamara made clear. Every threat, no matter how bogus, required a response. Since an ABM system would increase the chances of the Soviets surviving a nuclear war, that constituted an effort to achieve first-strike capability by other means. MAD was undermined because destruction would be neither assured nor mutual. The only sensible response to a Soviet ABM system was to inundate it with more weapons than it could possibly handle – in other words, to build more bombs.26
A new generation of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) was designed to address the new threat. Multiple Re-Entry Vehicles, or MRV, started as one missile, but then broke into separate warheads which would scatter in different directions, thus overwhelming any missile defence. That idea was improved further with MIRV, or Multiple Independently targeted Re-entry Vehicles, wherein each warhead carried its own guidance system. Not satisfied with that bit of wizardry, engineers then developed MARV, or Manoeuvrable Reentry Vehicles, which allowed warheads to change course according to necessity, for instance, to avoid ABM defences.
These developments ensured that advantage remained with the attacker. Since MAD was based precisely on that premise, a sense of security was restored. As a result, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed that ABM was pointless and, being pointless, could be outlawed. The entire panoply of MRV was nevertheless retained, even though ABM was its raison d’être. As Robert Oppenheimer, father of the Bomb, once remarked, weapons are developed not because they are useful but because they are possible. MRVs were possible, ABM was not. ABM was therefore outlawed, while MRV was not. The failure to limit MRVs meant that, from 1972 to 1982, the US and USSR added 12,000 warheads to their arsenals, despite Kissinger’s claim in 1969 that no more weapons were needed.
America’s talent for making smaller weapons meant that they did not originally need hugely powerful rockets for their ICBMs. The Soviets, in contrast, had initially needed to build bigger rockets to transport heavier weapons. In time, they developed lighter warheads, but still retained their powerful rockets. With the advent of MRV, those rockets gave them an advantage, since they could mount more warheads on each missile than the Americans could manage. Nixon seems to have walked blindly into this trap; he should have sought to ban MRVs, since they gave the Soviets an advantage. ‘I would say in retrospect that I wish I had thought through the implications of a MIRVed world more . . . than I did,’ Kissinger later admitted. The new wrinkle in the atomic equation eventually allowed the Soviets to move ahead in the number of actual ICBM warheads, even though there was little disparity in the number of missiles. This would prove crucial during the Carter presidency, when American military ‘weakness’ became controversial.27
While the two sides steadily expanded arsenals, they also negotiated their limitation. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which began in 1969, sought to reduce the pace of arms expansion. The biggest obstacle in the way of agreement was that neither side wanted to compromise strength. For this reason, the aim was limitation, not reduction. Growth would be regulated, but shrinkage was taboo. Both sides sought nothing more than the definition of a comfortable equilibrium. An agreement was reached in 1972 that did not reduce the ability of both sides to destroy the world. The chief benefit was a slight reduction in expenditure, not to mention the fact that enemies had come to an agreement.
‘The greatest paradox of the nuclear age,’ Kissinger once stated, is the fact that while ‘power has never been greater; it has also never been less useful.’ Frustration with nuclear impotence had long inspired strategists to look for ways to break the stranglehold of MAD – in other words, to use the power without suffering the consequences. This dilemma motivated American consideration of the neutron bomb, an idea that surfaced in 1977. The goal was a small nuclear device which killed people, but did not destroy buildings, effectively a ‘dirty bomb’ that releases lethal radiation but does not explode. Such a weapon, it was thought, would prove useful in a European war as an effective counterweight to the numerically superior Red Army. It would enable NATO to stop Soviet forces without destroying all of Central Europe.28
The idea provoked immense moral outrage. Critics complained that the neutron bomb was the ultimate manifestation of the capitalist ethic in that buildings were valued more than people. That distaste deeply affected President Carter, who confessed that he ‘did not wish the world to think of him as an ogre’. His national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski recalled that Carter ‘had a queasy feeling about the whole thing’ and eventually decided ‘that he would like to find a graceful way out’. An escape was found, but it was hardly graceful. Carter laid himself open to criticism that he did not have the stomach to protect his country.29
Like McNamara, Kissinger and Nixon before him, Carter was not comfortable with the endless expansion of arsenals. ‘By enjoining sovereign nations to forgo nuclear weapons’, he argued in 1976, ‘we are asking for a form of self-denial that we have not been able to accept ourselves.’ It behoved the superpowers, therefore, to ‘get down to . . . the actual negotiation of reductions in strategic forces’. Despite that hint of promise, Carter, once he became president, found himself shackled by the same dilemma that had plagued his predecessors. MAD seemed the only option and security could not be compromised. As a result, Carter deployed new cruise missiles in Europe, commissioned the first Trident submarine and doubled the number of warheads targeted at the Soviet Union. Yet despite that massive escalation of America’s arsenal, Carter was eventually crucified for being weak on defence.30
In 1978, Congress discovered that America’s arsenal was larger than was necessary. If the Russians launched a surprise attack, congressmen surmised, the US could still depend upon having 4,900 thermonuclear warheads to fire back. If, on the other hand, America received adequate warning of a Soviet attack, some 7,500 warheads would be available for retaliation. If those weapons were deployed, it would result in the destruction of 90 per cent of Soviet military targets, 80 per cent of industrial targets, all government facilities and 90 million people. In a first strike, the US would be able to destroy all but 400 Soviet nuclear warheads.
