Margaret Thatcher: "DON'T TEAR DOWN THAT WALL!"

[HBox]

Margaret Thatcher had an interesting response regarding the news that the Berlin Wall was coming down and German reunification was imminent. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6829735.ece)

Two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev that neither Britain nor Western Europe wanted the reunification of Germany and made clear that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.

In an extraordinary frank meeting with Mr Gorbachev in Moscow in 1989 — never before fully reported — Mrs Thatcher said the destabilisation of Eastern Europe and the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact were also not in the West’s interests. She noted the huge changes happening across Eastern Europe, but she insisted that the West would not push for its decommunisation. Nor would it do anything to risk the security of the Soviet Union.

Wow.

[booster11373]

That seems consistent with her policies

[STC-Dub]

Interesting.

[moochcassidy]

nastiest cunt of them all

[Alice S. Fuzzybutt]

No big surprise.

[Ritalin]

The crazy thing about this story is that she also said she was speaking for the President of the US as well.

[El Mudo]

Considering how unstable Eastern Europe had always been historically (especially in the 20th century) and what horrors had been unleashed by a unified Germany in 1914 and 1939 on her and her parent's generation, could you really blame her? And she was always doveish on Cold War issues anyway.

[TheMojoPin]

Considering how unstable Eastern Europe had always been historically (especially in the 20th century) and what horrors had been unleashed by a unified Germany in 1914 and 1939 on her and her parent's generation, could you really blame her?

Nope. People in power over here were fucking terrified when the wall was coming down because they had no idea if what was indicative of some kind of large scale revolution or a series of smaller revolutions across Eastern Europe. The idea of that occuring with all the military and nuclear resources available to revolutionaries scared the shit out of the West until it became clear that what occured with the Wall wasn't resulting in widespread chaos. What the West wanted was a clear decision on the part of the Soviets to tear down the wall that they would be aware of and could realitvely easily monitor, not the spontaneous and sudden act of it coming down since that could very easily could have meant disaster.

[El Mudo]

Nope. People in power over here were fucking terrified when the wall was coming down because they had no idea if what was indicative of some kind of large scale revolution or a series of smaller revolutions across Eastern Europe. The idea of that occuring with all the military and nuclear resources available to revolutionaries scared the shit out of the West until it became clear that what occured with the Wall wasn't resulting in widespread chaos. What the West wanted was a clear decision on the part of the Soviets to tear down the wall that they would be aware of and could realitvely easily monitor, not the spontaneous and sudden act of it coming down since that could very easily could have meant disaster.

People talk about the Balkans constantly, but Eastern Europe is the unstabli-est of the unstable. It always has been, and in their eyes, they were potentially looking at a pandora's box of chaotic revolutions in the entire region and turning that place back into the pseudo-anarchy it was in the 1920s, which would have been absolutely terrifying. Look at what's happened to Africa with mass revolution and no ensuing stability (and they don't have the military and nuclear arsenals that were present with the military buildups in Eastern Europe; its mainly just guys with AK 47s, machetes, and grudges).