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Challenging the Status Quo
By former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
The Atlantic Council
As the world celebrates 20
years since the fall of the
Berlin Wall it is right that we
should reflect on the impact
of those momentous months.
In the two decades which have passed,
there has been a tendency to diminish
the importance of the Cold War. We have
since learned how fragile the economic,
political and military structures in the
Soviet Union really were. But it would
be wrong to lose sight of the dangers
which mankind faced during the era of
Mutually Assured Destruction. Nor must
we downplay the bravery of those who
resisted oppression. No ideology has
been responsible for more deaths than
communism and it required tremendous
moral and physical courage to defy its
deadly grip.
By the late 1970s it had almost come
to be accepted that the world was locked
into an unbreakable armed stand-off.
But with the coming of Ronald Reagan
to the White House, all that was to be
transformed. President Reagan was not
prepared to accept the status quo. He
believed that the West could win both the
battle of ideas and the battle of resources,
and with the support of other leaders, he
was determined to loosen communism’s
hold. And by the mid-1980s, as the effects
of his determined stance began to expose
the frailty of Soviet power, communism
itself found someone from within who
was prepared to doubt its orthodoxy and
to promote change: Mikhail Gorbachev.
Twenty years on, the world has changed,
mostly for the better. Millions of people
who once struggled under the oppression
of communism live freer, more
prosperous and happier lives. We have not
created utopia: but then only communism
thought that mankind could. There are
still hardships. There are still dangers.
But it is a world where more people are
taking more decisions about their own
lives than ever in our history. And that is
something for us all to celebrate.
Baroness Margaret Thatcher was British
Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990.
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