Of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I? Perhaps. But others who often criticized me in Government are saying it too. In the pages which follow — on Europe, the wider international scene, social policy and the economy — I offer some thoughts about putting these things right. It is now, however, for others to take the action required.
CHAPTER XIII
Bruges or Brussels?
Policy towards Europe
NARROW INTERNATIONALISM
Once a politician is given a public image by the media, it is almost impossible for him to shed it. At every important stage of his career, it steps between him and the public so that people seem to see and hear not the man himself but the invented personality to which he has been reduced.
My public image was on the whole not a disadvantageous one; I was ‘the Iron Lady’, ‘Battling Maggie’, ‘Attila the Hen’, etc. Since these generally gave opponents the impression I was a hard nut to crack, I was glad to be so portrayed even though no real person could be so single-mindedly tough. In one respect, however, I suffered: whenever the topic of Europe arose, I was usually depicted as a narrow, nostalgic nationalist who could not bear to see the feudal trappings of Britain’s ancien régime crumble into dust like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, when the sunlight of Europe’s rational modernity was turned upon them. I was ‘isolated’, ‘backward-looking’, ‘rooted in the past’, ‘clinging to the wreckage of Empire’, and ‘obsessed with the outdated notion of sovereignty’. And virtually all my statements on Europe were read in that light.
In fact, of the three underlying reasons for my scepticism about European federalism, the most important was that the European Union was an obstacle to fruitful internationalism. (The other two were that Britain showed that established and ‘satisfied’ nationalisms were the best building-blocks for international cooperation; and that, as I argue elsewhere in this chapter, democracy cannot function in a federal superstate where the multiplicity of languages makes democratic debate and democratic accountability mere slogans.) The European federalists are in fact ‘narrow internationalists’, ‘little Europeans’ who consistently place the interests of the Community above the common interests of the wider international community. The EU came near to sabotaging the GATT; it has sparked a series of trade disputes across the Atlantic; it has prolonged the instability of Central and Eastern Europe by maintaining absurdly high trade barriers on their infant export industries; and it threatens to divide NATO with premature and militarily incomprehensible plans to establish a ‘European pillar’ or ‘European defence identity’. And most of these obstructive initiatives make no sense in their own terms; they are launched solely in order to bring nearer the day when ‘Europe’ will be a fully-fledged state with its own flag, anthem, army, parliament, government, currency and, eventually one supposes, people.
I am not alone in warning that this could stimulate both the US and Japan to safeguard themselves by forming similar protectionist empires. The world might then drift towards an Orwellian future of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia — three mercantilist world empires on increasingly hostile terms. In the process the post-war international institutions which have served us well, like NATO and GATT, would be weakened, pushed aside and eventually made irrelevant. That prospect is still alive and should worry us.
If we look ahead still further to the end of the twenty-first century, however, an even more alarming (because more unstable) future is on the cards. Consider the number of medium-to-large states in the world that now stand poised on the edge of a freemarket revolution: India, China, Brazil, possibly Russia. Add to these the present economic great powers: the USA, Japan, the European Union (or, with only a slight amendment of the scenario, a Franco-German ‘fast lane’ bloc). What we are possibly looking at in 2095 is an unstable world in which there are more than half a dozen ‘great powers’, all with their own clients, all vulnerable if they stand alone, all capable of increasing their power and influence if they form the right kind of alliance, and all engaged willy-nilly in perpetual diplomatic manoeuvres to ensure that their relative positions improve rather than deteriorate. In other words, 2095 might look like 1914 played on a somewhat larger stage.
Whether your favourite nightmare is Orwell’s tripartite division of the spoils, or this vision of 1914 revisited, the key to avoiding it is the same. Neither need come to pass if the Atlantic Alliance remains, in essence, America as the dominant power surrounded by allies which, in their own long-term interest, generally follow its lead. Such are the realities of population, resources, technology and capital that if America remains the dominant partner in a united West, then the West can continue to be the dominant power in the world as a whole. And since collective security can only really be provided if there is a superpower of last resort, the rest of the world (apart from ‘rogue states’ and terrorist groups) would generally support, or at least acquiesce in, such an international structure.
Britain’s role in such a structure would, I believe, be a disproportionately influential one. That is not, however, my principal reason for supporting it. My reason is that such a world best meets the needs of international peace and collective prosperity. It would also be a liberal world — politically, economically and culturally — and far more so than a world dominated by either Asian or Eurasian blocs, remarkable though their achievements have been in history and in recent years.
Let me stress again, however, that it will not come to pass unless America is persuaded to remain the dominant European power militarily and economically. That means we must ensure that American troops remain in Europe for the foreseeable future, and in particular for the next few years when budgetary pressures will tempt the US to withdraw. In these circumstances, the EU’s creeping tendency to establish itself as a separate ‘third force’ risks alienating America and sending the legions home. The stakes are high. And to divide the West and move closer to permanent world instability in order that Europe may enjoy a modest increase in status as one independent superpower among seven or eight seems to me the most mischievous and irresponsible form of nationalism.
TOWARDS MAASTRICHT
One of the few things I still regret about the timing of my departure from Downing Street was that it prevented my coming to grips with the rapidly changing scene in Europe.[63] In the autumn of 1990 the groundwork was being laid for what would be the Maastricht Treaty, designed to set in place the framework for a federal United States of Europe. I had fought many battles within the European Community since becoming Prime Minister, but I had never before faced one of this scale and importance.
It had, of course, been increasingly clear to me that the European Commission and a number of heads of government held a quite different view from mine about the purpose and direction of the Community. It was as a warning against the way in which statism, protectionism and federalism were advancing relentlessly that I delivered the Bruges speech in 1988. At Bruges I had argued against attempts to fit nations ‘into some sort of identikit European personality’, calling instead for ‘willing and active cooperation between independent sovereign states [as] the best way to build a successful European Community’.
63
I have described the arguments about Europe, which formed the background to my stepping down as Prime Minister, in