The satellization of Mrs. Thatcher.

YANK: What got into Mrs. Thatcher?

Brit: What do you mean, "What got into Mrs. Thatcher?"

Yank: So she gives an interview to the New York Times in London. And she dumps all over Reagan on the Grenada business, one more time. Three months after the invasion, two weeks after the last U.S. combat soldier has left the island, five days after the last elected prime minister of Grenada goes back there and says he wishes the United States would leave a detachment there permanently, one month after a poll reveals that more than 90 per cent of the people of Grenada are positively worshipful in their gratitude to the United States for having relieved them of hell on earth under those Marxist madmen. That's what I mean, "What got into Mrs. Thatcher?"

Brit: Mrs. Thatcher is a political woman, just as your President Reagan is a political man. She is certainly entitled to take into account domestic pressures, isn't she?

Yank: You raise two questions. The first is: Why should there be such heavy domestic pressures against our action in Grenada? It is obvious that the Left would be opposed, because the Left is always opposed to any action's being taken that sets back the Marxist movement anywhere on earth. The second question is: How pressing could such pressures have been? She won her election only half a year ago and won it resoundingly. She is totally in command of the House of Commons, and she even implied, in the same interview, that she intends to run again in five years, when her current term comes to an end. So that neither strategic nor tactical concerns can plausibly be said to have demanded this fresh denunciation of Reagan's Caribbean move.

Brit: She made herself perfectly plain. She said that force is only the instrument of last resort; and that her problem has been to persuade Europe to deploy the cruise missiles, and the Grenadian business made it much tougher for her; and that, after all, Grenada is as far from the States as Cairo is from London, and what does it matter if we have a Communist island in the eastern Caribbean? She even said that, after all, she had never attended a Commonwealth Conference since she became prime minister at which a freely elected prime minister from Grenada had been present, so if she can put up with such creatures, why can't you Yanks?

Yank: Well, there are several comments one might make here. The first is that not all that long ago, the British considered Cairo close enough to London to warrant direct military intervention: 1956. They failed; we didn't. Second: The Commonwealth is a jolly abstraction, not all that different from the United Nations. Other than that all Commonwealth countries curtsy to the Queen, they have nothing else in common. A Communist Grenada may be okay by Mrs. Thatcher. It isn't okay by us, and she should give us the benefit of the doubt in matters Caribbean. Argentinian rule in the Falkland Islands doesn't cause us any loss of sleep, but we gave her the benefit of the doubt on that one, understand?

Brit: But what about the argument that it made the missile deployment that much more difficult for her?

Yank: The whole idea of missile deployment is to prevent happening to Europe what had just about finished happening in Grenada. If the American people thought that the acceptance by Europe of missiles designed to protect not us, but Europeans, was so narrowly achieved, enthusiasm for collective security would be threatened to the point of having as many Americans calling for the return of our troops from West Germany as are calling for their removal from Lebanon. If Mrs. Thatcher suddenly doesn't understand the doctrine of containment, she doesn't understand the basic moral architecture of our alliance.

Brit: You will not deny that the use of force is only the last resort?

Yank: I not only deny it, I denounce it as a michievous, dangerous cliche. People who utter it mean, or ought to mean, something else.

Brit: What?

Yank: Force should be resorted to when the absence of force does not effect an imperative national objective and should always be used when loss force guards against the use of more force at a later time. A lesser foce used against Hitler in 1937 would have prevented the need for greater force used against him beginning in 1941. The difference between the two modes of force is measured by about 45 million lives. Lives lost by using force too late.