Her Rightness

“Statecraft” is an odd book by an odd woman who was nevertheless one of Britain’s--and arguably the world’s--greatest political leaders of the last half of the 20th century. Many in Britain, though probably fewer in the United States, would contest that claim to greatness. But it is justified by the fact that in the 1980s she managed to drive through radical changes in her country and inspire some radical changes abroad, at a time of peace, when there was no crisis in Britain or the wider world to help her along. To be a wartime leader is not easy, but it comes naturally to many politicians. To be a peacetime leader is far harder, especially in democracies.

That helps explain why Margaret Thatcher has continued to command a worldwide following and an audience for so long since her departure from elected office in 1990. No other living British prime minister has done so, and few American presidents have either. Yet she has managed to publish two volumes of memoirs and, until the 76-year-old recently retired from public life on the recommendation of her doctors, was able to get not only fat fees for her lectures but also plenty of ears eager to hear what she had to say. She has had little influence in Britain as a whole in recent years but has retained a heavy, if sometimes destructive, influence in her Conservative Party.

What “Statecraft” makes plain, though, is that Thatcher continues not just to command attention but also to crave it. When her party ejected her from office in 1990, a famous photograph showed her looking tearfully through the window of her limousine as she left the prime minister’s office at No. 10 Downing St. for the last time. She did not want to leave and has not wanted to retire gracefully. She thinks the world still has need of her advice.

“Statecraft,” her latest vehicle for this mission, is a misleading title, as it implies some sort of disquisition on the art of government or international relations, perhaps along the lines of Henry Kissinger’s magisterial “Diplomacy.” A more accurate title would have been “The State of the World and What Should Be Done About It.” The book is essentially an outline of world affairs today, especially in terms of great-power politics and threats to security, with policy recommendations for governments of all stripes.

Two things make the book an odd read. One is that it is an often uneasy blend of personal anecdote with broader, more objective analysis. The anecdotes could have been rewarding if they had mainly covered Thatcher’s period in office. But because the book is about contemporary affairs, they mainly cover her time as a former leader rather than an actual one. The many quotes from her speeches around the world during the 1990s, giving her brave words and reporting on the rapturous applause, soon become tiresome.

Most of her anecdotes tell you more about Thatcher than about world affairs. The best example is her story of how, when Gen. Augusto Pinochet was put under arrest in Britain at the behest of a Spanish judge, she sent him a commemorative plate of Britain’s Elizabethan defeat of the Spanish armada. We have seen off the Spanish before and will do so again, was the rather clunky message she was sending her friend. To the reader, though, another message comes through: that for all her talk of liberty and democracy, Pinochet’s support during Britain’s war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982 matters more to her than stories of his brutality as Chile’s dictator.

Even so, for the most part, her broader analysis is good and makes for salutary reading. She is a robust admirer of America and a robust supporter of its interventionist military role as the world’s sheriff. Rightly, at least with hindsight, she argues that it should have acted sooner and more decisively during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, and that it must be supported now in its fight not just against Osama bin Laden but also against rogue states seeking to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction. As an old cold warrior, she exhibits, not surprisingly, a continuing suspicion of Russia and its motives, though she may nevertheless be out of date in doing so. Her hardheaded and principled views on China are more convincing, though the moral distinction between her support for Pinochet and her dislike of his Chinese equivalents is hard to discern.

As is often the case with the books of doers rather than writers, there has been much speculation about who actually wrote “Statecraft.” The likeliest answer seems to be that, as an experienced user of speech writers, Thatcher employed a team of people to draft different sections of it, and then superimposed her anecdotes and some more of her own views, for the style is disjointed and quite variable.

Another clue comes from the second odd feature of the book: that, at the end of each section and often subsection, there is a list of bullet points, in bold type, giving potted recommendations on each topic. This may have been an editor’s attempt to bring cohesion to a rather rambling collection of thoughts, but it gives “Statecraft” something of the flavor of a management book rather than of a learned essay on current affairs.

This is odd, but what makes Thatcher truly odd--and what in the end makes “Statecraft” more damaging than beneficial to her reputation--is that she continually shows herself to be not the principled politician of conviction of long renown but actually a prejudiced and rather vindictive person. She loves fighting old battles, settling old scores. She also thinks that the only people in the world who are worth listening to and trusting are the roughly 400 million residents of the English-speaking countries.

Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans (except Pinochet) and Africans simply don’t have a chance in Thatcher’s eyes. They do not trace back their political and legal values to the Magna Carta. They are all, in her eyes, collectivists rather than freedom-loving individuals. It is all the more surprising therefore that having supported British membership of the European Union during the 1970s and having helped to deepen that market during her time as prime minister, she now thinks Britain ought to leave that ghastly grouping, run as it is by bureaucrats and foreigners. To be critical of European countries and of the European institutions is fine: There is plenty to criticize and to change. But in this book Thatcher goes beyond that, arguing in essence that Europe is always to be distrusted because it is full of Europeans and in her lifetime Europeans have always caused trouble. It is time for her to retire, even if she cannot do so gracefully.

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From ‘Statecraft’

I only met General Pinochet after he had ceased to be President of Chile. But I had indirect contact with him much earlier, at the time of the Falklands War in 1982. At that time Chile provided vital assistance to us without which, I am convinced, many more of our servicemen would have lost their lives. ...

I felt grateful to the Chilean President and to Chile, and this influenced my later action when ex-President Pinochet found himself in difficulties. But I was moved by more than sentiment. It is in a country’s interests to keep faith with its allies. States in this sense are like people. If you have a reputation for exacting favors and not returning them, the favors dry up. ... I was and am convinced that General Pinochet by his actions turned Chile into the free and prosperous country we see today.