A constructed Peace The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963

So by 1960 serious problems were beginning to develop within the western alliance. America and Europe were increasingly at odds in the nuclear area. The three main European allies had all come, in their different ways, to see nuclear forces under their own control as of fundamental importance, while American policy, or at least State Department policy, had evidently turned against the idea of nuclear capabilities under national control.

This conflict between the United States and the European allies on the nuclear issue was a basic source of tension, but it is important to see it in context: the western political system as a whole was in disarray, and the problems were growing. On the most fundamental issues, the western countries did not quite know what they wanted or how to go about achieving their goals. Britain and France, for example, both very much wanted to keep Germany from becoming too powerful and independent, but each had adopted a set of policies which pulled in the opposite direction. The presence of western troops, and especially American troops, on German soil was the heart of the NATO system, and this system had been designed in large part to keep Germany from posing a threat to the status quo. And yet the British were attracted to the general idea of disengagement, favored even unilateral cutbacks in allied troop strength in Germany, and to rationalize those reductions in force levels supported a change in NATO military strategy that would place much greater emphasis on nuclear deterrence--policies that not only tended to undermine the system for limiting German power and independence, but also directly alienated the Germans and weakened the bonds of confidence tying Germany to the West.

For France also, the control of German power was a fundamental goal, and yet de Gaulle seemed determined to destroy the system that had been designed to keep Germany from becoming too strong and too independent. In de Gaulle's view, America was a hegemonic power and sought to keep the European nations down. If the Europeans were to assert their own political identities, the American grip had to be broken. NATO was the instrument of American hegemony; the NATO structure therefore had to be radically transformed. The message was that the American presence was no longer appreciated; the implication was that the Europeans countries would ultimately have to look to themselves for their security. All this was a matter of basic political philosophy and had little to do with anything the United States had actually done. But it was hard to see how this sort of policy fit in with the other fundamental goal of making sure that Germany did not pose a threat to European stability. The American presence was the linchpin of the structure within which German power was contained, a structure which made it possible to keep the Soviets at bay without a great buildup of German power. Why then did de Gaulle seem determined to wreck that very structure? And in particular wouldn't a nationalistic French policy, especially a policy of nuclear independence, by its very nature encourage the Federal Republic to go down the same path?

As for the Germans themselves, a policy of reaching for political, and thus military, independence made eminent sense, except for one thing. It was natural that the German government would not want to be so absolutely dependent on the United States for protection, and thus should want a nuclear force of its own. The only problem was that the Soviets objected violently to a German nuclear capability. Did it make sense, in such circumstances, to provoke the USSR by trying to establish German nuclear independence? The Soviets might react most obviously by again threatening Berlin. If Adenauer had been willing either to go to war over the Berlin issue or had been prepared to write off the city and allow it to fall into Communist hands, then his policy would at least have been consistent. But as it turned out, he was neither willing to go all the way and accept a real military confrontation over Berlin, nor was he prepared to accept the very serious and possibly catastrophic long-term political consequences that a sacrifice of Berlin would entail. It was as though he had not thought the problem through--as though he were determined to move ahead without regard for the consequences.⁸⁴⁸

So the whole situation was a mess. Problem had been piled on top of problem. And the United States, by far the most important western power and thus the leader of the western alliance, did not really know how to proceed. By 1960 it seemed in fact that Eisenhower had lost his grip on policy.
Eisenhower at Loose Ends

Secretary Herter gave a major speech at the December 1960 NATO Council meeting in Paris. That speech was supposed to lay out the administration's basic thinking on the future of the alliance. Eisenhower wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to leave a kind of testament, "a legacy of the finest ideas and plans this administration could develop."⁸⁴⁹ And yet the position Herter took at the Paris meeting did not come close to capturing the president's fundamental point of view. His December 17 statement, with its call for a "substantial conventional capability" in Europe so as to give NATO commanders the "flexibility of response" they needed, clearly did not reflect Eisenhower's thinking. The "flexible response" line implied that the large U.S. troop presence in Europe would have to be maintained indefinitely, which again directly contradicted the president's basic point of view. Eisenhower had wanted to take a relatively tough line with the Europeans. He thought they needed to be told that the time had come for them to take on more of the burden of providing for their own defense--that a "redeployment" of U.S. forces was now necessary, if only for balance of payments reasons. The State Department, however, did not see things that way at all, and Herter's language on this point remained quite mild--far too mild, in fact, for Eisenhower's taste. It "was not as tough a statement," the president said, "as he would have made."⁸⁵⁰

