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Demonstrate a little commonsense.
RMA
That said, we have reached one of those points in military history when the role of technology in fighting wars has taken on an altogether new importance. The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a real revolution. The term refers mainly to two developments: the power of instantly available, networked information, and the large-scale use of precision firepower. One of the foremost experts on the strategic implications of RMA, Professor Eliot Cohen, has graphically described its reality:
Satellites beaming fresh pictures of targets to pilots in jet aircraft, tanks communicating their locations to computerized command posts, generals peering remotely over the shoulders of company commanders through the cameras of orbiting unmanned aircraft – these are all phenomena of today, not the military dreams of tomorrow.* (#litres_trial_promo)
America is and will remain far ahead of any of her rivals in the use of these technologies – as long as she keeps on investing in them.
But RMA is not without its drawbacks. I have already referred to one of these – a feeling that technology can make war casualty-free. A more tangible danger is what (in the jargon) are called ‘asymmetric threats’. By these are meant threats posed by powers which, although generally lagging well behind America militarily, are able to concentrate their resources upon and exploit American vulnerability in one particular aspect of warfare. Thus China has on its own admission been developing plans to use networks and the Internet to cripple America’s banking system and disrupt its military capability.* (#litres_trial_promo) Information- or Cyber-warfare has leapt from the television screen to the centre of the Pentagon’s preoccupations. That is absolutely right. It is a rule as old as warfare itself that every advance in military technology provokes counter-measures. And history is full of rich and technologically advanced civilisations which fell before a more primitive enemy who had seen and exploited a systemic weakness.
That is why we have to:
Give top priority to investing in and applying the latest defence technologies
Be alert to the dangers that America’s technological sophistication could be undermined by asymmetric threats from a determined enemy
Never believe that technology alone will allow America to prevail as a superpower.
‘REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR’
Before, during and after my time as Prime Minister I have paid many visits to American military bases and other sites, but none like that which I made to the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor on the morning of 11 May 1993. A tender took us out to the ship, upon whose shattered hull a special structure has been erected. For the last forty years, the colours have been raised and lowered each day in honour of the 1177 members of the Arizona’s crew who died in the Japanese air force’s attack of 7 December 1941. Some of the bodies were recovered, but the remains of nine hundred still lie in the depths of the water that now fills the ship. Standing over a square opening that leads down to the ocean, I lowered a bouquet of flowers. The petals drifted across the surface and I thought about the sailors who died in such terrible circumstances so that the rest of us could live in peace and freedom.
The USS Arizona should not only, however, be a place of pilgrimage: it should be a place of reflection. The immediate consequence of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was, of course, to bring America into the Second World War. So it was, in that sense, the day the Axis powers began to lose. The circumstances of the attack swung an earlier sceptical American opinion behind the war effort. ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ became the title of America’s most popular war song. Those words should also serve as a warning to us.
On that Sunday morning sixty years ago, just before eight o’clock, 353 Japanese aircraft began their devastating attack. Some three thousand military personnel were killed or wounded, eight battleships and ten other naval vessels were sunk or badly damaged, and almost two hundred US aircraft were destroyed in the space of just three hours. What made the attack on Pearl Harbor so shocking was the fact that it was entirely unexpected. Tension between America and Japan had been rising. But there was no suspicion of what the Japanese were planning and there had been no declaration of war. The inquiries launched after the event found that errors had been made by the US naval and army commanders in the Hawaii region. But the fact remains that what happened at Pearl Harbor reflected far more broadly on the unpreparedness of America for an attack coming (literally) ‘out of the blue’.
The colours raised over the Arizona on the day of my visit were given to me when I left by the Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Fleet. They are now framed in my office in London. They serve as a constant reminder. What troubles me, however, is that America and her allies now face a similar threat, and we have been doing too little to guard against it.
MISSILES AND MISSILE DEFENCE
The lessening of superpower rivalry in the final stage of the Cold War also resulted in a loosening of superpower disciplines. On the one hand, Soviet political satellites were released to seek their own irregular and eccentric orbits. On the other, as the Soviet Union itself crumbled, its weapons stockpiles were dispersed and plundered, new clients were found for weapons production, and existing experts with knowledge of advanced military technologies abandoned a state that could no longer pay its bills.
Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Kuwait in 1990 occurred a little too early for him. He had not quite been able to acquire the weaponry he needed to strike back at the West – his plans to develop the nuclear weapon having been seriously set back by Israel’s pre-emptive attack in June 1981. But if Saddam had been in a position credibly to threaten America or any of its allies – or the coalition’s forces – with attack by missiles with nuclear warheads, would we have gone to the Gulf at all? Just posing that question highlights how fundamentally the reality of proliferation can affect the West’s ability to exert power beyond our shores.
Subsequent experience in dealing with Saddam Hussein should also bring home to us the difficulty of trying to maintain a united front against proliferators – even against a rogue whom everyone in public characterises as a pariah. The recent book by Richard Butler, former head of UNSCOM, the body commissioned to inspect and eliminate Saddam’s weapons capability, provides new insights into how China, and in particular France and Russia, have played fast and loose with their international obligations. The Russians clearly still view Iraq as their gateway to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, while the French have huge commercial interests in the Iraqi oil industry. All three powers have been driven by what Mr Butler calls ‘a deep resentment of American power in the so-called unipolar post-Cold War world’.* (#litres_trial_promo) If this is a precedent for international cooperation in such matters it would be better to pursue other channels.
The more general, and even more important, lesson from experience in dealing with Saddam is that it is extremely difficult to prevent states that are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from doing so. If it is so hard to monitor and control the activities of a country like Iraq, which has been defeated in war and subjected to repeated threats, sanctions and punishment, what chances are there of preventing the proliferation of WMD among states that are much less subject to scrutiny?
In fact, proliferation has proceeded, often assisted by the failure of the West to check the outflow of technologies. Nor have international arms control agreements helped much in this respect. The Biological Weapons Convention has been unsuccessful in preventing the development of this particularly horrible weapon, because its provisions are for all practical purposes unverifiable. The same is true of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
These agreements, though, are at least more or less neutral in their effects. The same cannot be said, however, of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the United States Senate rightly refused to ratify. The fundamental truth here is that the nuclear weapon cannot be disinvented. A world without nuclear weapons is thus quite simply a fantasy world. The realistic question, therefore, is whether the West and America wish to stay ahead of potential nuclear competitors or not. If we do not, we hand power over regions where our interests are at stake to the Saddams and Gadaffis and Kim Jong Ils.
Faced with that prospect it is easy to see why America’s nuclear deterrent must be completely credible, which means that it has to be tested and modernised as necessary. We should have learned by now that no weapons technology ever stands still. For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other’s good intentions. All those who shelter beneath the American nuclear umbrella should have been praising Senator Helms and his colleagues who defeated the CTBT – not having tantrums.* (#litres_trial_promo)
Moreover, in the end nuclear weapons will probably be used. That is a terrible thought for everyone. It is also a novel thought for many who argued, as I did, during the 1970s and 1980s for an up-to-date deterrent as a means of keeping the peace.
During the Cold War’s ‘balance of terror’ it was always possible to argue that because both sides had powerful nuclear arsenals this provided an important stabilising factor, preventing not just nuclear but conventional war, at least in Europe. In truth, there was never any cast-iron guarantee against a nuclear exchange. We knew that we would never initiate a war of any kind against the Warsaw Pact. And we had good reason to believe that the Soviets would be too cautious to launch a nuclear war against the West. But we could never altogether rule out the possibility of miscalculation or technical error precipitating an exchange.
Since the end of the Cold War, it has been possible to cut back nuclear arsenals substantially, and it may be possible for America and Russia to cut back still further. But we should not forget that the START II and the proposed START III treaties, like earlier arms control (and, as in these cases, arms reduction) agreements, do not in themselves actually make us more secure. What they do is reduce the cost of our security, by lowering expenditure on surplus weaponry, and they arguably help ease tensions and mistrust. The last point is about all that can be said for agreements about the targeting of missiles – which can always be re-targeted.
With the end of the Cold War we entered what one leading expert has provocatively termed ‘the second nuclear age’. Among the fallacies which Professor Colin S. Gray lists as afflicting Western strategic policy planners today are that ‘a post-nuclear era has dawned’, ‘nuclear abolition is feasible and desirable’, and ‘deterrence is reliable’. He has also warned that ‘the less strategically attractive nuclear weapons appear to the United States, the greater the attraction of those weapons and other WMD to possible foes and other “rogues’”.* (#litres_trial_promo) And he is right.
