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Their relationship was a critical strength in winning the Cold War, but it was not without disagreements and angry confrontations. The greatness of neither is diminished by our understanding of their shared history.
Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship, by ... - National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/300961/odd-couple
Both the subtitle of Richard Aldous’s book — “The Difficult Relationship” — and its foreword proclaim it to be an exercise in historical revisionism. Justifying this, he quotes Sir Nicholas Henderson, former British ambassador to the U.S., telling left-wing firebrand–cum–elder statesman Tony Benn: “If I reported to you what Mrs. Thatcher really thought about President Reagan, it would damage Anglo-American relations.” We are only at the bottom of page 2, and I am already irritated. But this is the low-water mark of Aldous’s theme. It gets much better from page 3 onwards. And there is less revisionism in those later pages than meets the eye. That’s mainly because earlier historians of the relationship have never disguised that it was marked by occasional but serious disagreements that provoked both the principals and their aides into harsh expressions of anger and distrust. Geoffrey Smith’s path-breaking 1991 study Reagan and Thatcher (also published by Norton) went into those disagreements in depth. He interviewed some of the leading players in the Reagan and Thatcher administrations at a time when their memories of these episodes were still fresh. His accounts have stood up very well to later publication of original documents from the archives. Which is fortunate because intervening historians and writers, including this reviewer, have relied heavily on them. . . .
Was their relationship difficult? Well, yes, because all serious relationships are difficult. Reagan and Thatcher had the disagreements described above because their national interests differed on occasion. They debated these disagreements frankly in private and in the main discreetly in public. Each conceded to the other on occasion. After initial rows, Reagan yielded to Thatcher on the Falklands, Thatcher to Reagan on Grenada. But they supported each other without “fractious” dispute on a wider range of policies, often against substantial international opposition, and they succeeded against the odds in winning the Cold War. If that relationship counts as a difficult one, what relationship doesn’t? And what relationship did either have with another national leader that was warmer or more cooperative or crowned with greater success? Maybe the most striking and persuasive aspect of Aldous’s revisionism, therefore, is that it amounts to a thorough refutation of the British Left’s view of the Reagan-Thatcher relationship. That view was expressed most sourly by Denis Healey, who said: “When President Reagan says, ‘Jump,’ Mrs. Thatcher asks, ‘How high?’” Healey was so fond of this one-liner that he was still producing it a few years ago in Cold War retrospectives. It was never true; indeed, it is close to a reverse of the truth. But Aldous’s account of Thatcher’s record of blowing into Washington, blowing up, and blowing out again surely destroys it once and for all. And that’s my kind of revisionism.
Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/300961/odd-couple
Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship, by ... - National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/300961/odd-couple
Both the subtitle of Richard Aldous’s book — “The Difficult Relationship” — and its foreword proclaim it to be an exercise in historical revisionism. Justifying this, he quotes Sir Nicholas Henderson, former British ambassador to the U.S., telling left-wing firebrand–cum–elder statesman Tony Benn: “If I reported to you what Mrs. Thatcher really thought about President Reagan, it would damage Anglo-American relations.” We are only at the bottom of page 2, and I am already irritated. But this is the low-water mark of Aldous’s theme. It gets much better from page 3 onwards. And there is less revisionism in those later pages than meets the eye. That’s mainly because earlier historians of the relationship have never disguised that it was marked by occasional but serious disagreements that provoked both the principals and their aides into harsh expressions of anger and distrust. Geoffrey Smith’s path-breaking 1991 study Reagan and Thatcher (also published by Norton) went into those disagreements in depth. He interviewed some of the leading players in the Reagan and Thatcher administrations at a time when their memories of these episodes were still fresh. His accounts have stood up very well to later publication of original documents from the archives. Which is fortunate because intervening historians and writers, including this reviewer, have relied heavily on them. . . .
Was their relationship difficult? Well, yes, because all serious relationships are difficult. Reagan and Thatcher had the disagreements described above because their national interests differed on occasion. They debated these disagreements frankly in private and in the main discreetly in public. Each conceded to the other on occasion. After initial rows, Reagan yielded to Thatcher on the Falklands, Thatcher to Reagan on Grenada. But they supported each other without “fractious” dispute on a wider range of policies, often against substantial international opposition, and they succeeded against the odds in winning the Cold War. If that relationship counts as a difficult one, what relationship doesn’t? And what relationship did either have with another national leader that was warmer or more cooperative or crowned with greater success? Maybe the most striking and persuasive aspect of Aldous’s revisionism, therefore, is that it amounts to a thorough refutation of the British Left’s view of the Reagan-Thatcher relationship. That view was expressed most sourly by Denis Healey, who said: “When President Reagan says, ‘Jump,’ Mrs. Thatcher asks, ‘How high?’” Healey was so fond of this one-liner that he was still producing it a few years ago in Cold War retrospectives. It was never true; indeed, it is close to a reverse of the truth. But Aldous’s account of Thatcher’s record of blowing into Washington, blowing up, and blowing out again surely destroys it once and for all. And that’s my kind of revisionism.
Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/300961/odd-couple
