In June 1977 I paid a flying visit to Rome. This too resulted in some valuable contacts and discussions, notably with the grand old man of Christian Democracy, Professor Amintore Fanfani, and also with one of Italy’s most clever and effective Finance Ministers, Filippo Pandolfi. My visit concluded with a private audience with Pope Paul VI — my first experience of the Vatican. These are always very private occasions. With Pope Paul VI and later with Pope John Paul II I discussed Northern Ireland; and with John Paul II, whose election as Pope has always struck me as providential, I held in addition a discussion about the irreligious nature of communism and the challenge it presented to Christian statesmanship. It is no secret that I greatly admire the role played by John Paul II in the liberation of his country, Poland, and of the other countries of Eastern Europe from the legions of communists that proved no match for his spiritual authority.
In public speeches on this visit I called for the involvement of the Italian Christian Democrats in the nascent EDU: I recognized that the word ‘conservative’ had a different and pejorative significance in Italy, but urged my hosts to consider instead the reality of our similar policies. I made the point in person to Aldo Moro, then the Christian Democrat party leader. He was an aloof, academic figure on the left of his party, and I did not feel he was very sympathetic to what I was saying. Alas, there was no occasion to return to the subject, for within a year Signor Moro was kidnapped and murdered.
In retrospect, I can see that the Italians were quite right in thinking that they and we saw the world very differently. Christian Democracy served a useful purpose in many European countries, where it was important for all shades of moderate opinion to combine in order to resist fascism and communism. Catholic social teaching provided a valuable framework — for Protestants as well — in societies where no strong secular centre-right political tradition existed. The trouble was that, whatever their merits as a view of life, such ideas were not in themselves sufficient to give an ideological basis for the practical policies required in the late twentieth century. This was particularly true of economic policy, where anything from full-blooded free enterprise on the one hand to corporatism on the other could be dressed up in the language of Christian Democracy. Some Christian Democrat parties, like the German CDU, have gone at least part of the way towards making up for such deficiencies by adopting free-market rhetoric (if not always free-market policies). Others, like the Italian Christian Democrats, have gone the way of all dinosaurs. Christian Democracy has also shown itself incapable of shedding light on the great question of the post-Cold War world — the long-term relationship between nation states and supra-national institutions. I conclude that however much individual Christian Democrats may command our respect and deserve our support, Conservatives have little to learn from them.
In any case, Christian Democrat and conservative parties from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Britain did agree to found the European Democratic Union. I was present at the launch in Salzburg in April 1978. Among other party leaders there were Helmut Kohl and Franz Josef Strauss — the leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and, after Herr Kohl’s narrow defeat in the elections in October 1976, the Chancellor-candidate of the German right. The contrast between the two of them interested me. Both were very large and very German. But Herr Strauss was a mercurial intellectual, had a lively wit and was an accomplished orator. He also lacked Helmut Kohl’s caution and, when pitted against Helmut Schmidt, his impulsiveness, and a not altogether deserved reputation for extremism later defeated him. It was a glittering occasion at the Klessheim Castle and the Austrians, whose brainchild the EDU was, were magnificent hosts. And for me it was also a useful platform at an important time.
As I have mentioned, the third pressing European question was the role of the countries of the Community in East–West relations. Although this issue preoccupied me from soon after my becoming Leader, I only tackled it directly on one occasion — in a speech, drafted with the help of Hugh Thomas, to the Grandes Conferences Catholiques in Brussels on Friday 23 June 1978. The theme was ‘Principles of Foreign Policy’, covering a wide canvas, including the need to advance democracy throughout the world so as to reduce the risk of war. But the part of the speech which received greatest attention concerned the political role of the European Community. I did not regard the EEC as merely an economic entity: it had a wider strategic purpose. As a zone of democracy, stability and prosperity adjoining Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, it was both a showcase for the Western way of life and a magnet drawing politicians and peoples away from communism. Moreover, Western European countries should not be tempted to govern their relations with the Soviet Union and its satellites on economic grounds alone, but rather with full regard to the effects of technology transfer and cheap credits in oiling the Russian war machine.
We must see our relationships with the Soviet Union as a whole. The supply by the West of credit, grain and technology; the negotiation of different aspects of security and disarmament; Soviet and satellite activities in Africa, Asia and the Pacific are all features of one landscape. Unless we learn, as the Soviet Union has learned, to look at the landscape as a whole we shall be consistently out-manoeuvred.
In order to grasp how we had arrived at such a pass it is necessary to consider the East-West balance more generally.
EAST-WEST
One of the first foreign statesmen I met after becoming Leader was Henry Kissinger, President Gerald Ford’s Secretary of State. Over the years my respect for Dr Kissinger steadily grew and — though starting from different perspectives — our analysis of international events increasingly converged. At this time, however, I was uneasy about the direction of Western policy towards the Soviet Union, of which he was acknowledged to be the impresario.
I did indeed recognize the importance of the ‘opening to China’ achieved under Richard Nixon in the power-play with the Soviets. It was a crucial element of victory in the Cold War to detach China permanently from the Soviet Union. As for ‘linkage’ — that is to recognize the links between one issue and another in bilateral relations between states, in Henry Kissinger’s own words ‘to create a network of incentives and penalties to produce the most favourable outcome’[46] — I took the view that its prospects had been undermined by President Nixon’s domestic weakness induced by Watergate. But I had serious doubts about the strategy of ‘détente’.
My gut instinct was that this was one of those soothing foreign terms which conceal an ugly reality that plain English would expose. It was difficult to see any difference between appeasement and détente as it began to evolve under the conditions of American paralysis after the election of a post-Watergate Congress dominated by ultra-liberal Democrats and the collapsing position in South Vietnam. Although so many obeisances had been paid to the concept that it was not prudent to attack it directly, I came as near as I could. This was not just a reflection of my preference for plain speaking: it was also the result of my conviction that too many people in the West had been lulled into believing that their way of life was secure, when it was in fact under mortal threat.
The first condition for meeting and overcoming that threat was that the Alliance should perceive what was happening; the second and equally important condition was that we should summon up the will to change it. Even in Britain’s parlous economic state we still had the resources to fight back, as part of NATO and under the leadership of the United States. But we could not assume that that would always be so. At some point decline — not just relative but absolute and not just limited to one sphere but in every sphere, economic, military, political and psychological — might become irreversible. Urgent action was required and urgency entails risks. Accordingly, my first major foreign affairs speech was a risk.
46
Henry Kissinger,