Foreign policy of Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher at Camp David during her meeting with Ronald Reagan (December 1984)

The foreign policy of Margaret Thatcher was the foreign policy of the United Kingdom from when Thatcher's premiership commenced in May 1979, until November 1990. Her foreign policy has been described as "having helped the US stare down and defeat the Soviet Union". As Thatcher pointed out herself "The United States and Britain have together been the greatest alliance in defence of liberty and justice". From her first days as Prime Minister of Great Britain, she criticised Western societies (thus referring not only to British voters and citizens) for their "self-questioning" that has gone too far that it causes paralysis, and that action should substitute introspection at the beginning of a "dangerous decade" that challenges Western security and way of life; among other international problems she points the "immediate threat from the Soviet Union" which is "military rather than ideological" at the end of the 1970s. These words were a cornerstone to Thatcher's later foreign policy as a Prime Minister. Together with US President Ronald Reagan they made an enduring effort to bring freedom to people in the Eastern Bloc and under communist regimes that will refuse them such primal human rights as freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of movement, et al. This effort would later result in the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism as well, and the dissolution of Soviet Union.

Mr Speaker, wars are not caused by the build-up of weapons. They are caused when an aggressor believes he can achieve his objectives at an acceptable price. The war of 1939 was not caused by an arms race. It sprang from a tyrant's belief that other countries lacked the means and the will to resist him. Remember Bismarck's phrase: "Do I want war? Of course not! I want victory!"

Our task is to see that potential aggressors, from whatever quarter, understand plainly that the capacity and the resolve of the West would deny them victory in war and that the price they would pay would be intolerable. That is the basis of deterrence and it is the same whatever the nature of the weapons, for let us never forget the horrors of conventional war and the hideous sacrifice of those who have suffered in them.

Our task is not only to prevent nuclear war, but to prevent conventional war as well.

No-one understood the importance of deterrence more clearly than Winston Churchill, when in his last speech to you he said: "Be careful above all things not to let go of the atomic weapon until you are sure and more than sure that other means of preserving peace are in your hands!" Thirty-three years on, those weapons are still keeping the peace, but since then technology has moved on and if we are to maintain deterrence—as we must—it is essential that our research and capacity do not fall behind the work being done by the Soviet Union. That is why I firmly support President Reagan's decision to pursue research into defence against ballistic nuclear missiles—the Strategic Defense Initiative. Indeed, I hope that our own scientists will share in this research.

United States and the Soviet Union are both signatories to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty without any terminal date. Nothing in that treaty precludes research, but should that research—on either side—lead to the possible deployment of new defence systems, that would be a matter for negotiation under the treaty.

Mr Speaker, despite our differences with the Soviet Union, we have to talk with them, for we have one overriding interest in common—that never again should there be a conflict between our peoples. We hope too that we can achieve security with far fewer weapons than we have today and at lower cost, and thanks to the skilful diplomacy of Secretary Shultz, negotiations on arms control open in Geneva on 12 March. They will be of immense importance to millions. They will be intricate, complex and demanding, and we should not expect too much too soon.

We must recognise that we have faced a Soviet political offensive designed to sow differences among us; calculated to create infirmity of purpose; to impair resolve, and even to arouse fear in the hearts of our people.

Hope is such a precious commodity in the world today, but some attempted to buy it at too high a price. We shall have to resist the muddled arguments of those who have been induced to believe that Russia's intentions are benign and that ours are suspect, or who would have us simply give up our defences in the hope that where we led others would follow. As we learned cruelly in the 1930s, from good intentions can come tragic results!

Let us be under no illusions. It is our strength and not their goodwill that has brought the Soviet Union to the negotiating table in Geneva

Mr Speaker, we know that our alliance—if it holds firm—cannot be defeated, but it could be outflanked. It is among the unfree and the underfed that subversion takes root. As Ethiopia demonstrated, those people get precious little help from the Soviet Union and its allies. The weapons which they pour in bring neither help nor hope to the hungry. It is the West which heard their cries; it is the West which responded massively to the heart-rending starvation in Africa; it is the West which has made a unique contribution to the uplifting of hundreds of millions of people from poverty, illiteracy and disease.

