Kitabı oku: «Statecraft», sayfa 6

The truth is that the global system of ballistic missile defence, which I am proposing, is by far the best chance we have of preventing missiles and their warheads reaching our cities. This is because unlike other less comprehensive systems a global ballistic missile defence system has the ability to target and destroy missiles in each of their three phases of flight – the boost phase, mid-course, and the terminal phase. The first phase, directly after launch, is naturally the best from the point of view of the intended victim – and the worst from that of the aggressor, on whom the warhead’s destructive elements fall.

I believe that the best way to achieve such a global system is probably along the lines suggested by the excellent and authoritative report of the Heritage Foundation’s Commission on Missile Defense. This would be based upon a combination of a sea-based missile defence system and a space-based sensor system. By contrast, it seems highly unlikely that a single land-based system, or indeed any system which accepts the constraints of the ABM Treaty, could provide America with an effective defence.*

I also believe that the British Missile Proliferation Study Report was right to underline the effect that restricting America’s missile defence in that way, as proposed by the Clinton administration, would have on the rest of the Alliance. Britain, as America’s closest ally and most effective military collaborator, would be particularly vulnerable to missile attack from a rogue state if we were not within the defensive shield.* The British and other European governments should be pledging their full support to those in America who wish to create an effective global ballistic missile defence. America’s NATO allies should also be prepared to bear a fair share of the burden of the expense: so far there is little sign of this happening.

Though you would not guess it from President Putin’s well-publicised objections, Russia too has a strong interest in America’s building such a system. Its cities are closer to the potential threats than are most of the West’s. For its part, America by offering to protect Russia has the potential to achieve the visionary goal of President Reagan who saw SDI as a benefit to share.

I was delighted that George W. Bush, in the course of his US presidential campaign, made his position on this matter so clear, saying:

It is time to leave the Cold War behind, and defend against the new threats of the twenty-first century. America must build effective missile defences, based on the best available options, at the earliest possible date. Our missile defence must be able to protect all fifty states – and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas – from missile attacks by rogue nations, or accidental launches … A missile defence system should not only defend our country, it should defend our allies, with whom I will consult as we develop our plans.†

As President, Mr Bush energetically set about honouring this pledge. I hope that Congress will see fit to support his endeavours. I also trust that America’s allies, above all Britain, will take full advantage of the President’s proposal to protect our populations too. And no one should pretend that the events of 11 September made effective missile defence any less important, or its acquisition any less urgent.

So I conclude that:

 We must recognise that the threat from ballistic missiles carrying nuclear or other WMD warheads is real, growing and still unanswered

 We should acknowledge that diplomatic and other means aimed at curbing proliferation will have little effect

 Politicians should stop talking as if a world without nuclear weapons were a possibility and begin to accept that nuclear weapons need to be tested and modernised if the nuclear shield is to be maintained

 They should recognise that though political conditions make proliferation and the threat of missile launches more likely, the advance of science has made coping with them more possible

 The only way to do this is to build a system of global ballistic missile defence.

TAKING THE STRAIN

Given leaders of resolution and foresight, and with the support of her allies, the American superpower has the material resources to prevail. But does it have the moral resources? I predict that this question will come to be asked even more frequently in the wake of the terrorist onslaught of 11 September. That outrage was aimed directly at the heart of America’s culture, values and beliefs.

Osama bin Laden once described Americans as ‘a decadent people with no understanding of morality’.* His contempt for America’s fighting spirit has already been shown to be misplaced. But what of his and his fellow fanatics’ scorn for our kind of liberal society?

It should be said at once that remarkably few Westerners view all that constitutes Western society today as perfect. Indeed, with us self-criticism is second nature. We worry openly about family breakdown, the dependency culture, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse and violent crime. We are all too conscious that a rising standard of living has not always brought with it a higher quality of life.

But at this point the critics and the enemies of our society part company. What conservative-minded Westerners want to see is the strengthening of personal responsibility in order to make our free society work. What our enemies demand is altogether different: it is the imposition of a dictatorial system in which neither freedom nor responsibility is valued, one where all that is required of individuals is obedience.

