“Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World”, by Margaret Thatcher

512 pages, Harper, ISBN-13: 978-0060199739

Oh, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie…why-oh-why couldn’t you have been born a Yank? *sigh* *whimper* *groan* Ah, well, we must make do with what we have been born with, and that’s that. So, then…Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World by Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS, FRIC (née Roberts), is the Iron Lady’s primer for American and British statesman on how to create a better world. The book is broad and sweeping and eminently readable as Thatcher covers every region on earth and presents her views of the appropriate approach for the United States and Britain in its relations with foreign powers (as a bonus, she devotes a considerable number of words to her unmitigated hostility to the European Union that she considers negative in every conceivable way – oh, how she would have loved the passage of Brexit!). In her prescriptions for Britain she accepts those facts she regards as irreversible and, thus, her recommendations are clearly plausible and deserve to be considered seriously. One does not have to agree with each and every pronouncement to appreciate the soundness of Thatcher’s basic approach and to admire her refusal to bend her views to the popular assumptions of the day. As Thatcher describes it in her introduction, “statecraft” differs from “statesmanship” in that the former contains an emphasis on “activity rather than rhetoric, strategy not just diplomacy”. In the age of globalism, Thatcher is scornful of those statesman who see the world as they would like it to be rather than as it is. Thatcher’s pronouncements in this book are too broad to cover in this review but here is a sampling:

• She regards the United States as the only true global super power; 
• She is strongly against “internationalism”, or the tendency of states to subsume their sovereignty in favor of international organizations; 
• She is remarkably hostile to the European Union and its efforts to create a super-state to rival the United States; 
• She opposes the Euro and argues that the subordination of national sovereignty to an organization she regards as a bullying anti-democratic bureaucracy to be a recipe for future disaster; 
• She would tie Britain to the economic and political fortunes of the United States, even going so far as to suggest that Britain join NAFTA; 
• She is properly hostile to such international entities as the world criminal court, regarding it as a vehicle to subvert the superior legal systems of the U.S. and Britain, and sees such international organizations being used to hurt the interests of the West; 
• She notes the dangerous precedent set by the case of Augusto Pinochet, the military ruler of Chile between 1973 and 1990, when Spain demanded his extradition for alleged crimes committed in Chile; 
• Finally, she rails against “do-goodism” which assails common sense, citing the arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia as one of many examples of myopic western diplomacy which had the effect of allowing the Serbs (who controlled the Yugoslav military) to maintain a vast armaments superiority, which had the effect of encouraging Serbian aggression – the opposite of the intended effect.

Thatcher was an impressive thinker with consistency and logic often on her side. The key to statecraft is not to place the entire world into a single system but to know what situations require the carrot and which require the stick. I do not see this wisdom in existence in either the American State Department or the British Foreign Ministry; I certainly do not see it in the nations of Western Europe who foolishly often stand in opposition to American efforts to secure tranquility around the world. Thatcher would have promoted the growth of free markets everywhere, confronted bad regimes and rewarded good regimes, and sought to deter aggression through the credible threat of force, not through endless talk, appeasement and unenforceable treaties. You can quibble with her over the details, but after observing the world over the past several decades I think that Thatcher’s approach to the world is, by and large, the correct one. Anyone with an open mind will enjoy and appreciate Statecraft; filled with her personal observations and anecdotes; always readable and lively, this excellent book is must reading for anyone interested in the subject of international affairs.