Larison wades into the debate:
One reason that I am not disappointed with Thatcher at all as a result of these reports is that I am leery of criticism made twenty years after the fact, especially when the criticism is being made with the certain knowledge that the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and eventual dissolution of the USSR occurred largely peacefully. People who want to find fault with Thatcher over this are generally the sort of people who think that Bush’s speech in Kiev in the summer of 1991 was some unpardonable betrayal of freedom and goodness. These people are foolish. The speech was, on the contrary, a sober and serious one that deserves to remembered for what Bush actually said and not the caricature that his hawkish critics have made of it ever since. Thatcher’s statements and actions in 1989-90 ought to be viewed with a similar respect for context and with an awareness of the uncertainty that Western governments experienced in coping with the collapse of a huge imperial system.
Agreed. But the Germanophobia was silly, reactionary and disproved by subsequent events. The neocon silence has been deafening, though, hasn't it?