How The Cold War Ended:

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Letter published in Peace News, Edition 233, 1990

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Other People's inventions

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I am writing in reply to a recent article in which Mrs Thatcher claimed that her policies had led to the democratisation of Eastern Europe; she has a habit of claiming other people's inventions her own. Mrs Thatcher has been corrected by Tony Benn and Neil Kinnock in the House of Commons for claiming to have invented microsurgery and START, respectively: I would like to take this opportunity to rebuke her for claiming to have freed Eastern Europe.

As the inventor of microsurgery and START, I am able to tell your readership that the democratisation of Eastern Europe would be allowed by the Soviet Union provided that the US agreed to START. As a Labour Party Member I am only too happy to say that Mrs Thatcher's policies had nothing at all to do with my idea of getting the US to agree to START.

Historians will remember what the policies of Mrs Thatcher and NATO were. The US has admitted that it cancelled plans for a Third World War to liberate Eastern Europe, not because it wold have led to a genocidal nuclear holocaust, but because it had been found that the new Soviet explosive tank armour was so superior to NATO's that a conventional war would not have been winnable. Some policy Mrs Thatcher!

I suggest to your readership that in order to deter future wars the United Nations General Assembly should be democratically elected; then member countries could cede all of their armed forces in agreed stages to the UN.

 

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