That study should have provided reassurance that MAD remained stable. A group of professional worriers, however, worked diligently to undermine equanimity. In 1972, the veteran foreign policy adviser Paul Nitze revived his Committee on the Present Danger, a think tank first established twenty-two years earlier when the Soviets exploded their first atomic weapon. The new CPD included old-timers like Nitze and Eugene Rostow, in addition to a new generation of anti-Soviet hardliners who would figure prominently in the Reagan era. ‘By its continuing strategic nuclear buildup’, the group warned, ‘the Soviet Union demonstrates that it does not subscribe to American notions of nuclear sufficiency and mutually assured deterrence. Soviet nuclear offensive and defensive weapons are designed to enable the USSR to fight, survive and win an all-out nuclear war.’31
In an article published in Foreign Affairs in 1976, Nitze accused the Soviets of preparing for nuclear blackmail. According to his scenario, the advantage that the Soviets possessed in ICBM warheads as a result of MRV would allow them to launch a devastating first strike which would eliminate most American missiles. The Americans would then be left with their submarine-launched missiles and bombers. At this point the ‘shelter gap’ – the Soviet ability to protect a far higher percentage of their citizens – would come into play. ‘As the Soviet civil defense program becomes more effective’, Nitze wrote, ‘it tends to destabilize the deterrent relationship’ because the US can ‘no longer hold . . . the Soviet population . . . hostage to deter a Soviet attack’. Nitze estimated that the American second strike would kill only 3 per cent of the Soviet population (a mere 7.5 million people), an entirely acceptable level of loss for them. The Soviets would then respond by hitting American cities, causing a much higher level of loss, due to the American failure to build shelters. An American president, realizing this likely sequence of events beforehand, would suffer a ‘paralysis of will’ and decide not to use his weapons at all. In other words, by mere threat of attack the Soviets could bend the Americans to their will, since an attack would not bring mutual destruction.32
On another front, Nitze and his merry band of doom-mongers raised the old dilemma of nuclear impotence. Deterrence, they argued, gave a natural advantage to the Soviets, who possessed much larger conventional forces. Back in the 1950s a gaggle of nuclear strategists, led by Herman Kahn, had struggled with this dilemma, to no avail. The acceptance of MAD in the early 1960s was essentially an acknowledgement that the problem was insoluble. In the 1970s, however, a new generation began once more to think the unthinkable. Consideration of nuclear war required redefining standards of survivability, a redefinition that some hardliners easily managed. ‘If we have to start over again with Adam and Eve,’ argued Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, ‘I want them to be Americans.’33
The SALT II Agreements of June 1979 added fuel to the pyre on which the CPD would burn Carter. Under the terms of the treaty each side could add an additional 4,000 warheads to their armouries by 1985. In addition, each superpower was allowed to deploy one new weapon system over the subsequent five years, without those weapons counting in the 4,000 warhead limit. Nitze and his friends objected that SALT II institutionalized an American disadvantage and was therefore equivalent to surrender to nuclear blackmail. They argued that Carter, by signing SALT II and rejecting the neutron bomb, had given the Soviets the keys to the world. The committee talked loudly of a ‘Vietnam syndrome’ which rendered Americans fearful about using their rightful power. One member, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, argued that failure in Vietnam had fostered a ‘culture of appeasement, which finds reasons not only against the use of force, but denies its place in the world’.34
In 1980, Carter ran for re-election against Ronald Reagan, the darling of the CPD. Reagan won the election by a landslide. He thought MAD was madness – ‘the craziest thing I ever heard of’. It reminded him of ‘two westerners standing in a saloon aiming their guns at each other’s head – permanently’. In searching for an alternative, he was prepared to contemplate a nuclear holocaust. His team of advisers included thirty-two members of the CPD, individuals who had also embraced the idea of Armageddon. ‘Every day I think that time is running out,’ the new defence secretary, Caspar Weinberger, confessed. Reagan’s vice-president, George H.W. Bush, politely explained how a nuclear war might be won. ‘[If] you have survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it can inflict on you. That’s the way you can have a winner.’ The world started to worry again.35
Afghanistan: Trapping the Bear
In the ‘Great Game’ of the nineteenth century, Britain and Russia vied for control of Afghanistan. The game ended in 1907 when the two adversaries formally agreed not to argue. Then, in the mid-1970s, a new ‘Great Game’ began, with the Americans replacing the British. In the sequel, the object was changed. While the British had once tried to keep the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans now tried to draw them in – the aim being to create a Russian Vietnam.
During the reign of King Mohammad Zahir Shah (1933–73), Afghanistan was reasonably stable, at least in comparison to the situation before or since. Stability began to unravel when the Afghans were drawn into Cold War rivalries. Mohammed Daoud Khan, cousin of the king and prime minister from 1953–63, willingly courted the Soviets, in an attempt to counterbalance American friendliness toward Iran and Pakistan. In 1955, he refused to join the Baghdad Pact, essentially an anti-communist, pro-Western pledge by Central Asian states, and instead reached agreement with the Soviets on a package of military and economic aid.
In 1964, the establishment of a constitutional monarchy paved the way to genuine political parties. Within a year, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was founded, with Soviet assistance. Party harmony was, however, difficult to maintain amidst ethnic and clan rivalries. By 1966, the PDPA had split into two factions, Khalq and Parcham. The former, led by Nur Mohammed Taraki, advocated the abolition of the monarchy and the immediate establishment of a radical socialist state. Parchamites, led by Babrak Karmal, were gradualists who contended that Afghanistan, lacking a true proletariat, was not yet ready for Marxist revolution.
