I spoke out against these trends in a speech to UN Ambassadors in New York in September 1991. I defended the ‘new nationalism’ which was apparent among the constituent peoples of the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. This was itself, I argued, a reaction against the tyranny of communism; most of those who embraced it were convinced democrats; and, to the extent that there was a risk of excesses, these should be seen as proof that attempts to suppress national identity were both bound to fail and would result in even stronger national passions when they eventually did fail. That had important implications for the future of the UN.
True internationalism will always consist of cooperation between nations: that’s what the word means. And similarly, the United Nations, which embodies the highest aspirations of internationalism, reminds us by its very name of its true purpose. The starting-point for all your deliberations is that you represent nations. Your often elusive goal is that they should be united in some common purpose. But unity of purpose — not union — is the objective.
In fact, by the time I spoke in New York it was already becoming apparent that all was not well with the New World Order. I was deeply concerned about the West’s failure to see what was at stake in the former Yugoslavia, where Slovenia’s and Croatia’s bids for freedom from the oppressive impoverishment of communism were being challenged by armed force. For me, rights of national self-determination and self-defence (indeed human rights more generally) lay at the heart of any just international order — and, at least as important, of any stable international order. Stability is a conservative value in foreign policy: anyone who doubts that should be given a one-way ticket to Mogadishu. But stability should not be used as an excuse for upholding a status quo that is itself inherently unstable because it suppresses social forces that cannot ultimately be contained.
It is perhaps significant that on each of the three occasions when I felt compelled, since leaving office, to intervene publicly on the subject of foreign affairs (other than as regards Europe), it has been my conviction that both moral and practical considerations required a change of approach. The first was when in April 1991 I was moved by what I heard from Kurdish women, who came to beg me to speak out in order to gain relief for their compatriots bearing the brunt of Saddam Hussein’s merciless attacks. Parliament was in recess and there was no minister available to see them. I am glad to say that — doubtless coincidentally — action was subsequently taken at least to set up safe havens.
The second occasion was when, on the occasion of the coup in the Soviet Union in August 1991,1 was dismayed by the willingness of some Western leaders apparently to ‘wait and see’ whether the coup leaders were successful, rather than give full moral support to the resistance gathered around Boris Yeltsin at the Russian White House. So, as soon as I had checked what had happened, I held a press conference outside my Great College Street office and went on to give a succession of interviews.
I said that it was quite clear that what had happened in Moscow was unconstitutional and that the Russian people should now take their lead from Boris Yeltsin as the leading democratically elected politician. In this new and dangerous situation our own planned defence cuts must not now go ahead. But I warned against assuming that the coup would be successful. The Soviet people had now developed a taste for democracy and would be reluctant to lose it. They should protect democracy by acting as the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe had done — by taking to the streets and making their views known.
The following morning it was already starting to become clear that my optimism that the coup would not succeed was being borne out by events. The news was of huge protest rallies in Leningrad and Moscow. I thought it was worth trying to speak directly by telephone to Mr Gorbachev who, according to the coup leaders, had had to step down ‘for reasons of health’. But I was hardly surprised when the Soviet Ambassador told me this was impossible. I had assumed that telephone contact would have been cut off by the KGB — though in this I soon learned I had overestimated the coup leaders’ competence. Later in the day the Conservative MEP Lord Bethell, a great expert on Russian matters, contacted my office to say that he had with him Mrs Galina Staravoitova, an adviser to Mr Yeltsin on a visit to London. I immediately asked them to come in and brief me. I related how I had failed to make contact with President Gorbachev. Mrs Staravoitova then asked me whether I would like to speak to Mr Yeltsin instead. After searching through her handbag, she came up with the number for the direct line to his office in the Parliament building and after several failed attempts — to my astonishment — I was put through.
Mr Yeltsin and I spoke for some time, with Lord Bethell translating. It was clear that the outlook from the besieged White House was grim but also that Mr Yeltsin and his supporters were in good heart. He asked me if I would chair a commission of doctors to investigate the truth about Mr Gorbachev’s allegedly poor health, which had every appearance of a classic Soviet diplomatic illness. Of course I agreed, and the rest of the day was spent in cooperation with the Foreign Office and the Department of Health trying to compile a suitable list of distinguished doctors. Luckily, it proved unnecessary, for the coup by now was crumbling fast.
I was duly denounced in the press by British Government ‘sources’ for my call to the Russians to come out into the streets to stop the coup, and for my call to our politicians to stop Western defence cuts. But I had no regrets. Democracy has to be fought for and if necessary died for; and indeed three brave young men did die for it. Their sacrifice is remembered by Russians today.
But the issue on which my view and that of the Western foreign policy establishments differed most was Bosnia. What seemed to me so tragic was that, like anyone else who had bothered to follow events — and I was regularly briefed both by British experts and by others from the region — I could see the preparations for Serbia’s war of aggression against Bosnia being made. The West’s feeble and unprincipled response to the earlier war against Croatia made it almost inevitable. Indeed, with Western acquiescence the Yugoslav army was able to withdraw its heavy armour from Croatia into Bosnia.
I was working on Volume I of my memoirs with my advisers in Switzerland in August 1992 when I learned that Bosnian Vice-President Ejup Ganić wanted to see me: he was desperately trying to summon help from abroad for Bosnia, having slipped out of Sarajevo.
Because of the privations of Sarajevo, I had laid out a substantial afternoon tea for our meeting. To my surprise he refused all food as he gave me a thorough briefing on the political and military situation. But when I went into my study to telephone the Foreign Office to arrange a meeting for him, my colleagues again pressed him to eat something — whereupon he wolfed down several sandwiches at a go. He then explained to them that, having lived in an underground bunker for months with little to eat, he had not trusted himself to eat politely in front of me.
What he told me confirmed all that I had heard and read, and I now decided that it was my moral duty to act. I would take the highest-profile initiative I could, but focusing on the United States — for after many fruitless conversations with the Foreign Office I despaired of a hearing in Britain. In the New York Times and on American television I sought to awaken the conscience of the West by arguing that by doing nothing we were acting as accomplices. But I also covered the strict practicalities.