Reagan And Thatcher S Special Relationship

Drawing on recently declassified documents and elite interviews with key protagonists that reveal candid recollections, Sally-Ann Treharne highlights the pivotal moments in Reagan and Thatcher's shared history from a new vantage point.

Reagan and Thatcher's Special Relationship provides an insightful and original study, with a new regionally focused approach to the study of Anglo-American relations. The Falklands War, the US invasion of Grenada, the Anglo-Guatemalan dispute over Belize and the US involvement in Nicaragua are vividly reconstructed as Latin American crises that threatened to overwhelm a renewal in US-UK relations in the 1980s. Reagan and Thatcher's efforts to normalise relations, both during and after the crises, reveal a mutual desire to strengthen Anglo-American ties and to safeguard individual foreign policy objectives whilst cultivating a close personal and political bond that was to last well beyond their terms in office. This ground-breaking reappraisal analyses pivotal moments in their shared history by drawing on the extensive analysis of recently declassified documents.

Drawing on recently declassified documents and elite interviews with key protagonists that reveal candid recollections, Sally-Ann Treharne highlights the pivotal moments in Reagan and Thatcher's shared history from a new vantage point.

A new exploration of the relationship between the Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan administrations in domestic policy. Using recently released documentary material and extensive research interviews, James Cooper demonstrates how specific policy transfer between these 'political soul mates' was more limited than is typically assumed.

The uneasy alliance that lay at the heart of the relationship of two of the most powerful and controversial leaders of the late 20th century: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. For three decades, historians have cited the long-term alliance of Reagan and Thatcher as an example of the special bond between the US and Britain. But, as Richard Aldous argues, these political titans clashed repeatedly as they confronted the greatest threat of their time: the USSR. Brilliantly reconstructing some of their most dramatic encounters, Aldous draws on recently declassified documents and extensive oral history to dismantle the popular conception of the Reagan-Thatcher diplomacy.

New details of the remarkable relationship between two leaders who teamed up to change history. It?s well known that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were close allies and kindred political spirits. During their eight overlapping years as U.S. president and UK prime minister, they stood united for free markets, low taxes, and a strong defense against communism. But just how close they really were will surprise you. Nicholas Wapshott finds that the Reagan-Thatcher relationship was much deeper than an alliance of mutual interests. Drawing on extensive interviews and hundreds of recently declassified private letters and telephone calls, he depicts a more complex, intimate, and occasionally combative relationship than has previously been revealed.

Drawing on a host of recently declassified documents from the Reagan-Thatcher years, A Diplomatic Meeting: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Art of Summitry provides an innovative framework for understanding the development and nature of the special relationship between British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and American president Ronald Reagan, who were known as "political soulmates." James Cooper boldly challenges the popular conflation of the leaders' platforms, and proposes that Reagan and Thatcher's summitry highlighted unique features of domestic policy in their respective countries. Summits, therefore, were a significant opportunity for the two world leaders to further their own domestic agendas. Cooper uses the relationship between Reagan and Thatcher to demonstrate that summitry politics transcended any distinction between foreign policy and domestic politics—a major objective of Reagan and Thatcher as they sought to consolidate power and implement their domestic economic programs in a parallel quest to reverse notions of their countries' "decline." This unique and significant study about the making of the Reagan-Thatcher relationship uses their key meetings as an avenue to explore the fluidity between the domestic and international spheres, a perspective that is underappreciated in existing interpretations of the leaders' relationship and Anglo-American relations and, more broadly, in the field of international affairs.

Drawing on interviews with those closest to them, as well as on hundreds of recently declassified private letters and telephone calls, Wapshott depicts a complex, personal, and sometimes argumentative relationship between these two unlikely political soulmates. 8-page b&w photo insert.