It is still disputed whether or not Mrs Thatcher’s presence in Aspen at the critical moment helped determine Bush’s response to the Iraqi invasion. The Americans insist that the President needed no stiffening; and Bernard Ingham (who was there) agrees. ‘George Bush had a backbone before he arrived in Aspen and did not acquire it from Mrs Thatcher… Her familiar distinctive contribution [was] a clear and simply expressed analysis of the situation.’57 Doubt arose from the fact that in his first public response the President had stated that he was ‘not contemplating’ military action. This choice of words, Scowcroft admitted, was ‘not felicitous’, but he insists that it was not meant to rule out the use of force, merely to keep all options open.58 Nevertheless the belief took hold in Britain that Bush was a bit of a wimp who was impelled to strong action only by Mrs Thatcher’s robust example – an impression which she was happy to perpetuate. Actually it was not until some weeks later that she told Bush that this was ‘no time to go wobbly’. There was certainly a difference of emphasis between them: Bush was more concerned than Mrs Thatcher to assemble the widest possible coalition of Western and Muslim nations, and to take no military action without the specific authority of the United Nations, while she wanted to invoke Article 51 of the Charter to justify action in self-defence without further ado. But there is no doubt of Bush’s personal resolve.
On her way home she stopped off in Washington to see the President again. While she was with him Defense Secretary Dick Cheney called with the news that King Fahd had agreed to allow American forces to be stationed on Saudi soil: this was the key decision which made it possible to mount a military operation to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The same day the Security Council voted 13 – 0 to impose sanctions on Iraq. Mrs Thatcher immediately argued that this gave all the authority needed to impose a blockade to enforce them. But Bush shied away from the word ‘blockade’ which in international law constituted an act of war. He preferred the more diplomatic ‘quarantine’, which was the term President Kennedy had used to bar Soviet ships from Cuba in 1962.
The Gulf crisis came at an opportune moment for Mrs Thatcher, both internationally and domestically. So far as her relations with Bush were concerned, she was delighted to have the chance to demonstrate once again that Britain was still America’s best friend in a crisis, while scoffing at the Europeans’ feebleness. Whether or not her presence in Aspen significantly influenced Bush’s reaction, their identity of view instantly recreated the sort of Anglo-American special relationship she had enjoyed with Reagan.
A major international crisis also seemed just the thing to rebuild her position at home. The possibility of military action to repel another aggressive dictator could only revive memories of the Falklands. As in 1982 Mrs Thatcher relished the chance to show that she was not afraid of war. Woodrow Wyatt found her on 10 August ‘very bullish about the possibility of squashing Iraq’.59 Eight days later there occurred the incident that put a new phrase into the vocabulary of politics. The question was what to do about two Iraqi oil tankers which were trying to beat the allied blockade. ‘We had lengthy discussions with the British about it,’ Scowcroft recalled, ‘and of course Margaret Thatcher said go after the ships.’ But this risked upsetting the Soviets, who still retained some influence with Iraq, so James Baker persuaded Bush to hold off for three days. ‘Margaret went along with this delay only reluctantly’, Bush wrote:
I called her at about three in the morning her time – although I wasn’t looking forward to it… We knew how strongly she wanted to stop those ships. She insisted that if we let one go by it would set a precedent. I told her I had decided to delay and why. It was here, not earlier, as many have suggested, that she said, ‘Well, all right, George, but this is no time to go wobbly.’60
‘George always loved that’, Barbara Bush wrote, ‘and wobbly he did not go.’61 Thereafter, Scowcroft recalls, ‘we used the phrase almost daily’.62
Meanwhile, Mrs Thatcher devoted her diplomatic efforts to berating anyone else she thought insufficiently robust – notably King Hussein who came to Downing Street in early September seeking support for a deal to save Saddam’s face. ‘He walked into a firestorm,’ Charles Powell recalled. ‘I was not discourteous,’ she insisted later. ‘I was firm – very firm indeed.’63 Above all she was contemptuous of those – most prominently Ted Heath – who muddied the waters by flying to Baghdad to try to negotiate the release of a number of British hostages whom Saddam was holding as pawns in a cruel game of diplomatic poker. In the Commons she was curtly dismissive of Heath’s freelance efforts: she was bound to welcome the return of thirty-three whom he had managed to bring out, but pointed out that there were still another 1,400 British nationals in the country.64 She resolutely refused to negotiate with such barbarism.
In fact her bellicosity, in a situation where British territory was not at stake, probably did her less good than she expected. The polls registered no significant recovery of her popularity over the next three months and the fact that British troops were committed did not save her when her leadership was on the line. Nevertheless, she enjoyed having a ‘real’ crisis on her hands again. But this time – remembering the trouble she had had with the Foreign Office in 1982 – she was determined to keep control firmly in her own hands. Once again she formed a small war cabinet – but it was not a properly constituted Cabinet committee, just an
Her first military commitment, as early as 7 August, was to send two squadrons of Tornados and one of Jaguars to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman, and a destroyer and three minesweepers to join the destroyer and two frigates already in the Gulf. She initially hoped to limit Britain’s ground contribution to an infantry or parachute battalion. But the Americans were pressing for tanks, so in September the Chief of the General Staff persuaded her to send the 7th Armoured Brigade (the ‘Desert Rats’) from Germany, plus two armoured regiments and an infantry regiment, led by Sir Peter de la Billiere but ultimately under the command of US General Norman Schwarzkopf. (The French, by contrast, retained operational independence.)65 The army chiefs hoped that war in the Gulf would win them the same sort of reprieve that the Falklands had secured the Royal Navy.
Mrs Thatcher personally insisted on Peter de la Billiere, who had impressed her as the SAS commander in charge of the Iranian Embassy siege back in 1980. He was what she called ‘a fighting general’ who even spoke passable Arabic. He was on the point of retirement, but she let it be known that if he was not appointed she would make him her adviser in Downing Street.66 The MoD gave way and sent him to the Gulf, where he fully justified her faith in him.
Almost as if she sensed that her own time might be short, she was impatient to act quickly, without waiting to see if sanctions might do the job without recourse to war and without seeking further authority from the UN. When Parliament was recalled on 6 September dissenting voices in all parties called for caution and delay. She argued on the contrary that ruling out early military action only played into Saddam’s hands. ‘I told them we already
Colin Powell, then chairman of the American Chiefs of Staff, wanted to give sanctions longer to work. General Schwarzkopf did not think he yet had enough troops. But Bush shared Mrs Thatcher’s fear that hanging about in the desert for months would put too much strain on the coalition. In Paris on 19 November she argued that Saddam’s use of hostages alone was reason enough to use force and promised ‘another brigade and some minesweepers’.67 She still worried that giving the military everything they wanted would mean further delay. But at her very last Cabinet three days later, after she had tearfully announced her resignation, she was better than her word and pushed through the commitment of another armoured brigade and an artillery brigade, all from the British Army of the Rhine, making a total British contribution of 45,000 personnel.
Her removal from office just as these preparations were gathering pace left her feeling cheated of another war. ‘One of my few abiding regrets,’ she maintained in her memoirs, ‘is that I was not there to see the issue through.’68 Her fall, according to Peter de la Billiere, ‘caused consternation’ among the troops in the Gulf and dismayed the allies, particularly the Saudis, who could not understand how a democracy could replace a leader without an election.69 In fact ‘Desert Storm’ was so overwhelmingly an American operation that her absence made little difference.
As time passed, however, Lady Thatcher persuaded herself that she would not have acquiesced in the
