Forty years ago, President Ronald Reagan addressed MPs and colleagues at the Royal Gallery of Parliament tomorrow. It was, he said, “a moment of kinship and return home to these sacred halls … one of the shrines of democracy.”
This was an important speech for Britain, especially for Reagan’s great friend and ally, Margaret Thatcher, because he fully endorsed the British troops fighting to rebuild the Falkland Islands. Only a week before, he had begged her to stop the fire.
Now the president has included the Falkland Liberators in his broader argument: “They are fighting for a cause – for the belief that armed aggression should not be successful and people should be involved in government decisions … If there was stronger support for this principle about 45 years ago, perhaps our generation would not have suffered the bloodshed of World War II.
At the heart of Reagan’s thinking was the last manifestation of the Cold War. Poland, then part of the Soviet bloc, suffered from martial law imposed by Moscow. Geographically and culturally, he said: “Poland is neither East nor West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. ” It was “magnificently irreconcilable with oppression.” The task of the West was to overcome such oppression and to “secure the fundamental rights we often take for granted.” In 1988, Mrs Thatcher will reinforce this message in her controversial speech in Bruges, reminding EEC partners that Prague, Warsaw and Budapest are European cities.
The Soviet Union, Reagan told parliament, gave an example of how “a small ruling elite … is mistakenly trying to alleviate internal unrest through greater repression and foreign adventure.” If only the West could oppose this, the Soviets could choose a “wiser course.”
This happened in the late 1980s. The Berlin Wall had fallen. The Cold War was won.
However, Reagan predicts that “the task I have set for myself will outlive our own generation.” He wanted “a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and strength of spirit of the next generation.”
Forty years later, this message is extremely appropriate. For Poland, read its neighbor Ukraine. This is exactly the kind of foreign adventure that Reagan warns against, but Russia says it sees it as an internal operation to liberate people from the Nazis.
Although communism has never regained power on the European continent, the situation may be worse now than it was then. Vladimir Putin may not believe in Marxism-Leninism, but he has as little respect as Stalin for the independence of free states.
He shares Stalin’s obsession with controlling the places he chooses to consider Russian, even when international law and democratic opinion say otherwise. He borrowed Stalin’s methods – shooting, bombing, rape, starvation and torture of civilians, deportation, use of prisoners as hostages, puppet regimes and grain robbery.
Putin has indulged in military bloodshed on a scale not seen since World War II. Reagan and Thatcher had to face the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, but even that was not as brutal as Putin’s attempt to destroy Ukraine.
Western politics today is worse than it was then. The United States and Britain are cooperating well with Ukraine, but Joe Biden is not Reagan. As for Boris Johnson, he performed best in Ukraine and is widely admired there, but his position at home is so rocky that, as I write, he cannot guarantee his own presence on the world stage. What Reagan called the “holy halls” of Westminster echoes to the quarrels of Tory MPs.
As in the 1980s – but worse – France and Germany are trying to look in both directions, resulting in a twist like a corkscrew. France, out of vanity, and Germany, out of guilt, see allowing Putin to get about half of what he wants as “peace.” In fact, such a deal would be nothing more than postponing the current conflict until it gets stronger. He is the only leader of the 1940s to redraw Europe’s borders by force. This cannot be allowed, but it will be, unless the allies agree to support Ukraine to the fullest.
Yes, the West must recognize that Russia has legitimate security interests in the region. But what President Macron, while campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, and Chancellor Scholz, while trying to sanction Russia while still buying its gas, must face is that Putin has violated every rule taken for peacekeeping. He should not be allowed to profit from this.
Ukraine has taken on the challenge Reagan set 40 years ago on its own behalf. If the West does not help Ukraine enough, it risks losing its profits from the Cold War victory – not to mention the grain needed to feed the world.
Special connection
The Queen’s anniversary tea party with the Paddington bear has been a worldwide delight, although I have yet to hear anything from Paddington’s “darkest Peru”.
No one is happier than the Ukrainians, who immediately released the video on their government show on Telegram. This is partly because Ukrainians are pro-British and love the queen, but also because in the Ukrainian version of the Paddington films, the bear was voiced by Vladimir Zelensky when he was an actor, not the world’s most popular statesman.
Mr Zelensky is obviously quite busy at the moment, but I hope he will find time to voice Paddington’s visit to Buckingham Palace again and thus, in a sense, have tea with the Queen.
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