The Founding Fathers believed that although the form of republican government they had framed was designed to cope with human failings, it provided no kind of substitute for human virtues. For them American self-government meant exactly that – government by as well as for the people. James Madison knew that democracy presupposed a degree of popular virtue if it was to work well. In Number 55 of the Federalist Papers he wrote:

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form* [Emphasis added]

The Founding Fathers and those who came after them had different religious beliefs, and sometimes none. But they were convinced that the way to nourish the virtues which would make America strong was through religion.

It is beyond my purpose to describe the complicated and still-evolving story of relations between Church – however defined – and state in America.* But when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835 that Americans held religion ‘to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions’ he was recording a very wise observation.

Whenever I go to America I am struck by the unembarrassed way in which the divinity keeps making an appearance in political discourse. And this reflects the fact that so many Americans are so deeply religious. Surveys have shown that two-thirds of Americans say that religious commitment is either the most important or a very important dimension of their lives, and America, far more than Britain or Continental Europe, is a church-going country.† And the natural, collective response of Americans to the tragedy of 11 September was to fill the nation’s churches. America’s faith, including its faith in itself and its mission, is the bedrock of its sense of duty.

That is yet another reason why we non-Americans can make our own the words of the poet Henry Longfellow:

Thou, too, sail on O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!‡

CHAPTER 3
The Russian Enigma
A VISIT TO NIZHNY NOVGOROD

Russia is so large that its overall conditions at any one moment almost defy generalisation. Indeed, it may be that the only way to understand the reality of Russia is to experience just a little of it at a time. Certainly, the impressions I gained from the visit I made in July 1993 have proved as instructive as anything I have read before or since.

I had been invited to receive an honorary degree from the Mendeleev Institute in Moscow, which specialises in chemical engineering and is one of Russia’s leading scientific institutions. My own early background as a research chemist meant that the invitation was of special interest to me. But I was also impatient to see for myself how much progress Russia, after almost two years of Boris Yeltsin and his reforms, was making. There were so many contradictory reports in the West that it was difficult to know quite what to think. Sir Brian Fall, one of Britain’s very best Ambassadors, had therefore prepared a programme that took in something of the old and the new. But even I was really not quite prepared for the resulting contrast.

On the afternoon of my first day in Moscow (Wednesday, 21 July) I was taken around a run-down shopping centre in one of the suburbs of Moscow. There was food on the shelves. But I could see that the choice was very limited and the quality, particularly of the fresh produce, was poor. The surroundings were as dreary as only socialist architecture can be. The locals were friendly, but half an hour of this was enough. Returning to the British Embassy for a working supper I reflected that though there were no evident shortages, neither was there much materially to show for reform. I had expected better, and I learned from the experts round the table that evening that a lot of Russians shared my view.

The following day I had another, more uplifting, rendezvous with the past in the form of several hours’ enjoyable conversation with Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, at the palatial Gorbachev Foundation (whose purpose I have never altogether understood) and then over lunch at the Residence. I was glad to see that both were in good form, though still somewhat shaken and embittered by the circumstances of Mr Gorbachev’s removal from power. Raisa told me about the discomforts of their three days of ‘exile’ in Crimea during the abortive coup in August 1991. There had apparently been little or no food, and she was lucky to have some sweets in her handbag to give to her granddaughter. In fact, I later learned that the mental pressure of the time had caused Raisa to have a stroke.*

After lunch we all went to the Mendeleev Institute. The ceremony was splendid. There were speeches. In mine I referred to the close relationship between science, truth and freedom. This relationship was, in fact, far from theoretical in the old Soviet Union, where independent-minded scholars of integrity often took refuge in the natural sciences, which were somewhat less contaminated and distorted by Marxist dogma.

An orchestra accompanied some wonderful Russian singing to round off the occasion. I could not though avoid noticing that the Gorbachevs were ignored by many present. Beneath the celebration political wounds ran deep.

At dinner that evening I had my first opportunity to discuss the Russian government’s reform programme with one of its main proponents and activators, the immensely able economist Anatoly Chubais. His ideas sounded admirable. But I could not quite forget the previous day’s dismal supermarket. Which was Russian reality? More importantly, which was the future?