On 17 July 1973, Daoud, supported by Parchamites, led a coup against his cousin, proclaiming Afghanistan a republic and naming himself president. The coup left Taraki and his Khalq colleagues out in the cold. Increasingly bitter factionalism worried the Soviets, who instructed their ambassador to warn Taraki and Karmal that prolonged ‘internal strife’ would endanger socialist transformation. The Soviets wanted a stable, modern Afghanistan modelled on their central Asian republics. They feared that PDPA disunity would be exploited by conservative Afghans and by their supporters in Pakistan, Iran and the United States.36
Mismanagement, rivalry and controversy dogged the Daoud government, which meant that those wishing it ill grew in number with each passing month. Of particular concern was the emergence of an Islamic fundamentalist opposition, mirroring developments in Iran. Islamic factions, collectively known as ‘mujahedeen’, opposed Daoud’s progressivism. This alarmed the Soviets, who feared that an Islamic resurgence might sweep across their central Asian republics.
Aware of the unpopularity of Marxism among Afghan traditionalists, Daoud began to distance himself from the PDPA, eventually establishing a government distinctly his own, administered through his National Revolutionary Party. He also cut ties with the Soviet Union and made overtures toward non-communist countries like Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States. The Soviets, fearful of losing a solid ally, reacted by attempting to broker rapprochement between Khalq and Parcham. That proved easier once Daoud excluded Parchamites from his government. A fragile unity was achieved after the murder in April 1978 of Mir Akbar Khyber, a prominent Parchamite. At his funeral on 19 April some 20,000
mourners witnessed the strange spectacle of Taraki and Karmal speaking from the same podium.
That unity, flimsy though it was, frightened Daoud. He reacted by arresting PDPA leaders on suspicion that they were plotting against him, which in fact they were. That, however, proved insufficient. The PDPA, backed by a fresh shipment of Soviet arms, launched a coup on 27 April, easily overwhelming the presidential guard. On the following day, Daoud and his family were shot and thrown into a mass grave. Taraki went from prison to presidency in one quick leap. While the coup wasn’t exactly engineered by the Soviets, many Afghans saw it that way. Airstrikes against Daoud’s forces were carried out with a level of precision that suggested the pilots might be Russian. According to an Afghan journalist, ‘anyone who believed that Soviets were not involved in the 1978 coup, was either uninformed . . . or was confirming Lenin’s assessment that there will always be useful idiots who . . . inadvertently support the Communist cause’.37
The ‘Saur’ or ‘Red’ revolution at first seemed popular. The New York Times found that ‘nearly every Afghan . . . said [they were] delighted by the coup’, while the Wall Street Journal reported that ‘150,000 persons . . . marched to honor the new flag . . . the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic’. The show of support gave Taraki the confidence to embark upon Marxist revolution. Helped by Soviet advisers, his government instituted a wholesale transformation of Afghan society, based on universal education, nationalization of assets, political indoctrination and land reform. The custom of arranged marriage and dowries was attacked, as was the usurious Islamic lending system. To leftists in the West, the abolition of brutal, often misogynistic Afghan customs seemed a positive example of what Soviet imperialism could achieve.38
Since Karmal and his followers had never supported Taraki’s plans for rapid socialist transformation, PDPA unity quickly disintegrated. Parchamites were excluded from the new government and, in keeping with the Afghan fondness for purges, many were murdered. The resumption of violent factionalism worried Moscow. As one official report declared, ‘repressions have taken on mass proportions, are being carried out without regard to law, and are directed not only at class enemies of the new regime . . . but also at persons who could be used for revolutionary interests’. This policy, the Soviets feared, ‘brings out discontent among the populace, undermines the authority of the revolutionary government and leads to the weakening of the new regime’. Taraki’s supporters defended the purge, arguing that Parchamites threatened the socialist transformation. In truth, Taraki coveted the efficiency of a one-party state. ‘We respect the experience of a multi-party system in some socialist countries,’ he remarked, ‘but we prefer to follow the example of the USSR. What is happening in Afghanistan is the beginning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on the Soviet model.’ As for the Parchamites, Taraki added: ‘Lenin taught us to be merciless towards the enemies of the revolution.’39
The Soviets felt that Taraki’s haste endangered the stability of the revolution. ‘The leadership of Afghanistan . . . [does] not sufficiently appreciate the role of Islamic fundamentalists,’ Dimitri Ustinov warned his Politburo colleagues on 18 March. As Ustinov understood, Taraki’s reforms, though humane and progressive, trampled on sacred Islamic customs. Secular, class-based goals were given priority over Sharia law. Land reform, as was the case in Iran, undermined the authority of large landowners and mullahs. Likewise, the liberation of women insulted the core values of many Afghans. The popularity of the Saur revolution that Western journalists had noticed arose not from the fact that it was progressive, but because it had toppled the widely despised Daoud. Many Afghanis now worried that Taraki would turn Afghanistan into a Soviet colony. At the back of everyone’s mind was the warning given by King Abdur Rahman Khan in 1901: ‘My last words . . . are: Never trust the Russians.’ Mohammed Sharif, an Afghan journalist, felt that ‘except for a small number of socialist intellectuals and Soviet-trained officials in the capital, the rest of . . . Afghan society remained very hostile toward the Soviets. An average Afghan views the Soviet Union as an expansionist empire committed to the destruction of Islam.’40
While Taraki was oblivious to the sensitivities of his people, the Soviets were not. ‘It is completely clear to us that Afghanistan is not ready . . . to resolve all of the issues it faces through socialism,’ the KGB chairman Yuri Andropov told the Politburo on 17 March. ‘The economy is backward, the Islamic religion pre-dominates, and nearly all of the rural population is illiterate. We know Lenin’s teachings about a revolutionary situation. Whatever situation we are talking about in Afghanistan, it is not that type of situation.’ As Andropov understood, this was not a good time to alienate Islamic fundamentalists. Their power was painfully obvious from events in Iran. One of Khomeini’s first acts on seizing control was to warn Taraki that, if he trampled on Islam, he would suffer the same fate as the Shah.41
Evidence that the fundamentalist contagion was spreading came on 12 March 1979, when the National Islamic Liberation Front, a loose collection of mujahedeen based in Pakistan, called for a jihad or holy war against the Taraki government and its supporters. In Herat, the jihad was launched by Ismail Khan, an Afghan Army captain who led a mutiny at the local garrison, targeting Soviet advisers. Around thirty were killed, their bodies displayed on pikes around the city.
