Spirited Major Calls for Caution

John Major, the former British Prime Minister, cautioned against short-sighted geopolitics in his Wednesday night speech to the ARCO Forum.

Major, who still serves as Conservative Member of Parliament, delivered the annual Gordon Lecture on Finance and Economics, peppering his address with criticism of Western regimes' handling of crises in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor.

Major called for "a much larger look at the implications of words and actions of foreign policy."

When the Berlin Wall collapsed and communism fell, Major said, "the demons came forth" in the form of instability in the states of the former Soviet block.

Russia, which had previously helped to maintain a precarious balance of power in the Balkan region, was suddenly in no position to keep the peace.

So the West stepped in, which Major says was a mistake.

"Would the West have put ground troops in Bosnia if Russia was still a communist state?" Major asked. "The answer is, we would not."

Major said he concluded that Western triumphalism in the face of the collapse of communism failed to address long-term issues that eventually arose.

Although Major's strongest words of the evening were reserved for the Western response to the Balkan quagmire, he also voiced skepticism about the future of a unified Europe.

France and Britain, he said, would never trade their sovereignty for free trade or efficient markets.

"The heart of Europe is Germany and France. And of the two, France is the maypole about which the others dance," Major said with a rueful smile.

As Prime Minister, Major opposed British integration into the Euro and weathered a storm of protest from a faction of his own party.

He said Wednesday night that he still considered himself opposed to a united European currency. The current Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has favored Britain's further integration with the rest of Europe.

Despite the weighty topics, Major's speech was full of dry British wit, which delighted the capacity crowd of nearly 1,000.

Recalling a summit meeting with Boris Yeltsin, Major said he asked the Russian president to describe the state of Russia in one word.

"Good," Yeltsin replied.

Major said he sought elaboration--

perhaps two words.

"Not good," Yelstin grunted, according to Major.

It was Major's good humor that has helped him through the travails of what has been--by nearly all accounts--a stunningly successful political career.

Major's road to 10 Downing St. was unorthodox even by British standards. He did not attend college and learned through his positions in virtually every department of the British government.

He was an effective Chancellor of the Exchequer to Margaret Thatcher and made few enemies in the party, both factors in his ascent after Thatcher stepped down in 1990.

"I think [he served] from a sense of loyalty to the Conservative party and from a sense of duty to the country," said Pippa Norris, a lecturer at the Kennedy School and an expert on British politics.

Major faced two tasks that occupied nearly the entirety of his seven-year tenure as Prime Minister.

First, he tried to steer the United Kingdom through economic doldrums caused by the privatization of government industries during the 1980s.

Second, Major faced what he called the "intractable" problem: his party was split in two by the thorny issue of a greater Europe.

These battles between the Euroskeptics, who championed national sovereignty and worried that a British monetary union with Europe would weaken the county's economy, and the Europhiles, who saw an extra-national union as the way to the U.K.'s salvation, wore Major down.

"This deep-ridden conflict, he inherited," Norris said. "He didn't try to paper over it. I don't think there was anything he could have done."

By any measure, and even in the face of criticism, John Major was unflappable. The day he resigned, he left 10 Downing St. for the relief of the cricket field.

According to Norris, Major now serves as an advisor to the party and as an elder statesman to the country. According to Norris, he will help the Conservatives focus their message as they try to recover from more than two years in the opposition.

"I think John Major has settled in nicely," she said.