CALLS TO WESTERN EUROPE 303Margaret Thatcher communicated more frequently and directly
with Reagan than the Pope did. She and the President were soulmates
in politics. Letters passed frequently to and fro, and they phoned each
other when rapid decisions of importance were necessary.^10 While rec-
ognizing that America outmatched Britain in global power, Thatcher
hoped to use her influence with Reagan for the good of their common
cause. She sought at the same time to promote the British national
interest; and when Reagan failed to support her before the Falklands
war in 1982 or alert her about his invasion of Grenada in 1983, she
gave vent to her annoyance. She was also eager to communicate her
enthusiasms. In 1984 she had told the President that Gorbachëv was a
new kind of Soviet leader in the making.
But as soon as Gorbachëv became general secretary, she went off
the boil. Far from acting as an intermediary between East and West,
she sniped from the sidelines at the moves towards conciliation.
Her fear was that Reagan might yield too much in discussions with
Moscow, and she assured French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius
that Gorbachëv was only a ‘charming communist’.^11 Her hostility to
Reagan’s idea of abolishing nuclear weapons never left her. The only
adjustment to her position after Reykjavik came with her advice to the
President to provide Gorbachëv with a clearer idea about the projected
stages for introducing the Strategic Defense Initiative; she also advised
Reagan to promise that the Americans would refrain for a fixed period
from deploying the results of their research.^12 Percy Cradock, her For-
eign Policy Adviser, thought she was overly occupied with questions of
American policy. He nagged her in 1986 – in the nicest possible way,
no doubt – to seek an invitation to visit Moscow. She consistently
refused, arguing that there ‘might be too little to show’.^13 What she
apparently meant was that Gorbachëv was unlikely to make conces-
sions to the British national interest. Chernyaev astutely reckoned that
she instinctively valued him predominantly because he was likely to
bring about ‘the self-liquidation’ of a political and social order that was
alien to human nature.^14 But foreign policy was a different matter.
Thatcher was not going to provide Gorbachëv with undue publicity by
appearing to cooperate with him. She could see no purpose in making
it easy for Gorbachëv and Reagan to liaise.
Her inactivity perplexed even some of her friends in the United
Kingdom. Her critics went on to the attack. Labour Party leader Neil
Kinnock sympathized with Gorbachëv’s efforts to lessen international
tensions and spoke disrespectfully about her when meeting Soviet