Taraki, meanwhile, was behaving like a puppet who had cut his strings. In a fit of panic, he warned the Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin on 18 March that ‘The situation [in Herat] is bad and getting worse.’ When Kosygin asked what should be done, Taraki demanded heavy weaponry. Oblivious to the impact a Soviet involvement of this sort might have on world opinion, Taraki suggested ‘that [if] you place Afghan markings on your tanks and aircraft . . . no one will be any the wiser’. Kosygin disagreed. ‘I do not want to disappoint you, but it will not be possible to conceal this. Two hours later the whole world will know about this. Everyone will begin to shout that the Soviet Union’s intervention in Afghanistan has begun.’ Oblivious to that warning, Taraki then added that he was also short on soldiers skilled in heavy weaponry. ‘We want you to send us Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Turkmens,’ he told Kosygin. ‘They could drive tanks, because we have all these nationalities in Afghanistan. Let them don Afghan costume and wear Afghan badges and no one will recognize them.’42In view of what happened later, it is interesting to note just how adamantly Soviet leaders opposed invasion at this time. At a meeting on 20 March, Kosygin expressed the view that ‘There would be huge minuses for us. A whole bouquet of countries would quickly come out against us. And there are no pluses for us at all.’ Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko echoed that view, adding that it would be ‘a nice gift for China’. Andropov admitted that it might be possible to ‘suppress a revolution in Afghanistan . . . with . . . bayonets’, but to do so would be ‘entirely inadmissible’.43
The Afghan Army took ten days to recapture Herat. Airstrikes by Soviet-supplied bombers killed more than 20,000 residents, a toll which increased when government forces then indulged in brutal reprisals. The carnage, designed to intimidate mujahedeen supporters, had precisely the opposite effect. Every new act of brutality increased the people’s susceptibility to mujahedeen logic. That logic was attractive not simply because it was rooted in Islamic tradition, but also because it was genuinely nationalist. Taraki’s reliance upon outside help to deal with an internal threat only served to increase doubts about his regime’s legitimacy. As Soviet officials noted, ‘The situation in . . . Afghanistan . . . continues to deteriorate . . . The reactionary clergy is intensifying anti-government and anti-Soviet agitation and in this regard preaching the idea of creating a “free Islamic republic” . . . similar to Iran’s.’ The inability of Taraki to retain the loyalty of his people can be measured by the flood of desertions within the Afghan Army. Many soldiers, following Ismail Khan’s example, simply switched to the mujahedeen.44
The discomfiture of Taraki and his Soviet backers delighted Washington. Adhering to the dubious strategy of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’, the CIA in early March urged President Carter to back the mujahedeen. The agency suggested that supplies and money could be transferred through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Agency, which was already involved in this ‘good cause’. The US found themselves in a somewhat ironic position: having recently watched Islamic fundamentalists drive their great friend the Shah out of Iran, the Americans were now hoping to use a similar group of fundamentalists to do their dirty work in Afghanistan. This meant getting friendly with the odious Pakistani dictator Zia-ul-Haq, thus contradicting Carter’s much-trumpeted emphasis upon human rights. In exchange for Pakistani help, the US also turned a blind eye toward Zia’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme.