The most important threat of this sort today does indeed come from the so-called ‘rogue states’. This category usually refers to medium-sized (or even quite small) powers in the grip of an ideology (or of an individual) that shuns the existing international order, and is bent on aggression. The usual candidates are Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea, all of which should certainly be included, as in the light of recent events should Afghanistan.* (#litres_trial_promo) But we should not disregard either the chilling remark of a senior Chinese official made in 1995 at the height of confrontation between China and Taiwan. The official noted sarcastically that Beijing could take military action against Taipei if it wished, without worrying about US interference, because America’s leaders ‘care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan’. Perhaps the Chinese too remember Pearl Harbor.
We also have to guard against the idea that the desire of non-nuclear powers to become nuclear is somehow irrational. Inconvenient and even dangerous it may be, but irrational it is not. After all, was Colonel Gadaffi unreasonable to draw conclusions from Libya’s inability to react to the punitive action that America took against him in 1986 when he said: ‘If [the Americans] know that you have a deterrent force capable of hitting the United States, they would not be able to hit you. Consequently, we should build this force so that they and others will no longer think about an attack’?† (#litres_trial_promo)
By his own lights Gadaffi was talking sense – the folly is ours in letting him think he could get away with threatening us in this way.
But it is not just fanatics and revolutionaries who make this calculation. Every state that retains nuclear weapons makes it too. This is something that the utopian New Left internationalists simply refuse to grasp. Let me start close to home. Without Britain’s nuclear deterrent we would not be powerful enough to have acquired our status as a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council. And I have no hesitation in affirming that it is a matter of vital national interest that we retain both the weapon and the international standing it secures. If the present British government doesn’t understand that, they should – it is the main reason why the rest of the world takes notice of us.
Similarly, I fully understand India’s – and, in response, Pakistan’s – desire to demonstrate to the world that they too are nuclear powers. India has China on her doorstep and Pakistan has India. President Clinton was quite simply wasting his time when he advised India in the wake of its nuclear tests in 1998 to define her ‘greatness’ in ‘twenty-first-century terms, not in terms that everybody else has already decided to reject’.* (#litres_trial_promo) But we haven’t left nuclear weapons behind, and if we did others wouldn’t.
The arms control treaty that undoubtedly does most harm and makes least sense – and was accordingly regarded by the Clinton administration as ‘the cornerstone of strategic stability’ – is the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The ABM Treaty had some rationale when it was signed in 1972, though in retrospect not much. It prevented either the United States or the Soviet Union from deploying a strategic missile defence system capable of defending the entire national territory. It also prohibited the development, testing or deployment of anything other than a limited, fixed land-based system. The original treaty allowed for the deployment of two sites for such a system, though a protocol reduced this to one each in 1974.
The philosophy behind the treaty was that contained in the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (otherwise and rightly known as MAD). Essentially, the belief was that as long as each superpower was totally vulnerable to nuclear attack it would not be tempted to start a nuclear war. Practice never entirely followed this theory. The Soviets cheated by secretly building an early-warning station at Krasnoyarsk. NATO, through its doctrine of ‘flexible response’ – that is a graduated conventional and nuclear response rather than total nuclear war – also inched away from MAD. Not even the Cold War froze strategy entirely.
But there was, in any case, a deeper and more pervasive logic at work. The history of warfare, viewed from a technical perspective, is that of an unrelenting competition between offensive and defensive weapons and strategies, with progress in the development of one being countered by corresponding improvements in the other. Thus swords were countered by armour, gunpowder generated new techniques of fortification, tanks were opposed by anti-tank weapons and the bomber – known at the time as ‘the ultimate weapon’ – led to the development of radar systems capable of tracking its flight and the use of anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes to shoot it down. It was, therefore, written into the essential nature of warfare that exclusive reliance on that other ‘ultimate weapon’, the nuclear deterrent, could not last indefinitely: at some point the technology of defensive weapons would catch up. The ABM Treaty could not ultimately prevent that.
