Thatcher shaped modern Britain – that is undeniable – but she also shaped modern Estonia. Estonia owes its prosperity and even its liberty to Margaret Thatcher. There is a direct line between That-cher's foreign and economic policies and Estonia's current situation, writes British journa-list and political commentator in Estonia Abdul Turay.
In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, British territories in the South Atlantic. The military junta that cont-rolled Argentina assumed that the US would back them. The US was friends with both countries.
The Monroe Doct-rine states the Western Hemisphere is in the US sphere of influence. We now know from disclosed State Department papers that the US would rather have seen a humiliated Britain than a defeated, destabilized, Argen-tina.
US Secretary of State Ale-xander Haig flew first to Lon-don and then Buenos Aires to broker a deal. Margaret That-cher wanted to fight.
Argentine dictator, General Leopoldo Galtieri, thought Britain wouldn't fight.
Haig replied by referring to the Irish terrorist prisoner hunger strike the year before: “That woman will fight, that woman let 10 people of her own race starve to death, the British will fight and the British will prevail.”
The subsequent war proved three things: Britain could project power at a distance, major powers had a distinct advantage over minor ones, and modern military technology worked.
From then on the U.S. pursued a more robust foreign policy. The American thinking was if the British could defeat the Argentines so easily, maybe the US could take on the Russians.
There then followed an arms race. We all know what happened next.
No other postwar British leader would have taken this stance against tyranny. Mar-garet Thatcher's tenacity, her guts, her bloody-mindedness and sheer hard work delighted her supporters and scared her enemies.
Thatcher’s legacy continued to shape Estonia long after she left power. The economic policies Estonia pursued in the 1990s and today are really a more radical form of That-cherism.
Mart Laar, the prime minister under whose tenure these economic reforms were carried out, remained till the end a great admirer and personal friend of Margaret Thatcher.
Margaret Thatcher has been credited with and blamed for many things which she didn't do. She did not destroy the welfare state – Britain still has a sizable welfare state today. She did not finish off the unions, the decline of old industries in the 1970s and 1980s led to a collapse in union membership. She did not even solely cause the economic recovery of Britain. A combination of things including North Sea oil, the information revolution, and the fact that Britain had finally paid off its war debts to the United States brought that about.
Now that the great woman has passed on, let us celebrate some of the things she did achieve – helping to bring down the Iron Curtain and liberate Estonia.
Abdul Turay
ERR News
