How to Fight Terror

way to the United States to sign the INF Treaty in December 1987. The stop, made on Gorbachev's initiative, had both a practical and symbolic purpose. He had no aspiration to detach Thatcher from Reagan. Gorbachev knew that was impossible, and it would not have suited his purpose anyway. It was her closeness to Reagan that made her so helpful as an interlocutor. But Gorbachev would have looked to her for any hint as to how he should conduct himself in Washington. The occasion was also something of a celebration, as Gorbachev made clear in his public remarks before flying on to sign the treaty in Washington. "The agreement on the elimination of two kinds of nuclear weapons was not an easy one. But we have covered this road together, for the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and your allies and partners." It was virtually an open acknowledgement of a triangular relationship. But am I, as a British commentator, attributing too much significance to Thatcher's role in ending the Cold War? That was a question I put to Alexander Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev's closest advisors, in a conversation some years ago. "No", he told me, "you are not exaggerating. She was the link weapon", a happy description of the Iron Lady. Then he went on, "Reagan, Gorbachev, Thatcher, they all made mistakes, big mistakes. But together they changed the world." A fitting epitaph and a fair verdict, n