On the NATO nuclear issue, the Herter statement was also very much at variance with Eisenhower's thinking. It was not just that it was considerably more hostile to "additional national nuclear weapons capabilities" than Eisenhower ever was. The more important point is that it failed to propose anything real as an alternative. The whole Eisenhower concept of an independent European nuclear force, not subject to an American veto, and under the command of a European SACEUR, was not held out to the Europeans even as an ultimate goal. These aspects of the president's thinking, although they surfaced from time to time in the press, were but dimly reflected in the Herter statement. The control of the force would be "truly multilateral," Herter said, without making it at all clear what this was supposed to mean, and in particular whether America would be giving up her veto on the use of the weapons. "A suitable formula to govern" use of the force would be worked out eventually, which was another way of saying that the United States had no answer to this question right now. A NATO strategic force was simply an "extremely interesting thought." The NATO MRBMs might form the basis of such a force. Or they might not, since, as Herter pointed out, they were "required as modernization of the tactical strike capability." But on the other hand, the "line between 'tactical' and 'strategic' capabilities" was becoming "ever more blurred." In any event, the NATO MRBMs would be targeted in "coordination" with external forces such as SAC, a point which suggested that the U.S. government was not thinking in terms of an independent NATO force. This was not a plan for giving "NATO," let alone NATO Europe, independent power in the area of nuclear war-fighting. At most, the door was being left open for the "exploration of the concept of increasing the authority of the Alliance" in the nuclear area. The basic Eisenhower concept had been watered down practically beyond recognition, and indeed there was very little in the plan to capture the imagination of the Europeans. And none of this is to be understood in domestic political terms. The administration was about to leave office and was thus free to speak its mind and say where it thought the alliance ought to be headed. But it was evident from the Herter statement that it was incapable of laying out a clear concept.⁸⁵¹

If the December 17 statement did not reflect the president's own point of view, this was because Eisenhower was no longer the same man who had taken control of the policy making process in 1953-54. The president had no great personal regard for Herter, and he knew that the State Department as a whole was fundamentally out of sympathy with his basic thinking.⁸⁵² He in fact complained sharply from time to time about the behavior of American officials. In 1960, for example, he told Norstad that he had become "very dissatisfied regarding our relationships with our allies in the matter of atomic weapons and missiles. The US Government seems to be taking the attitude that we will call the tune, and that they have inferior status in the alliance."⁸⁵³ But he was no longer willing to put his foot down and make the State Department follow his lead. To be sure, in the formal policy documents, his views had to be taken into account, and the final texts did not take as firm a line as the State Department would have liked.⁸⁵⁴ But the president, for his part, did not insist on language that really expressed his own thinking. The result was that by 1959 and 1960 the BNSPs included provisions that reflected both the pro- and the anti-sharing point of view--that is, phrases each side could cite as a warrant for its own policy position.⁸⁵⁵

It was as though the Eisenhower presidency had run out of steam. There was no longer a strong hand on the rudder. Even America's friends in Europe were shaken by certain clear signs that Secretary Herter in particular was out of his depth.⁸⁵⁶ People wondered whether the U.S. government was fit to lead the western bloc. The French especially had their doubts.⁸⁵⁷ The whole "tripartism" affair of 1959-60, in particular, raised serious questions in their minds about American competence in the whole foreign policy area. This episode is in fact quite extraordinary, and is worth examining in some detail for the light it sheds on the way the American government was conducting its affairs in the late Eisenhower period. It also helps explain why de Gaulle dealt with America the way he did later on, especially in January 1963.⁸⁵⁸

The story begins with de Gaulle's famous memorandum of September 1958, which proposed that America, Britain and France set up an organization to make "joint decisions on political questions affecting world security." That tripartite body, he said, would not just work out common military plans, but would also oversee their implementation.⁸⁵⁹ The basic concept was not new. Beginning in the late 1940s, the French had from time to time called for setting up some kind of tripartite body to deal with these basic issues of policy, and in particular to deal with military and especially nuclear issues.⁸⁶⁰ But for de Gaulle, the idea was a centerpiece of his policy, and in spite of a series of disappointments, he remained interested in it well into the Kennedy period.⁸⁶¹