The treaty was also, of course, meant to contribute to arms control, because assured vulnerability should, the theory went, make it less necessary to build ever-increasing numbers of long-range missiles. On this point too it failed. The only time the Soviets slowed down the arms race was once they knew they had lost it.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is a Cold War relic. It is, therefore, rather surprising that today’s liberals show such misplaced affection for it. In fact, the best international lawyers tell us that the treaty has in any case lapsed, because one party to it, the Soviet Union, has ceased to exist. (Even if one takes a contrary view of the present legal position, it is clear from the treaty itself – Article XV, paragraph 2. – that either side is able to withdraw from it, giving six months’ notice.) Whatever purpose the ABM Treaty had has certainly ended, now that an increasing number of unpredictable powers can threaten us with weapons of mass destruction.
This consideration also bears upon the frequently heard assertion that discarding the constraints of the ABM Treaty and building missile defence would precipitate a new arms race. I argued in a speech to a conference of experts on missile defence in Washington in December 1998 that such fears were groundless. On the contrary, a failure to deploy a ballistic missile defence system (BMD) would provide an incentive for the leaders of rogue states to acquire missiles and develop weapons of mass destruction. Conversely, the deployment of a global BMD would dampen the desire of the rogues to stock up their arsenals – because the likelihood of their missiles getting through would have greatly diminished. I concluded that seen in this light such a system actually had a ‘stabilising potential’.* (#litres_trial_promo)
Two broader objections, though, can and doubtless will be raised against my advocacy of missile defence.
The first is that I am exaggerating the threats. But I am not. I base my arguments on the work of acknowledged experts. And all the experience of recent attempts to assess these threats is that the experts have consistently been inclined to underrate them. For example, the US administration’s 1995 National Intelligence Estimate, while taking current developments in missile proliferation seriously, concluded that the US would be free of threat for at least another fifteen years. Other evidence was, however, already by then emerging that caused me and my advisers to doubt whether this (relatively) comfortable judgement was soundly based.
Accordingly, in 1996 I warned in a speech at Fulton, Missouri – the site of Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech fifty years earlier – that there was a ‘risk that thousands of people may be killed in [a ballistic missile] attack which forethought and wise preparation might have prevented’. The seriousness of the danger was highlighted when in April the following year the Japanese Foreign Minister spoke of reports that North Korea had deployed the Rodong-i missile, with a range of 625 miles, and was therefore able to strike any target in Japan. Other reports highlighted the fact that proliferating rogue states were cooperating with each other – that Rodong missile was believed to have been financed by Libya and Iran. The Iranians were reported to have tested components of a missile capable of striking Israel, and Russia had been selling them nuclear reactors.
These ominous signs could still be discounted by those who chose to do so. But 1998 was the year in which much harder evidence emerged.
The authoritative report of the Rumsfeld Commission, appointed by Congress to assess the threat posed by ballistic missiles to the US, woke even the sleepiest doves from their dreams. Donald (now US Defense Secretary) Rumsfeld noted that, apart from Russia and China, countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq ‘would be able to inflict major destruction on the US within about five years of a decision to acquire such a capability, ten years in the case of Iraq’, adding that for much of that time the United States might not know that such a decision had been taken. He concluded that the threat was ‘broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly’ than reported by the intelligence services, whose ability to provide such warnings was in any case ‘eroding’.
Simultaneously, events were lending further gravity to the report’s conclusions. Although neither country poses any threat to the West, India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May 1998 took American intelligence by surprise, showing just how little we can expect to know about the new nuclear powers’ capabilities and intentions. Still more seriously, in July Iran test-fired a nine-hundred-mile-range missile and was discovered to be developing a still longer-range missile, apparently based on Russian technology. This constituted a threat to Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East. Most serious of all, in August North Korea took the world by surprise by launching a three-stage rocket over Japan. This represented a direct threat to America’s most important ally in the Pacific, to American forces stationed there, and indeed by implication to the American homeland. One of Thatcher’s laws is that the unexpected happens: but I doubt whether we can really still consider a missile attack as unexpected.
The second objection to my argument is quite the opposite of the first: it is that nothing we do will make any difference. This is turn comes in several variants. That most often heard today, especially since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the later fears of biological terrorism, is the suggestion that an aggressor does not need to acquire missiles in order to attack us. He can rely on other means closer to hand – whether passenger aircraft loaded with fuel, or anthrax, or a smuggled-in so-called ‘backpack’ nuclear weapon. In these circumstances, it is argued, missile defence is a waste of time and money.
