90 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
the President of the risk of firing the starting pistol for yet another
round of the arms race. She argued that the USSR might react by pro-
ducing a fresh generation of nuclear weaponry. Reagan’s programme,
moreover, could turn out to be only ninety-five per cent effective. Sixty
million people would die if even a few missiles penetrated the shield.
Thatcher was a post-war traditionalist who reasoned that nuclear
weapons had steadied a balance of power through the system of
mutual deterrence. The result was forty years of peace in Europe.
Reagan refused to budge. He stood by a basic position, as he explained:
‘My ultimate goal is to eliminate nuclear weapons.’^11
Yet he appreciated the fulsome support she offered on nearly every
other question of world politics. He recorded in his diary: ‘Margaret
Thatcher is a tower of strength and a solid friend of the U.S.’^12 As
she grew in confidence, she dispensed with her Foreign Secretary at
meetings with him.^13 The Americans regularly consulted her about
their initiatives in foreign policy – the unilateral decision to occupy
Grenada was an exception. Steadily the Pershing-2s and cruise mis-
siles began to reach Western Europe. They were installed at Greenham
Common near Newbury in England and Mutlangen near Frankfurt in
West Germany. Brezhnev and Andropov had thrown down a gauntlet
which America and her allies proved willing to pick up.
NATO tried to face the world united despite the known disagree-
ments. A secret system of inner consultation permitted the American
administration to consult the United Kingdom, West Germany and
France separately from the other allies. In European affairs, these were
the powers that counted for most in Washington. Even de Gaulle’s
pull-out from the alliance’s integrated military command failed to
push the Americans into excluding the French from sensitive negotia-
tions. The Quad, as the system was known, was implicitly aimed at
keeping Italy and other NATO members out of discussions. It came
into existence weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and an
early priority was to coordinate allied activity, including with Japan
and ‘the Australasians’. Arrangements were also made to involve
Canada. The supreme objective was to restrict the USSR’s global power
and counteract its pretensions. Whereas Brezhnev’s operations in
sub-Saharan Africa were regretted but accepted as almost a natural
feature of the Cold War, the Afghan war was treated as an intolerable
extension of Soviet influence. From 1979 onwards, America’s allies
and friends around the world sought to ‘roll back’ Moscow’s recent
achievements.