The U.S. government disliked the idea of a formal organization. A formal body would embitter the allies who were not included. But this did not mean that Eisenhower shut the door completely on the de Gaulle proposal. As he wrote Dulles at the end of 1958, he was against doing "this 3 power business unless we have to."⁸⁶²

A year later, Eisenhower felt the time had come to make a formal proposal. He met with de Gaulle and Macmillan at Rambouillet in December 1959. At the very start of their first meeting, he called for "the establishment of a tripartite machinery to operate on a clandestine basis with the object of discussing questions of common interest to the three Governments." His idea was "that each country should supply one or two men who should not only be competent but also of specially good judgment and of reasonably high rank. There might perhaps be someone on the political side, a military figure and an economist." De Gaulle was pleased with the proposal, which seemed to have come out of the blue. Macmillan, although astonished, was also happy to go along, and thought he could capitalize on his support for the proposal by getting de Gaulle to be more accommodating on trade issues, a fundamental concern for the British at this point. "We should not be obstructive about establishing the Tripartite group in London," the prime minister said, "tiresome though this may be for us in some ways."⁸⁶³

All of this, however, came as a big surprise to the State Department. Herter had been left entirely in the dark. The British, in fact, had to show him their record of the meeting where Eisenhower had made his proposal. It was always hard for the State Department, Herter complained, "to find out what had taken place at meetings where the President had only been accompanied by an interpreter." And the Secretary of State was not pleased by what he had learned. Eisenhower had suggested setting up the secret "tripartite machinery" on December 20; on December 21, the British foreign secretary got the impression, after telling Herter what had been proposed, that his American counterpart "clearly felt that continuation of the present system should be our aim and should suffice."⁸⁶⁴

Soon the State Department began to "backpedal." Instead of "tripartite machinery," Herter proposed informal talks over dinner; the main U.S. representative would be a diplomat in the London embassy, not even the ambassador.⁸⁶⁵ The British Foreign Office took a similar view.⁸⁶⁶ When the French responded by pressing for the establishment of the sort of "tripartite machinery" de Gaulle had called for in September 1958, Herter sought to "sidestep" that proposal.⁸⁶⁷ Not only that, but in his reply to the French foreign minister, he actually claimed that it had been de Gaulle and not Eisenhower who at Rambouillet had raised the idea of holding "private tripartite talks," even though the British record, the best evidence he had, shows quite clearly that this indeed had been Eisenhower's proposal. Basically all that Herter was willing to accept was the continuation of the tripartite talks that were already taking place in Washington: "we for our part are only too happy to leave matters as they now stand." The Americans, as a British diplomat happily pointed out, were pouring "as much water as possible into the rather heady wine of the Eisenhower proposals of last December."⁸⁶⁸

The French were clearly disappointed. The French ambassador in London discussed the matter with de Gaulle and "had formed the distinct impression that de Gaulle had now rather lost interest in this matter."⁸⁶⁹ But Eisenhower could not understand the French reaction. He was "quite astonished" by the French attitude, especially by their interest in formal structures. His plan at Rambouillet, he said, had been to bring together "one or two junior but capable staff officers" from each country to keep on top of issues of common concern, and it had seemed then that de Gaulle had been happy to go along. "Just where it jumped the track," he wrote Macmillan, "I do not know."⁸⁷⁰

So not only had Eisenhower allowed the State Department to sabotage his proposal, but he was not even aware of what had happened. It is not hard to imagine how de Gaulle must have reacted. The episode tended to confirm many of his prejudices about America. The Americans did not know how to pursue an effective foreign policy. The president was not quite in control. The U.S. government, it seemed, was like a congeries of semi-autonomous fiefdoms. De Gaulle himself would not tolerate for a minute in France the sort of independent action that was evidently par for the course in the American policy making system.⁸⁷¹ The United States was obviously a very strong country, but did American leaders really know how to manage the enormous power they controlled? It was the moral authority of the United States, America's fitness to lead the West, that was brought into question by episodes of this sort.

