The Third World War: August 1985

The United Kingdom, at the peak of its oil production, was less sensitive than others to a threat to external supplies, and even the return to comparative prosperity and a Conservative government had done little to diminish the parochialism of the seventies.

In Germany the wilder excesses of the urban left had been contained, not without difficulty and with much soul-searching about the increasing power of the police. Disillusion with the European Community helped to foster a revival of the historic belief that in the long run economic prosperity would depend very largely on the development of markets and supplies in Eastern Europe. The industrial and commercial pre-eminence of the Federal Republic in Western Europe was matched by that of the German Democratic Republic in the East. Some more daring politicians were tempted by this coincidence to wonder what they might do together. The majority, while still rejecting dreams of even an economic pan-German superpower, nevertheless accepted the importance of maintaining the advantages which accrued almost imperceptibly to a people who had a foot in either camp. While it might be dangerous to envisage a removal of the barrier between them, the sharpening of its prongs by renewed East-West conflict would be decidedly uncomfortable.

So the Secretary of State did not gather a very united or determined impression of European feelings from his tour of some of the more important Western capitals. The United States would as usual have to go it largely alone in the Middle East and the South Atlantic, and would no doubt be blamed for the consequences if things went wrong — though perhaps a rather longer exposure than usual to the rough and tumble of world politics and to the shortages and privations resulting even from the present situation would encourage the European doves to grow some beaks and claws. The position papers flew thick and fast in the State Department and the options remained irritatingly open.

The Soviet Foreign Minister did not fare much better in his rather more perfunctory tour of Eastern capitals. These countries saw their painful gains in economic prosperity endangered by Soviet brinkmanship. They found it hard to believe Soviet warnings about an energy shortage by the end of the century, which could only be remedied by laying hands directly or by proxy on a large slice of Middle Eastern oil supplies — upon which was based Soviet support for Egypt’s incursion into Arabia. They feared that Soviet moves towards a war footing would put further and intolerable pressure on the supply and price of consumer goods, including food. They pointed out — in vain — that while the Soviet secret police had to deal only with a handful of known intellectual dissidents, they (in Poland, for example) were faced by a movement much more widely and solidly based on the workers’ expectation of a standard of living that would approach first that of East Germany, then that of West Germany. Except in most aspects of military technology and the technology of space, the gap was increasing between the inefficiency of Soviet production and the far greater technical and managerial skills of East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Western methods and Western technology were increasingly seen as more relevant and more desirable. The example of Euro-communism in the West suggested that Party cadres could restore some of their tarnished popularity by keeping their distance from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

So, when the Secretary of State and Foreign Minister Baronzov met at Geneva at the end of January 1985, each had to look not only at his interlocutor across the table, but also, even more searchingly, over his shoulder at the silent ranks of his allies and supporters. A week was spent agreeing on the agenda for their meeting and a further two weeks on that for the summit. At last it was settled that President Thompson and President Vorotnikov (the offices of President of the USSR and Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had by then long been firmly unified) should meet on 15 February to discuss all threats to peace and any situation likely to lead to nuclear hostilities.