Early next morning I and my party – which included Denis and our daughter Carol, who had shrewdly arranged to cover the trip for the European newspaper – left by plane for the city of Nizhny Novgorod. Under communism it was known as Gorky and was a closed city dedicated to secretive nuclear weapons research. Its very existence had long been concealed as far as possible from prying Western eyes. Indeed, the British crew of the private jet we were using had to take on board a Russian navigator in order to locate the airport, which did not appear on any of the usual maps.

But Nizhny Novgorod, I was aware, once symbolised a very different tradition in Russian history. In 1817 the city hosted its first trade fair, which quickly established itself as the most successful in the whole of Russia. The Russians, who are the world’s most adept inventors of popular proverbs, used to say that Moscow was Russia’s heart, St Petersburg her head and Nizhny Novgorod her pocket. With the end of the Cold War had also come an end to reliance on the defence budget to provide employment. The ‘pocket’ rapidly emptied. So there was every reason for the citizenry to return to their old entrepreneurial ways in order to earn a living.

Successful entrepreneurship is ultimately a matter of flair. But there is also a fund of practical knowledge to be acquired and, of course, the right legal and financial framework has to be provided for productive enterprise to develop. I had heard back in London that the Governor of the province, Boris Nemtsov, was someone who understood all this and that he was committed to a radical programme of what some call Thatcherism but what I had always regarded as commonsense. So I had decided to see for myself, and our Embassy made the arrangements.

Nizhny Novgorod’s saviour was, I found, frighteningly young (in his mid-thirties), extraordinarily energetic, extremely good-looking and gifted with both intelligence and shrewdness (which do not always go together). He was a good talker and spoke fluent English. His background was in physics, on which he had written some sixty research papers. He was extremely self-confident, and with good reason.

Indeed, as we sat in his offices in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin building, the more I listened to Mr Nemtsov’s account of his reforms the more impressed I was. He explained to me that he had been using his powers as Governor to promote a real free-enterprise economy. At that time the Russian Duma had still not passed a law to create secure title to private property, but in Nizhny Novgorod he had already decreed a local law on private ownership of land. The soil, as I would later see for myself, was rich and well-cultivated. The prime difficulty was not therefore in growing crops – in fact, Nizhny Novgorod was already more than self-sufficient in grain – but rather in selling the produce. Under communism, decisions about distribution and marketing had, naturally enough, been left to the Party bureaucrats. But once that system collapsed, networks which in the ordinary conditions of capitalism would have evolved over time had to be created all at once from scratch. Mr Nemtsov had made it quite clear to the local farmers and traders that it was they who now had to fend for themselves: the state offered no answers. But he had made a large contribution to solving the problem by auctioning off the entire fleet of government-owned lorries – later that afternoon I visited one of the privatised transport firms and was extremely impressed with all I saw, not least the enthusiasm of the manager and his staff.

It was now time to gain some further information and some exercise, as amid what seemed a large proportion of the population of Nizhny Novgorod, the Governor and I took a walk down Bolshaya Pokrovskaya street. All the stores here were privately owned. Every few yards we stopped to talk to the shopkeepers and see what they had to sell. No greater contrast with the drab uniformity of Moscow could be imagined. One shop remains vivid in my memory. It sold dairy produce, and it had a greater selection of different cheeses than I have ever seen in one place. I ate samples of several and they were very good. I also discovered that they were all Russian, and considerably cheaper than their equivalents in Britain. I enthusiastically expressed my appreciation. Perhaps because as a grocer’s daughter I carry conviction on such matters, a great cheer went up when my words were translated, and someone cried, ‘Thatcher for President!’ But the serious lesson for me – and for my hosts – was, of course, that in this one privately owned shop in this distant Russian city, a combination of excellent local products, talented entrepreneurs and laws favourable to enterprise applied by honest and capable political leadership could generate prosperity and progress. There was no need of a ‘middle way’ or of special adjustment to Russian conditions. In that cheese shop was proof that capitalism worked. The doubters would have been astonished.

THE PERILS OF PREDICTION

But then, Russia has always had a unique capacity to surprise. Every prediction about it should be hedged around with qualifications if whoever makes them would be secure from embarrassment. And before going any further I would like to make my own modest contribution to the current wave of apologising. For I too was wrong – about some things.