But the problems of the Third World are not only those of famine. They face also a mounting burden of debt, falling prices for primary products, protectionism by the industrialised countries. Some of the remedies are in the hands of the developing countries themselves. They can open their markets to productive investment; they can pursue responsible policies of economic adjustment. We should respect the courage and resolve with which so many of them have tackled their special problems, but we also have a duty to help.

How can we help? First and most important, by keeping our markets open to them. Protectionism is a danger to all our trading partnerships and for many countries trade is even more important than aid. And so, we in Britain support President Reagan's call for a new GATT round.

The current strength of the dollar, which is causing so much difficulty for some of your industries, creates obvious pressures for special cases, for new trade barriers to a free market. I am certain that your Administration is right to resist such pressures. To give in to them would betray the millions in the developing world, to say nothing of the strains on your other trading partners. The developing countries need our markets as we need theirs, and we cannot preach economic adjustment to them and refuse to practise it at home.

— Margaret Thatcher, Speech to Joint Houses of Congress,

See also

• Foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration

Further reading

• Ashton, Nigel J. "Love's Labours Lost: Margaret Thatcher, King Hussein and Anglo–Jordanian Relations, 1979–1990." Diplomacy & Statecraft 22#4 (2011): 651-677.
• Brown, Archie. "The Change to Engagement in Britain's Cold War Policy: The Origins of the Thatcher-Gorbachev Relationship." Journal of Cold War Studies 10#3 (2008): 3-47.
• Byrd, Peter, ed. British foreign policy under Thatcher (Philip Allan, 1988).
• Chiampan, Andrea. "Running with the Hare, Hunting with the Hounds: The Special Relationship, Reagan's Cold War and the Falklands Conflict." Diplomacy & Statecraft 24.4 (2013): 640-660.
• Cooper, James. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan: A Very Political Special Relationship, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
• Cooper, James. "Two's Company, Three's A Crowd: Neil Kinnock, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, 1984-1987." White House Studies 13#1 (2013) 1-20.
• Corthorn, Paul. "The Cold War and British debates over the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics." Cold War History 13#1 (2013): 43-66.
• Cottrell, Robert. The end of Hong Kong: The secret diplomacy of imperial retreat (John Murray, 1993).
• Eames, Anthony M. "Margaret Thatcher's Diplomacy and the 1982 Lebanon War." Mediterranean Quarterly 25#4 (2014): 27-44. online
• Gibran, Daniel K. The Falklands War: Britain Versus the Past in the South Atlantic (McFarland, 1997).
• Ionescu, Ghita. Leadership in an Interdependent World: The Statesmanship of Adenauer, De Gaulle, Thatcher, Reagan & Gorbachev (1991) 336pp
• Lahey, Daniel James. "The Thatcher government's response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 1979–1980." Cold War History 13#1 (2013): 21-42.
• Ledger, Robert. "From Solidarity to ‘Shock Therapy’. British Foreign Policy Towards Poland Under the Thatcher Government, 1980–1990." Contemporary British History 30.1 (2016): 99-118.
• Lochery, Neill. "Debunking the Myths: Margaret Thatcher, the Foreign Office and Israel, 1979–1990." Diplomacy & Statecraft 21#4 (2010): 690-706.
• Ramsbotham, Oliver, and Hugh Miall. "The British Defence Debate in the 1980s." in Hugh Miall and Oliver Ramsbotham, eds. Beyond Deterrence (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1991) pp. 127-143.
• Sharp, Paul, ed. Thatcher's Diplomacy: The Revival of British Foreign Policy (St. Martin's Press, 1997).
• Sharp, Paul. "Thatcher’s Wholly British Foreign Policy." Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs 35#3 (1991): 395-411.
• Turner, Michael J. Britain's international role, 1970-1991 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Primary sources

• Urban, George R. Diplomacy and disillusion at the court of Margaret Thatcher: an insider's view (teNeues, 1996).