But this argument is flawed at several levels. The first is at the level of basic logic. It does not follow that because we have been shown to be vulnerable to one threat we should simply accept vulnerability to another. Second, no one argues that BMD offers a substitute for other measures. We need a layered defence so that we are able to guard against a range of threats. Of these the danger posed by an incoming missile is only one. But, third, it is by no means the least of the dangers we face; indeed, the likelihood that it will be employed against us must have increased as a result of the events of 11 September. Although we must avoid complacency, it is surely much less likely that hijacked aircraft will again be used as a means of mass terrorism against the West. In response to all that has happened, security has already been increased; a range of further measures will doubtless be adopted; air crews will be more alert; passengers will be less compliant; suicidal terrorists will find fewer collaborators to dupe; in short, the chances of a successful hijack will diminish. The attraction to terrorists or to a rogue state of an attack by the alternative means of a long-range missile has accordingly grown.
Moreover, that attraction was always considerable, for reasons that are often overlooked. We can never be sure that some fanatic may not seek to detonate a small nuclear weapon in a Western capital. We can, though, take some comfort from the fact that such acts of terrorism are not much favoured by the leaders of rogue states who want to use their weapons to maximum political effect. Ballistic missiles are attractive to them because they are designed to ensure that the weapon remains, from the moment of its launching until its impact, within the sole control of the power that fired it.
But in answer to the broader objection, I would simply say that no system is guaranteed perfect. I was never as optimistic as President Reagan seemed to be that even a fully-fledged Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) would render nuclear weapons obsolete. But in the post-Cold War age we are, after all, most unlikely to be faced with a full-scale nuclear exchange with a major power. Far more probable is that a rogue state may fire one or more missiles with nuclear or chemical warheads at one of our major cities. Another ever-present possibility is that an unauthorised launch could occur. In such cases, missile defence offers the only protection we have – though I certainly would not rule out preemptive strikes to destroy a rogue state’s capabilities.
The truth is that the global system of ballistic missile defence, which I am proposing, is by far the best chance we have of preventing missiles and their warheads reaching our cities. This is because unlike other less comprehensive systems a global ballistic missile defence system has the ability to target and destroy missiles in each of their three phases of flight – the boost phase, mid-course, and the terminal phase. The first phase, directly after launch, is naturally the best from the point of view of the intended victim – and the worst from that of the aggressor, on whom the warhead’s destructive elements fall.
I believe that the best way to achieve such a global system is probably along the lines suggested by the excellent and authoritative report of the Heritage Foundation’s Commission on Missile Defense. This would be based upon a combination of a sea-based missile defence system and a space-based sensor system. By contrast, it seems highly unlikely that a single land-based system, or indeed any system which accepts the constraints of the ABM Treaty, could provide America with an effective defence.* (#litres_trial_promo)
I also believe that the British Missile Proliferation Study Report was right to underline the effect that restricting America’s missile defence in that way, as proposed by the Clinton administration, would have on the rest of the Alliance. Britain, as America’s closest ally and most effective military collaborator, would be particularly vulnerable to missile attack from a rogue state if we were not within the defensive shield.* (#litres_trial_promo) The British and other European governments should be pledging their full support to those in America who wish to create an effective global ballistic missile defence. America’s NATO allies should also be prepared to bear a fair share of the burden of the expense: so far there is little sign of this happening.
Though you would not guess it from President Putin’s well-publicised objections, Russia too has a strong interest in America’s building such a system. Its cities are closer to the potential threats than are most of the West’s. For its part, America by offering to protect Russia has the potential to achieve the visionary goal of President Reagan who saw SDI as a benefit to share.
I was delighted that George W. Bush, in the course of his US presidential campaign, made his position on this matter so clear, saying:
It is time to leave the Cold War behind, and defend against the new threats of the twenty-first century. America must build effective missile defences, based on the best available options, at the earliest possible date. Our missile defence must be able to protect all fifty states – and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas – from missile attacks by rogue nations, or accidental launches … A missile defence system should not only defend our country, it should defend our allies, with whom I will consult as we develop our plans.† (#litres_trial_promo)
As President, Mr Bush energetically set about honouring this pledge. I hope that Congress will see fit to support his endeavours. I also trust that America’s allies, above all Britain, will take full advantage of the President’s proposal to protect our populations too. And no one should pretend that the events of 11 September made effective missile defence any less important, or its acquisition any less urgent.