The US, of course, did not remotely care about what was best for the Afghan people, their only concern was to make life difficult for the Soviets. Under-Secretary of Defense Walter Slocumbe openly discussed the possibility of ‘sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire’. Taken with the idea, Carter on 3 July officially sanctioned the CIA to funnel around $500,000 to the Afghan rebels. In the following month, the ambassador in Kabul frankly admitted that America’s ‘larger interests . . . would be served by the demise of the [PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan’. Americans harboured no illusions about the barbarism of their new ally. In May 1979, the Washington Post reported that the mujahedeen liked to ‘torture victims by first cutting off their noses, ears, and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another’. One of America’s new friends was the mujahedeen warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a brutal sadist and opium dealer whose trademark was throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.45
Meanwhile, the Afghan tail continued to wag the Soviet dog. The Russians found themselves tied to a dangerously unstable regime, in the form of Taraki and his deputy Hafizullah Amin. ‘Afghanistan’s difficulties are becoming more intense,’ a Politburo report warned. ‘In the Party and the government a collegial leadership is lacking, all power in fact is concentrated in the hands of . . . Taraki and . . . Amin.’ Their knee-jerk response to each crisis was to demand more Russian help. ‘The arrival of Soviet troops will significantly raise our moral spirit, will inspire even greater confidence and calm,’ they assured Moscow in early August. When the Soviets expressed concern about how intervention might be viewed in the wider world, Amin insisted that ‘we are a sovereign and independent state and solve all our problems independently. Your troops will not participate in combat actions. They will be used only in moments that are critical for us.’ He promised that, with sufficient help, his government could eradicate the mujahedeen by early spring.46
To make matters worse, Taraki and Amin were now arguing, each blaming the other for the worsening situation. On 9 September, the Politburo asked their ambassador in Kabul, Alexandre Puzanov, to impress upon them that ‘a rift in the leadership would be fatal to the revolutionary cause’. Little, however, could be done, since Amin had already launched a coup. On the 14th, his goons seized control of the presidential offices and arrested Taraki, who was later executed. On the following day, a worried Gromyko advised his team in Kabul that they should try ‘to restrain . . . Amin from repressions of supporters of . . . Taraki and other people . . . who are not enemies of the revolution’. That plea was about as effective as an umbrella in a tornado, since a purge had already begun. Watching from the sidelines, KGB agents grew convinced that the American-educated Amin was about to switch sides. These fears spread to the Politburo when his purge eliminated those whom the Soviets considered good communists. According to KGB General Leonid Shebarshin, the Politburo feared that Amin was preparing to ‘[do] a Sadat on us’.47
Now desperate, the Soviets decided to throw their weight behind Karmal, who had earlier escaped to Czechoslovakia. A deal was struck whereby he would request Soviet help to restore order, thus allowing the USSR to invade. Selling this plan to Brezhnev on 1 December, Andropov advised that two Soviet battalions already in Kabul would be ‘entirely sufficient’, but additional forces might be necessary ‘in the event of unforeseen complications’. Andropov felt certain that active intervention ‘would allow us to decide the question of defending the gains of the April revolution, establishing Leninist principles in the party and state leadership of Afghanistan, and securing our positions in this country’. General Nikolai Ogarkov, chief of the general staff, however, had deep misgivings. At a meeting with Brezhnev on 10 December, he argued that ‘the Afghan problem should be decided by political means, instead of relying on . . . force’. ‘The Afghan people . . . [have] never tolerated foreigners on their soil,’ he warned. Brezhnev sympathized, but, his options running out, reluctantly sided with Andropov.48
On 24 December Soviet troops moved on targets in Kabul and other cities. Four days later, the Politburo announced that Afghanistan had been ‘liberated’ and Amin executed. Karmal was formally installed as the new prime minister, whereupon he confirmed that the invasion had been his idea. In a message to Russia’s allies, the Politburo explained that invasion had been necessary because of the ‘sharp deterioration of the situation’, caused by the ‘gross interference on the part of several powers into the affairs of Afghanistan’. Even the dim-witted recognized the reference to the United States. Soviet leaders genuinely believed that right was on their side. According to the former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, everyone agreed that ‘Afghanistan [was] . . . a country within our sphere of interest, and we . . . had to do whatever possible to prevent the Americans and the CIA from installing an anti-Soviet regime there’.49
Since this was a Cold War conflict, rhetoric could be recycled. ‘The Soviet attack on Afghanistan and the ruthless extermination of its government’, Carter argued, ‘have highlighted in the starkest terms the darker side of their policies – going well beyond competition and the legitimate pursuit of national interest, and violating all norms of international law and practice.’ The clandestine support for the mujahedeen was turned into official policy. ‘It is essential that Afghanistan’s resistance continues,’ Brzezinski told Carter. ‘This means more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice . . . we should make Soviet involvement as costly as possible.’ On that score, the Carter administration succeeded. Within a month, the Soviets had 85,000 troops in Afghanistan. Their standing commitment would eventually expand to 105,000, with over 600,000 troops serving in total. Brzezinski was quite proud of the way he had helped to lure the Soviets into a trap. ‘We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would,’ he later boasted. ‘The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.”’ Carter said essentially the same thing to his wife: ‘We will help to make sure that Afghanistan will be their Vietnam.’50
Over the next twelve years, the US would channel around $3 billion dollars in cash and military hardware to the mujahedeen, far more than was actually needed in their war with the Soviets. Brzezinski has no regrets about his Faustian deal. ‘That secret operation was an excellent idea,’ he later insisted. ‘What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?’51
That statement was made in 1998. Four years later, American troops, deployed in Afghanistan to fight those ‘stirred-up Moslems’, discovered for themselves what had become of all that weaponry the US had given to their friends the mujahedeen.