I never had any doubt that the communist system was doomed to fail, if the West kept its nerve and remained strong. (On occasion, of course, that seemed a very large ‘if’.) I believed this simply because communism ran against the grain of human nature and was therefore ultimately unsustainable. Because it was committed to suppressing individual differences, it could not mobilise individual talents, which is vital to the process of wealth creation. It thus impoverished not just souls but society. Faced with a free system, which engages rather than coerces people, and so brings out the best in them, communism must ultimately founder.

But when? We did not know how desperately incompetent, indeed how near total breakdown, the Soviet system was in the 1980s. Perhaps that was for the best. Had some in the West been aware just how limited and over-stretched were the Soviet Union’s resources the temptation would have been to drop our guard. That could have been fatal, for the USSR remained a military superpower long after it had become a political and economic fossil. I would, though, never have predicted that within a decade of my becoming Prime Minister the countries of Central and Eastern Europe would be free, let alone that two years later the Soviet Union would itself have crumbled.

I must also confess to being at least half-wrong about another important aspect of the Soviet Union in my time, namely its durability. I was never attracted by the idea of deliberately trying to hold the Soviet Union together. Such strategies were, in any case, bound to fail because we in the West lacked the knowledge and means to give effect to them. As I have related elsewhere, I was thus alone in opposing an attempt by the then President of the European Commission to have the EEC ‘guarantee’ the integrity of the USSR in the face of independence movements by the Baltic states.*

But like just about everyone else, I underestimated the fundamental fragility of the Soviet Union once the Gorbachev reforms had begun. A non-communist Soviet Union, which was what we at that time wanted to see, even though we did not put it like that, was actually an impossibility. This was because what held the USSR together was the Communist Party.

The Sovietologists, with their subtle analyses of Soviet society, were wrong: the dissidents with their emphasis on the role of a monolithic party ideology were right. Communism was, in fact, like a parasite, occupying merely the shells of state institutions. These institutions were thenceforth effectively dead and could not be revived.

In the period which has elapsed since those dramatic events, other confident predictions have exploded, though not I think any of mine. Some economic liberals were, for example, led astray by too much confidence in the prescriptions of their own ‘dismal science’. It was not actually, as I shall explain, that the prescriptions were wrong. Rather, they took insufficient account of non-economic factors. The liberal economists assumed that with the Communist Party shattered and Western-style ‘reformers’ in the Kremlin it would be quite easy to instal the institutions of a free economy with rapid benefits for the Russian population. There appeared to be encouraging parallels with Poland, another former communist state where precisely such a crash programme of economic reform, masterminded by Leszek Balcerowicz in the early 1990s, had brought positive results within two or three years. But Russia was not Poland.

On the other hand, the gloomiest predictions about Russia have also been largely – though it is premature to say permanently – disproved. Some foresaw a new Russian imperialism set on achieving by force the recreation of a Russian-centred Soviet Union. So far, at least, this has not happened. Tensions remain between Russia and her neighbours. But there have been no large wars, no use of weapons of mass destruction, no return of communism, no turn towards fascism. It is right that among the many criticisms which can be made of Western policy such important if negative achievements should also be acknowledged.

In truth, the story of Russia over the last decade is not one of progression or even regression along a clear path, rather it is a tale of twists and turns, accelerations and occasional derailments, of integration countered by disintegration, of reform and reaction, all alternately or even simultaneously in play. We have to try to understand what has happened and why, because only by doing so can we predict, let alone influence or steer, what happens in the future.

And that is important. Russia cannot and must not be written off. Personally, I feel this with a conviction bordering on passion. The Russian people suffered so much in the twentieth century – and they were so frequently left to their unhappy lot by those Westerners who lied and collaborated with their oppressors – that we must be indignant at the state in which they remain. In the Cold War the West’s greatest allies were always the ordinary Russian people. They now deserve better.

But taking Russia seriously today is also a matter of calculation. When ex-President Yeltsin went to Beijing in December 1999 and reminded us undiplomatically that Russia still had a formidable nuclear arsenal, he was only telling the truth. Whether weak or powerful, an opportunity or a headache, Russia matters.