So I conclude that:
We must recognise that the threat from ballistic missiles carrying nuclear or other WMD warheads is real, growing and still unanswered
We should acknowledge that diplomatic and other means aimed at curbing proliferation will have little effect
Politicians should stop talking as if a world without nuclear weapons were a possibility and begin to accept that nuclear weapons need to be tested and modernised if the nuclear shield is to be maintained
They should recognise that though political conditions make proliferation and the threat of missile launches more likely, the advance of science has made coping with them more possible
The only way to do this is to build a system of global ballistic missile defence.
TAKING THE STRAIN
Given leaders of resolution and foresight, and with the support of her allies, the American superpower has the material resources to prevail. But does it have the moral resources? I predict that this question will come to be asked even more frequently in the wake of the terrorist onslaught of 11 September. That outrage was aimed directly at the heart of America’s culture, values and beliefs.
Osama bin Laden once described Americans as ‘a decadent people with no understanding of morality’.* (#litres_trial_promo) His contempt for America’s fighting spirit has already been shown to be misplaced. But what of his and his fellow fanatics’ scorn for our kind of liberal society?
It should be said at once that remarkably few Westerners view all that constitutes Western society today as perfect. Indeed, with us self-criticism is second nature. We worry openly about family breakdown, the dependency culture, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse and violent crime. We are all too conscious that a rising standard of living has not always brought with it a higher quality of life.
But at this point the critics and the enemies of our society part company. What conservative-minded Westerners want to see is the strengthening of personal responsibility in order to make our free society work. What our enemies demand is altogether different: it is the imposition of a dictatorial system in which neither freedom nor responsibility is valued, one where all that is required of individuals is obedience.
The Founding Fathers believed that although the form of republican government they had framed was designed to cope with human failings, it provided no kind of substitute for human virtues. For them American self-government meant exactly that – government by as well as for the people. James Madison knew that democracy presupposed a degree of popular virtue if it was to work well. In Number 55 of the Federalist Papers he wrote:
As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form* [Emphasis added]
The Founding Fathers and those who came after them had different religious beliefs, and sometimes none. But they were convinced that the way to nourish the virtues which would make America strong was through religion.
It is beyond my purpose to describe the complicated and still-evolving story of relations between Church – however defined – and state in America.* (#litres_trial_promo) But when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835 that Americans held religion ‘to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions’ he was recording a very wise observation.
Whenever I go to America I am struck by the unembarrassed way in which the divinity keeps making an appearance in political discourse. And this reflects the fact that so many Americans are so deeply religious. Surveys have shown that two-thirds of Americans say that religious commitment is either the most important or a very important dimension of their lives, and America, far more than Britain or Continental Europe, is a church-going country.† (#litres_trial_promo) And the natural, collective response of Americans to the tragedy of 11 September was to fill the nation’s churches. America’s faith, including its faith in itself and its mission, is the bedrock of its sense of duty.
That is yet another reason why we non-Americans can make our own the words of the poet Henry Longfellow:
Thou, too, sail on O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!‡ (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_d1382163-81d3-5d94-b0cc-ac408cc5b316)
The Russian Enigma (#ulink_d1382163-81d3-5d94-b0cc-ac408cc5b316)
A VISIT TO NIZHNY NOVGOROD
Russia is so large that its overall conditions at any one moment almost defy generalisation. Indeed, it may be that the only way to understand the reality of Russia is to experience just a little of it at a time. Certainly, the impressions I gained from the visit I made in July 1993 have proved as instructive as anything I have read before or since.
I had been invited to receive an honorary degree from the Mendeleev Institute in Moscow, which specialises in chemical engineering and is one of Russia’s leading scientific institutions. My own early background as a research chemist meant that the invitation was of special interest to me. But I was also impatient to see for myself how much progress Russia, after almost two years of Boris Yeltsin and his reforms, was making. There were so many contradictory reports in the West that it was difficult to know quite what to think. Sir Brian Fall, one of Britain’s very best Ambassadors, had therefore prepared a programme that took in something of the old and the new. But even I was really not quite prepared for the resulting contrast.