Downing Street: Maggie Knows Best
To the British of the mid-Seventies, she was ‘Mrs Thatcher, Milk Snatcher’. Margaret Thatcher’s defining moment came in 1971 when, as education secretary in Edward Heath’s government, she abolished the provision of free school milk for children aged seven to eleven. Never mind that Labour had previously done the same for secondary school pupils. Never mind that kids seldom drank the milk, which was usually curdled by the time it was distributed. The point was that Thatcher’s mean-spirited cut had set down a marker by demonstrating that she held no sentimental attachment to the welfare state. The fact that it was a woman who had taken milk from the mouths of babes made the act seem that much more ruthless, more foreboding. Though not everyone realized it, the age of consensus was dead. Its executioner was a woman.
Thatcher was born in 1925 in Grantham. Her father, Alfred Roberts, was a grocer, self-made man, alderman and lay Methodist preacher – characteristics that shaped Margaret. ‘I . . . owe almost everything to my father’, she confessed after her triumphant election in 1979, ‘and . . . the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.’ She inherited his belief in hard work, Christian morality and the idea that one gets what one deserves. A scholarship allowed entry to Oxford, where she was president of the university’s Conservative Association, only the third woman to hold that post. She graduated in 1947, married a wealthy man in 1951, gave birth to twins two years later, and then embarked upon a crusade.52
In 1958, she was chosen as parliamentary candidate for the safe Conservative seat of Finchley in North London. That campaign provided a clear indication of her philosophy. ‘Don’t be scared of the high-flown language of economists and cabinet ministers,’ she told a ladies luncheon. ‘Think of politics at our own household level. After all, women live in contact with food supplies, housing shortages and the ever-decreasing opportunities for children, and we must therefore . . . remember . . . that as more power is taken away from the people, so there is less responsibility for us to assume.’ The Finchley Press admired how she ‘weighed up Russia’s propagandist moves with the skill of a housewife measuring the ingredients in a familiar recipe, pinpointed Nasser as the fly in the mixing bowl, switched swiftly to domestic problems . . . then swept her breathless audience into a confident preview of Conservatism’s dazzling future.’53
She won comfortably and, in parliament, quickly established a reputation as a high flyer. Though loyal to her party, she was never prepared to compromise rigid principles. In 1961, she defied the whip by supporting the reintroduction of corporal punishment. Misguided humanitarian concerns had, she felt, caused the country to ‘[lose] sight of the . . . true aims of punishment . . . [which] should be . . . the protection of the community’. That suggested an uncompromising conservatism, as did her support for capital punishment and her opposition to the liberalization of divorce laws. She was, however, one of the few Tories to support the decriminalization of male homosexuality, and also backed the legalization of abortion.54
Religion infused her politics, but only to a limited extent. She was devout, but not fundamentalist, and was by no means softened by Christian charity. ‘Even the Good Samaritan had to have money to help, otherwise he too would have had to pass on the other side,’ she famously remarked. Faith provided moral foundation for her vision of society. ‘I believe that by taking together . . . key elements from the Old and New Testaments, we gain . . . a proper attitude to work and principles to shape economic and social life. We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. “If a man will not work he shall not eat”, wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Indeed, abundance rather than poverty has a legitimacy which derives from the very nature of Creation.’ That was essentially her father’s lesson; it did not require Christian reinforcement, but was stronger because of it. In line with these beliefs, she attacked Labour policy as ‘a step not merely towards Socialism but towards Communism’. The Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, she argued in 1966, was ‘an apostle of change, a change to more power for politicians over people and their pockets. I reject that kind of change; we are more interested in progress than in change, progress through increased personal responsibility and increased personal endeavour.’ All that suggested a very hard-hearted woman, but she insisted she possessed a soft core. ‘I’m a romantic at heart’, she insisted; ‘there are times when I get home at night, and everything has got on top of me, when I shed a few tears silently, alone.’ In the absence of witnesses, many people doubted that revelation.55
In the Conservative leadership contest of 1964, Thatcher supported Ted Heath, and was rewarded with a leg up the ministerial ladder. She entered the Shadow Cabinet in 1967, moving quickly from Fuel to Environment to Education. She became, during this period, a devout supporter of the monetarist theories espoused by Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek, in opposition to Keynesian gospel. Within the Tory party, the guru of monetarism was Sir Keith Joseph, social security minister in the government of 1970–4. For Thatcher, monetarism was instinctive; it harmonized with her housewife’s ethic of self-reliance and fiscal responsibility. ‘Any woman who understands the problems of running a home’, she argued, ‘will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.’ It did not worry her that monetarism favoured those with greater means, since she had nothing against wealth, as long as it came from hard work. ‘Pennies do not come from heaven,’ she maintained. ‘They have to be earned here on earth.’56
The Tories’ Selsdon Park declaration of January 1970 seemed to promise a full conversion to monetarism – Thatcherism before Thatcher. Government intervention was declared taboo, and ailing industries would not be rescued simply out of sentiment. Heath’s heart, however, wasn’t in it, as a series of U-turns eventually made clear. This alienated Conservative rightwingers, who gave up on him long before the country did.
