NATO AND ITS FRIENDS 89factory at Tolyatti, the new city on the banks of the Volga, in honour
of the late Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti. Like the
West Germans, the Italians relied heavily on the USSR for its supplies
of natural gas. Giulio Andreotti, the former Prime Minister who
served as Foreign Affairs Minister from 1983, was active in trying to
se cure a good working relationship with Gromyko. Not surprisingly,
Reagan preferred Pope John Paul II to the Italian politicians of his
acquaintance. The Vatican under the leadership of the Polish pontiff
maintained staunch opposition to the USSR, atheism and Soviet dom-
ination of Eastern Europe.
While the Pope was close to the American President on many of
the biggest questions about communism, Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher was still closer. They had bonded as political soulmates at
their first meeting at the House of Commons in 1975.^10 Neither of
them had been in power at the time, but they kept in touch and took
pleasure in each other’s subsequent ascent to national leadership.
Thatcher regarded West European socialists such as Mitterrand in
France and Schmidt in West Germany with distaste, and the unilateral
nuclear disarmament leanings of a section of the British Labour Party
simply horrified her. She welcomed Reagan’s election to the White
House as a sign that America was recovering its confidence after its
humiliation in Vietnam. She stood out against all those in Western
Europe who refused to accept the need for firmness in dealing with
the USSR; and when Pravda branded her as the Iron Lady, she gloried
in her achievement in annoying the Kremlin.
Even Thatcher’s loyalty to Reagan was put under severe strain. In
1982 the Argentinian military junta annexed the Falkland Islands and
for some days before the Royal Navy reached the South Atlantic, there
was confusion about America’s policy on the coming conflict. Unlike
Secretary of State Haig, Caspar Weinberger at Defense wanted to assist
the British. His intervention tipped the balance of opinion, for which
Thatcher was forever grateful, and the Royal Navy received intelli-
gence data that helped to achieve victory over the Argentinians. A
much more serious contretemps with the American administration
occurred in October 1983, when Reagan ordered the invasion of the
tiny Caribbean island of Grenada to overthrow a new communist gov-
ernment. Grenada belonged to the Commonwealth and Thatcher felt
that Reagan at the very least should have informed her of his plans in
advance. He manfully endured the force of her fury by telephone. She
already felt doubts about his Strategic Defense Initiative and warned