Political commentary
Eastward ho
Charles Moore
What did Mr Andropov have that Mr Brezhnev lacked? Neither was a close friend of Mrs Thatcher. Each ruled over the same repressive empire which she has so often excoriated. Yet she went to weep diplomatic tears by Yuri's tomb, while Leonid had only Mr Francis Pym to mourn his passing. Coming conveniently close on the heels of the Prime Minister's shopping spree in Budapest, Andropov's death gave her the chance to build up something that seems to resemble a new policy towards the East. If it is a new policy, what can it be? If it isn't, why hang about in Red Square when the temperature is minus five?
The change cannot have been prompted by signals from the Kremlin. Dramatic alterations there now seem almost unknown. In common with everyone (including, surely, Mrs Thatcher and the Foreign Office), I know next to nothing about Mr Chernenko, but he does not seem to be the man to let a hundred flowers bloom. He is yet another immobile sep- tuagenarian with a large hat and a grim face. Why, or indeed, how should his Soviet Union risk dropping its impassive mask or its military guard when the western democracies can be relied upon to come up with a succession of silly ideas in order to impress their electorates?
Nor does it seem likely that Mrs Thatcher is acting under orders from the White House. It is obvious that .low that Cruise is deployed, there is less need to speak as harshly of the Russians as before; and it is also obvious that Mr Reagan would like some sort of arms control agreement to help him win his second term. It may be that the Americans are pleased to let Mrs Thatcher test the water for them and so avoid getting wet themselves; but Mr Bush made it clear at the weekend that America does not want Britain to be her am- bassador: 'I don't want to leave the impres- sion that the whole American-Soviet rela- tionship can be brokered or solved by an in- termediary.' Mrs Thatcher appears to have thought of her new role for herself.
The role that she has chosen is the one which the Foreign Office has always prefer- red. Already Mrs Thatcher has been praised for it in the newspapers by Mr George Walden, that department's permanent representative at the House of Commons. Although advocated with great sophistica- tion, the Foreign Office view is essentially simple — there is automatically something better about talking than not talking, automatically something better about am- bassadors exchanging friendly dinner par- ties than formal, angry notes, automatically something better about any regime that ex-
ists than any that might aspire to replace it. One must not necessarily, it says, look for immediate results; the important thing is to create a climate. Of course one cannot con- done denials of human rights, it goes on, but we are talking about the threat of world war: we just cannot afford to get too work- ed up about the fate of a few Polish shipyard workers.
No doubt there is much to be said for this view. It avoids most of the dangers of adventurism. It does make it easier for the representative of a hostile power who wants to say something to find a peaceful way of saying it. One just ought to notice that it is a view which is predisposed to cringe to the mighty and that, like the wish of trade unionists to help run the country, it is a cri de coeur from people who would like to have more interesting jobs than they do. All that one needs to say about it here is that it has not, until now, been Mrs Thatcher's view. Whether or not she was ill-advised in past years to praise the wish of Eastern Europeans to be free, and to rail against the yoke under which they groaned, it now looks uncomfortable that she starts to visit some of the chaps in charge of keeping the yoke on, and does not breathe a harsh word. It must be confusing for the Polish and Russian exiles who, until now, have been among Mrs Thatcher's strongest sup- porters here, to see her suddenly getting on Christian name terms with the Abomina- tion of Desolation. It appears to have con- fused her own Government which, through Lord Whitelaw, is now playing down her visit. More to the point, it must be confus- ing for the Russians themselves.
Nor is Mrs Thatcher confronting an international crisis of such magnitude that all normal attitudes need be abandoned. Churchill was well known as a scourge of Bolshevism, yet turned to Russia to save Britain from Germany and justifiably, ex- cept for Yalta, escaped blame. Here rather less is at stake. It is a question of emphasis, of the calculation of rather small diplomatic advantages. Not even Mrs Thatcher herself could believe that her visit to Moscow will do much to change the Russians or, there- fore, the Americans, or, therefore, the balance or weight of nuclear power. The world remains much the same — only she looks remarkably different. Since she is a great believer in her own consistency, one suspects that she did not intend this effect.
Then why is she doing it? Much has already been made of the tendency of politi- cians to want, after a few years in office, to become statesmen and to tread the boards of the international stage. Mrs Thatcher is not immune from that vanity. In fact, she
may be particularly prone to it, because Bri- tain's first woman Prime Minister is still a fascinating figure abroad, whereas at home people are a bit bored with her. It must be nice to go to Budapest and be stared at, rather than to Bolton and be pelted with eggs. Even the British press which, for all its Toryism, is hard to manage at home, can, quite easily be worked into a state or patriotic Thatcherite euphoria abroad by a few scenes of friendly meetings with other world leaders. And it is only natural for Mrs Thatcher, now that she has been in the job some time, to want to take advantage of its perks. It must be fun get a good seat for the weird atheistic obsequies of a Russian tyrant, and Mrs Thatcher probably feels
i that her second chance to take the offer s too good to miss. Her memoirs would tool( rather piffling beside Lord Macmillan's if she had to record that she had never even met the top Russians.
There may be an inclination to indulge Mrs Thatcher in her new interests. Why not let the poor woman have a few foreign MO and see a bit of the world? Must be ghastlY for her cooped up in Number Ten and then going off and being shouted at by all those MPs. Maybe she might even knock a bit of sense into the Russians. Maybe. But one wonders whether she has really considered what her life will be like if she starts trying to become her own Foreign Secretary as well. She is not coming to diplomacy at a time of quiet at home. In local government, denationalisation, education, labour law, her administration has rather a heavy Pro" gramme. In foreign affairs themselves, the next few months will see the culmination of most of the rows over the EEC budget and the Common Agricultural Policy, and one cannot believe that Mrs Thatcher will leave all of that to the half-disgraced Sir Geoffrey Howe. Yet if the visit to the funeral and the 30 minutes with Mr Chernenko are suPPose",4 to be, as Mrs Thatcher says, 'starting from the bottom up', she will have to try to con- tinue towards the top. Will she start visiting all the other Eastern block countries? Will she try to make up a party for a summit? Where will she find the time? It is very difficult to know how important diplomacy is in modern politics. Since its advocates eschew anything as vulgar as the 'bottom line', they find it difficult t° prove their case, and their opponents have equal trouble refuting it. But there Is something slightly sinister about a politician who comes to prefer the international con- ference table to his own representative assembly. Diplomacy is the democraticic politician's escape from democracy an from the people who elected him. Its rules are invented by politicians for their oWn convenience. Its preoccupations are so dis- tant tant from those of ordinary people that its practitioners tend to forget that those Pe°.4. ple exist. It would be sad and surprising 1,1 Mrs Thatcher, of all people, forgot, arwe ended up like Mr Heath, rejected by 61_ voters, but full of sage advice on world Pr° blems entirely beyond her control.
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