When the Conservatives failed to hold on to power in the election of February 1974, Thatcher and Joseph sharpened their knives. A second defeat in October settled the matter – Heath had to go. In between those two elections, Joseph delivered a speech outlining monetarist policy and offering a clear alternative to Heath. The number one danger facing the country, he argued, was inflation, on which he outlined three ‘truths’: ‘First that inflation at its present pace cannot be abated entirely painlessly. Secondly, the cure by gradual abatement would be infinitely less painful than what would happen if we reflate . . . Thirdly, there is one thing worse – far worse – than stopping inflation, and that is not stopping it.’ The message was clear: there is no alternative. That message was so often trumpeted it became known as ‘TINA’. ‘We need a government with strong nerves to set broad policy lines and stick to them,’ Joseph insisted. ‘Then we can recover our footing, and . . . the soundness of our economy . . . will be restored.’57
Joseph was proposing a revolution, one he briefly thought he might lead. He was, however, a rather scary figure who brought Rasputin to mind. His hopes for the leadership were dashed when a speech in Birmingham in October 1974 carried a hint of eugenics. Wisely withdrawing from the race, he passed the monetarist baton to Thatcher. A perfect partnership evolved: he provided the intellectual weight, she the ruthlessness of a Rottweiler.
Had Heath done the decent thing and resigned after the second election defeat, Thatcher might never have become prime minister. His incorrigible vanity, however, rendered it impossible to accept rejection. Because he did not resign, the mainstream candidates – William Whitelaw, James Prior and Sir Geoffrey Howe – held to party etiquette and did not challenge him when a leadership contest was held on 4 February 1975. Thatcher was seen as a stalking horse who would gauge party interest in a genuine challenge. Contrary to expectation, however, the stalking horse proved a thoroughbred – she polled 130 votes, Heath 119. Now the frontrunner, she proved impossible for Whitelaw, Howe or Prior to overtake. On the second ballot a week later, she secured 146 votes out of 279 cast – the necessary majority. The MP Julian Critchley rightly called it a ‘peasants’ revolt’ – the party peons had expressed their displeasure with an elitist leadership by electing a grocer’s daughter. The grandees had not supported her and none expected her to last.
That expectation might have been fulfilled, if not for the cooperation of the 1974–9 Labour government. Its misfortune was her blessing; had she been forced to fight the next election against a popular Labour prime minister, her tenure as leader might have been compared to that of William Hague or Michael Howard, the hapless victims of Tony Blair. Unlike them, however, she had the good fortune to become leader at a time when the country seemed to be falling apart. Because the disintegration seemed serious, Thatcher’s radicalism gained credibility.
Thatcher was also helped by the mysterious resignation of Wilson, until then the most formidable leader in Labour’s history. James Callaghan, who took over in April 1976, had immense ministerial experience, but lacked the fortitude essential for the top job. Not long after he entered Downing Street, Britain plunged into its worst economic crisis since 1931. The pound went into freefall, with government efforts to halt the slide serving only to spread panic. By May, with the pound at $1.70, Britain was forced to seek help from foreign banks. A line of credit was secured only on the condition that public spending be cut by $1 billion. This alienated the party’s left wing, who thought the ‘capitalist crisis’ was caused not by too much socialism, but by not enough.
With the pound continuing to fall, the government prepared for an appeal to the International Monetary Fund, a move that would necessitate further cuts. The annoyance of leftwingers erupted at the party’s Blackpool conference in September. The MP Judith Hart urged Callaghan to ‘tell the IMF that we do not agree with the pre-Keynesian classical economics that dominate the IMF . . . tell them that there are . . . other solutions. Let us convince the international field that our answers are right.’ Stuck in Cloud Cuckooland, the left pushed for the nationalization of the banks and increases in welfare spending. Callaghan responded with his New Realism. ‘We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending,’ he told a chamber disinclined to recognize reality. ‘I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and that, in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked . . . by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment . . . that is the history of the last twenty years.’ To Labour supporters, that sounded painfully like Mrs Thatcher. In fact, it was precisely what Thatcher thought, but her solution was a great deal more brutal than what Callaghan had in mind.58
When sterling fell to $1.50, the chancellor Denis Healey presented his party with a stark choice: either the IMF or the Tories. The latter, he warned, would mean ‘massive new cuts in the public expenditure, unemployment in the low millions, and a return to the confrontation between a British government and the working people of this country’. The party reluctantly came round. The terms, agreed in October, involved the IMF loaning $3.9 billion, in exchange for an agreement that the government would cut public spending by $2.5 billion, sell £500 million worth of BP shares and maintain stringent controls on the money supply. In other words, in order to stay in office, Labour underwent a forced conversion to monetarism. Thatcher made much of her opponents’ predicament. ‘People do not have to get into the hands of international bankers if they run their affairs in such a way that they do not need to go for loans,’ she argued with characteristic homespun logic. Sticking the knife in further, she taunted Labour: ‘Nothing I can say about the Chancellor of the Exchequer is half as damning as the judgement he passed on himself . . . when he . . . [said] that the alternative to another loan would be economically savage and would produce riots in the streets. What an account of one’s stewardship to say . . . that there will be riots in the streets unless the capitalist countries bail one out!’59
By-election losses were meanwhile slowly eroding Labour’s majority in the Commons. A shabby deal with the Liberals, agreed on 23 March 1977, allowed the government to remain in power, much to Thatcher’s disgust. ‘Mr. Callaghan and his Labour Government have not been reprieved,’ she snarled. ‘They have secured a stay of execution but they are still under sentence of death.’ Contrary to expectations, however, Labour’s medicine began to work. The pound edged toward $2.00, inflation and unemployment fell, and early repayments on the IMF loan were made. ‘Is this the Labour miracle?’ the Sunday Times asked. Polls suggested a dead heat between Labour and the
Tories.60
Sustaining the miracle, however, depended upon the cooperation of the trade unions, who had shelved wage demands while the government fixed the economy. In January 1978, Callaghan asked for restraint to continue. The TUC, however, rejected his plea, signalling open war in the autumn. Gambling on the workers’ good sense, Callaghan assumed that, when crunch time came, they would forgo a pay rise in order to ensure a Labour victory at the next election. That proved misguided. At the Labour conference, the TUC outlook prevailed. What resulted was double-digit wage demands during what came to be known as the Winter of Discontent. Trade unions queued up to pummel the government, downing tools without any effort at negotiation. The issue was not pay, but vengeance; the government was being punished for supposedly losing touch with the working man. Callaghan’s great mistake came in trying to govern in the interests of the country, rather than the workers. What followed was the worst period of industrial unrest since the General Strike of 1926. Hospital operations were cancelled, rubbish went uncollected, essential services were curtailed, and the dead went unburied.
