Foreign Policy of Great Britain Speech by Margaret Thatcher

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Maxat BalgyntayevWritting Section 5Date: 17.10.12 Foreign Policy of Great Britain speech by Margaret ThatcherAs I speak today, 1979 - and with it the 1970s-- has less than two weeks to run. I myself will have some reason to remember both the year and the decade with affection. But in general few, I suspect, will regret the passing of either.
The last 10 years have not been a happy period for the Western democracies domestically or internationally. Self-questioning is essential to the health of any society. But we have perhaps carried it too far and carried to extremes, of course, it causes paralysis. The time has come when the West - above all Europe and the United States-- must begin to substitute action for introspection.
We face a new decade - I have called it 'the dangerous decade' - in which the challenges to our security and to our way of life may if anything be more acute than in the 1970s. The response of Western nations and their leaders will need to be firm, calm and concerted. Neither weakness nor anger nor despair will serve us. The problems are daunting but there is in my view ample reason for optimism.
Few international problems today lend themselves to simple solutions. One reason is that few such problems can any longer be treated in isolation. Increasingly they interact, one between the other. Thanks to a still-accelerating technological revolution we become daily more aware that the earth and its resources are finite and in most respects shrinking.
The fact of global interdependence - I apologize for the jargon - is nothing new. Four hundred years ago South American gold and silver helped to cause inflation in Europe - an early example of the evils of excess money supply. Two hundred years ago men fought in India and along the Great Lakes here in America in order that, as Macaulay put it, the King of Prussia might rob

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