On the afternoon of my first day in Moscow (Wednesday, 21 July) I was taken around a run-down shopping centre in one of the suburbs of Moscow. There was food on the shelves. But I could see that the choice was very limited and the quality, particularly of the fresh produce, was poor. The surroundings were as dreary as only socialist architecture can be. The locals were friendly, but half an hour of this was enough. Returning to the British Embassy for a working supper I reflected that though there were no evident shortages, neither was there much materially to show for reform. I had expected better, and I learned from the experts round the table that evening that a lot of Russians shared my view.
The following day I had another, more uplifting, rendezvous with the past in the form of several hours’ enjoyable conversation with Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, at the palatial Gorbachev Foundation (whose purpose I have never altogether understood) and then over lunch at the Residence. I was glad to see that both were in good form, though still somewhat shaken and embittered by the circumstances of Mr Gorbachev’s removal from power. Raisa told me about the discomforts of their three days of ‘exile’ in Crimea during the abortive coup in August 1991. There had apparently been little or no food, and she was lucky to have some sweets in her handbag to give to her granddaughter. In fact, I later learned that the mental pressure of the time had caused Raisa to have a stroke.* (#litres_trial_promo)
After lunch we all went to the Mendeleev Institute. The ceremony was splendid. There were speeches. In mine I referred to the close relationship between science, truth and freedom. This relationship was, in fact, far from theoretical in the old Soviet Union, where independent-minded scholars of integrity often took refuge in the natural sciences, which were somewhat less contaminated and distorted by Marxist dogma.
An orchestra accompanied some wonderful Russian singing to round off the occasion. I could not though avoid noticing that the Gorbachevs were ignored by many present. Beneath the celebration political wounds ran deep.
At dinner that evening I had my first opportunity to discuss the Russian government’s reform programme with one of its main proponents and activators, the immensely able economist Anatoly Chubais. His ideas sounded admirable. But I could not quite forget the previous day’s dismal supermarket. Which was Russian reality? More importantly, which was the future?
Early next morning I and my party – which included Denis and our daughter Carol, who had shrewdly arranged to cover the trip for the European newspaper – left by plane for the city of Nizhny Novgorod. Under communism it was known as Gorky and was a closed city dedicated to secretive nuclear weapons research. Its very existence had long been concealed as far as possible from prying Western eyes. Indeed, the British crew of the private jet we were using had to take on board a Russian navigator in order to locate the airport, which did not appear on any of the usual maps.
But Nizhny Novgorod, I was aware, once symbolised a very different tradition in Russian history. In 1817 the city hosted its first trade fair, which quickly established itself as the most successful in the whole of Russia. The Russians, who are the world’s most adept inventors of popular proverbs, used to say that Moscow was Russia’s heart, St Petersburg her head and Nizhny Novgorod her pocket. With the end of the Cold War had also come an end to reliance on the defence budget to provide employment. The ‘pocket’ rapidly emptied. So there was every reason for the citizenry to return to their old entrepreneurial ways in order to earn a living.
Successful entrepreneurship is ultimately a matter of flair. But there is also a fund of practical knowledge to be acquired and, of course, the right legal and financial framework has to be provided for productive enterprise to develop. I had heard back in London that the Governor of the province, Boris Nemtsov, was someone who understood all this and that he was committed to a radical programme of what some call Thatcherism but what I had always regarded as commonsense. So I had decided to see for myself, and our Embassy made the arrangements.
Nizhny Novgorod’s saviour was, I found, frighteningly young (in his mid-thirties), extraordinarily energetic, extremely good-looking and gifted with both intelligence and shrewdness (which do not always go together). He was a good talker and spoke fluent English. His background was in physics, on which he had written some sixty research papers. He was extremely self-confident, and with good reason.