The workers won, but the reputation of the trade union movement was shredded. So, too, was the idea of worker solidarity. ‘Nobody is in favour of somebody else’s strike,’ remarked the trade union leader Clive Jenkins, ‘but they’re always in favour of their own.’ Organized labour came to be seen as a dragon in need of St George. ‘Each night the television screens carried film of bearded men in duffle coats huddled around braziers,’ recalled Healey. ‘Nervous viewers thought the Revolution had already begun.’ One poll in January 1979 suggested that 51 per cent of the people believed the unions were under communist control. Worse still, the unions had managed to alienate their most loyal supporters – 83.4 per cent of Labour voters wanted a ban on secondary picketing. Frank Chapple of the Electricians Union found the madness bewildering: ‘Whether the wildcat strikers in the vanguard were politically motivated, misled, sick-minded or just plain stupid, it was all far removed from [the] trade unionism . . . I could remember.’ ‘This shambles was of course a triumph for Mrs Thatcher,’ Healey reflected. ‘The cowardice and irresponsibility of some union leaders in abdicating responsibility . . . guaranteed her election; it left them with no grounds for complaining about her subsequent action against them.’61
When Labour’s precarious hold on government slipped away on 28 March 1979, the country faced the most momentous election since 1945. Thatcher spoke in apocalyptic tones appropriate to turbulent times. The election, she suggested, was the last opportunity to stave off complete collapse. On every soapbox, she reiterated her personal ‘vision’: ‘a man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as a servant and not as master: these are . . . the essence of a free country, and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend’.62
On 3 May, the Tories gained 43.9 per cent of the vote, Labour 36.9 and the Liberals 13.8. Under Britain’s peculiar electoral system, that was enough to give the Tories a majority of 70 seats over Labour, and 43 overall. It was by no means a mandate for the kind of radicalism Thatcher presented, but that hardly mattered to her.
Around 1975, a sense of confusion and malaise settled upon Britain. Wilson’s ‘White Heat’ gave way to a cold winter of discontent. The hope that once fuelled the 1960s seemed cruelly mistaken. ‘All over the country’, wrote Margaret Drabble, ‘people blamed other people for the things that were going wrong – the trades unions, the present government, the miners, the car workers, the seamen, the Arabs, the Irish, their own husbands, their own wives, their own idle good-for-nothing offspring, comprehensive education. Nobody knew whose fault it really was, but most people managed to complain fairly forcefully about somebody.’ A revolution had occurred and Thatcher, though not its author, was its beneficiary. The turbulence of the 1960s had frightened ordinary people. They reacted by circling the wagons and taking refuge in the family – the only institution that still offered stability. Traditional values like individualism, morality and hard work took centre stage, as Thatcher understood. Politicians on the left struggled to come to terms with this resurgence of beliefs once derided as bourgeois. Those still stuck in the 1960s ethos of progressivism fought this new conservativism by contemptuously deriding it. This explains why Labour in Britain and the Democrats in America lost touch with their blue-collar bases. Disenchanted with the left, the working class shifted allegiance to those once seen as oppressors. That shift was not, however, inevitable: in New Zealand, Australia, France, Italy and Spain, the left adjusted to the political trend and rode it, in the process avoiding the right-wing fundamentalism that characterized Britain and America in the 1980s. The British Labour Party, in contrast, would take until 1997 to accept that the people did not actually want socialism. There was no more potent sign of a party out of touch than Labour delegates stubbornly singing the ‘Red Flag’ and calling each other ‘comrade’ at party conferences throughout the 1980s.63
The fact that Thatcher had won a landslide with less than 44 per cent of the vote did not trouble her, since she was convinced that she alone understood what ailed Britain. She was the stern governess who would correct Britain’s self-indulgent ways, with monetarism her cod liver oil. Hers would be, as she promised, ‘a conviction government’, which was really just a polite way of saying ‘Maggie knows best’. The fact that she did not care about being popular gave her enormous power. Consensus, that noble goal of previous prime ministers, was, she argued, ‘the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies . . . it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects’. Those who sought consensus were ‘quislings’ and ‘traitors’.64
On entering 10 Downing Street the morning after her election, Thatcher quoted St Francis of Assisi: ‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.’ Hollower words had seldom been spoken. Synthetic sincerity would become a Thatcher trademark. The message sounded fine, but the face said: ‘I don’t really care if you believe me.’ There had indeed been discord, error, doubt and despair. In time, however, the Seventies would seem like a quaint period of social harmony compared to the strife that followed.65