Saturday, March 2, 2019
To what extent did Thatcher achieve her aims in foreign policy?
When Margaret Thatcher first came to power in 1979 she had shortsighted interest in foreign policy but focussing primarily on economic and house servant policy. However, it was an area where she left a great impact on.One of Thatchers aims was to increase the defence for Britain as she believed the USSR was a massive threat militarily. This meant improving relations with the USA. Her views on Communism helped with this as her and Ronald Reagan both shared the same ideas. She also believed NATO was vital to British and europiuman defence and so to strengthen this family relationship was important.She supported NATOs decisiveness to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, hitherto though she knew it would trigger mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. transaction improved with the US when Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air extract bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for their apparent bombing of a Berlin club this decision wasnt very popular with the British citizens.Another iodine of Margaret Thatchers aims was to reassert Britains position as a major power. Many people will say she achieved this because of the Falklands state of war. In April 1982, Argentina coherent the invasion of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia which were under British control at the time. She successfully retook the islands back by setting up a War Cabinet and dispatching a naval task force against them which in June they surrendered. nevertheless though 255 British soldiers died and the attack on an Argentinian cruiser which drop down and killed everyone on board, people were far more distracted by the achievement which took place. This helped her win the 1983 elections. However, she was strongly criticised as to why she didnt pay help to the Falklands defence that led to the war, in which she could have stopped happening. T his in get would have saved the lives of the British soldiers and the people on the Argentinian cruiser. virtu all in ally people may disagree that Thatcher achieved the aim to raise Britains spatial relation entirely because of the Grenada incident. On October 1983, the USA attacked Grenada a member of the Commonwealth, without consulting Britain to take-over a red ink organisation. This was an embarrassment for Thatcher because it showed her weakness to defend countries which were once members of the Commonwealth who felt they electrostatic needed to be defended.Thatcher also wanted to see the defeat of Communism, which few people argue was achieved and that her role played an important part. She was able to build a working relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev who came to power in the Soviet marriage ceremony in 1985. This placed Britain in a good position to be the peace-maker between the US and the Soviet conglutination. They ended up meeting a couple of times which led to the agreement to scrap all intermediate-range missiles from Europe, the elimination of tactical and battlefield nuclear weapons and conventional forces. After that many an(prenominal) countries in Eastern Europe experienced their own revolution which led to domestic changes and an end to the Soviet domination over them. This was a victory for Britain and all the other NATO countries.Although this aim was achieved, Thatcher feared that because many changes were happening across Eastern Europe, Germany would dismount to reunify and become strong again which would affect the European poise of power and Thatcher didnt like this.After discussing the aims of Margaret Thatcher in Foreign Policy, I believe on the whole she achieved them. She managed to reassert Britains position as a superpower because of the Falklands war. It was a massive turning point for Thatcher and a defining moment in her premiership which helped her stay in power by winning the 1983 election. Even though many p eople died during the Falklands War, she was considered a highly talented and committed war leader by many people.She also helped defeat Communism by building a relationship with the Soviet leader and making discussions between the US and the Soviet Union easier. This led to nuclear disarmament which helped with Britains fear of Russia attacking them.
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