Indeed, as we sat in his offices in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin building, the more I listened to Mr Nemtsov’s account of his reforms the more impressed I was. He explained to me that he had been using his powers as Governor to promote a real free-enterprise economy. At that time the Russian Duma had still not passed a law to create secure title to private property, but in Nizhny Novgorod he had already decreed a local law on private ownership of land. The soil, as I would later see for myself, was rich and well-cultivated. The prime difficulty was not therefore in growing crops – in fact, Nizhny Novgorod was already more than self-sufficient in grain – but rather in selling the produce. Under communism, decisions about distribution and marketing had, naturally enough, been left to the Party bureaucrats. But once that system collapsed, networks which in the ordinary conditions of capitalism would have evolved over time had to be created all at once from scratch. Mr Nemtsov had made it quite clear to the local farmers and traders that it was they who now had to fend for themselves: the state offered no answers. But he had made a large contribution to solving the problem by auctioning off the entire fleet of government-owned lorries – later that afternoon I visited one of the privatised transport firms and was extremely impressed with all I saw, not least the enthusiasm of the manager and his staff.
It was now time to gain some further information and some exercise, as amid what seemed a large proportion of the population of Nizhny Novgorod, the Governor and I took a walk down Bolshaya Pokrovskaya street. All the stores here were privately owned. Every few yards we stopped to talk to the shopkeepers and see what they had to sell. No greater contrast with the drab uniformity of Moscow could be imagined. One shop remains vivid in my memory. It sold dairy produce, and it had a greater selection of different cheeses than I have ever seen in one place. I ate samples of several and they were very good. I also discovered that they were all Russian, and considerably cheaper than their equivalents in Britain. I enthusiastically expressed my appreciation. Perhaps because as a grocer’s daughter I carry conviction on such matters, a great cheer went up when my words were translated, and someone cried, ‘Thatcher for President!’ But the serious lesson for me – and for my hosts – was, of course, that in this one privately owned shop in this distant Russian city, a combination of excellent local products, talented entrepreneurs and laws favourable to enterprise applied by honest and capable political leadership could generate prosperity and progress. There was no need of a ‘middle way’ or of special adjustment to Russian conditions. In that cheese shop was proof that capitalism worked. The doubters would have been astonished.
THE PERILS OF PREDICTION
But then, Russia has always had a unique capacity to surprise. Every prediction about it should be hedged around with qualifications if whoever makes them would be secure from embarrassment. And before going any further I would like to make my own modest contribution to the current wave of apologising. For I too was wrong – about some things.
I never had any doubt that the communist system was doomed to fail, if the West kept its nerve and remained strong. (On occasion, of course, that seemed a very large ‘if’.) I believed this simply because communism ran against the grain of human nature and was therefore ultimately unsustainable. Because it was committed to suppressing individual differences, it could not mobilise individual talents, which is vital to the process of wealth creation. It thus impoverished not just souls but society. Faced with a free system, which engages rather than coerces people, and so brings out the best in them, communism must ultimately founder.
But when? We did not know how desperately incompetent, indeed how near total breakdown, the Soviet system was in the 1980s. Perhaps that was for the best. Had some in the West been aware just how limited and over-stretched were the Soviet Union’s resources the temptation would have been to drop our guard. That could have been fatal, for the USSR remained a military superpower long after it had become a political and economic fossil. I would, though, never have predicted that within a decade of my becoming Prime Minister the countries of Central and Eastern Europe would be free, let alone that two years later the Soviet Union would itself have crumbled.
I must also confess to being at least half-wrong about another important aspect of the Soviet Union in my time, namely its durability. I was never attracted by the idea of deliberately trying to hold the Soviet Union together. Such strategies were, in any case, bound to fail because we in the West lacked the knowledge and means to give effect to them. As I have related elsewhere, I was thus alone in opposing an attempt by the then President of the European Commission to have the EEC ‘guarantee’ the integrity of the USSR in the face of independence movements by the Baltic states.* (#litres_trial_promo)
But like just about everyone else, I underestimated the fundamental fragility of the Soviet Union once the Gorbachev reforms had begun. A non-communist Soviet Union, which was what we at that time wanted to see, even though we did not put it like that, was actually an impossibility. This was because what held the USSR together was the Communist Party.
The Sovietologists, with their subtle analyses of Soviet society, were wrong: the dissidents with their emphasis on the role of a monolithic party ideology were right. Communism was, in fact, like a parasite, occupying merely the shells of state institutions. These institutions were thenceforth effectively dead and could not be revived.