[Put Figure Nine about here]

And indeed by the end of the Eisenhower period, the world in general had the sense of an administration at loose ends, soft and flaccid and incapable of steering a clear course. This impression played a key role during the American presidential election campaign in 1960. Many Europeans also felt that something was amiss. On September 9, Norstad met with Adenauer and two other west European leaders. The sense of the discussion was that the Eisenhower policy of "leadership by generosity" had failed, and that the U.S. needed to take a stronger and clearer line.⁸⁷² A year earlier, NATO Secretary General Paul-Henri Spaak had told Eisenhower directly "that the United States is too kind, too indulgent," and that "sometimes it is necessary to speak out with full strength."⁸⁷³ And Adenauer, in his first meeting with President Kennedy in early 1961, also stressed the importance of America playing a stronger role in the alliance.⁸⁷⁴ When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers: the policy of "leadership by generosity" would end in 1961, and under Kennedy America would become far more assertive in her dealings with the NATO allies. But the Europeans--and Adenauer above all--would not be too happy with what they were about to get.

In the late Eisenhower period, however, it was not at all clear how things would develop. Everything was very much up in the air. The great issues of the defense of the West, the control of nuclear weapons, and Germany's place in the international system, were all still unresolved. The whole idea of a German nuclear force, and thus of a strong Germany with a truly independent foreign policy, was by no means out of the question. There might be no way to prevent the Germans from building such a force. Europe could not depend so completely on America; an integrated NATO, or even European, force might not be viable or meaningful as an alternative; national forces might be the only answer. Britain and France were going to have forces of this sort. How could Germany, more exposed than they were, accept a permanent non-nuclear status?

A system based on the control of German power, the sort of system that the Paris accords had been designed to establish, had not really taken root. Germany was in the process of getting effective control over nuclear weapons, and no one could tell how far that process would actually go. For the USSR, this question of a German nuclear capability was of fundamental importance. A non-nuclear Federal Republic, dependent on the western powers for protection, was no problem, but a nuclearized Germany, able to play her own hand in international politics, was another matter entirely. And the Americans, it now seemed, were moving ahead with a policy that might well lead to a real German nuclear capability. They were arming the Germans with nuclear weapons, and by 1960 Eisenhower was publicly calling for a change in the law to make a more liberal sharing policy possible. "I have always believed," he told the press, "that we should not deny to our allies what our enemies or potential enemies already have. Allies should be treated as allies, not as junior members of a firm who are to be seen but not heard."⁸⁷⁵

This, in fact, had been the president's view for many years. In 1957 and 1958, the Soviets saw what the United States was doing in Europe. They saw an American policy which they had every reason to fear was leading directly to a German nuclear capability. From their point of view, events could not simply be allowed to run their course. They had earlier tried to deal with this problem through diplomacy, but that effort had failed. Of the western powers, only Britain had been interested in the Soviet-backed idea of a nuclear-free zone in central Europe. So tougher measures might now be necessary.

Berlin was the obvious lever. The vulnerability of West Berlin made it easy for the Soviets to exert pressure. The "Berlin question," Khrushchev bluntly told the American ambassador in Moscow, Llewellyn Thompson, "was one of geography that he intended [to] make use of." Thompson thought he knew what the Soviet leader's real goal was. "Khrushchev," he cabled Washington in November 1958, "is a man in a hurry and considers that time is against him" especially on the German nuclear issue. The western powers, he advised, had better get ready for a "major showdown" with Russia.⁸⁷⁶

That showdown was not long in coming. The great Berlin crisis of 1958 to 1962, the central episode of the Cold War, began that very month.

PART THREE

THE COLD WAR PEACE

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE POLITICS OF THE BERLIN CRISIS, 1958-1960
In November 1958, the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, announced that his government was going to sign a peace treaty with East Germany. When it did so, he said, western rights in Berlin would be ended. He would give the western powers six months to negotiate a settlement which would transform West Berlin into a "free city." If, however, the western powers refused to work out a settlement on that basis and sought instead to maintain their position through military force, the USSR would "rise in defence" of her East German ally. The Soviet Union was thus threatening war if her demands were not met, and this led to a great crisis which lasted with varying degrees of intensity until the end of 1962.

What exactly was the crisis about? The Soviets were making threats, but what were they really trying to achieve? How far were they willing to go in their confrontation with the West if they were unable to achieve their objectives peacefully? And how would the western side react to Soviet pressure? What were the NATO governments willing to do to resolve the crisis, and in particular what arrangements relating to Germany as a whole would they prepared to accept? When, if at all, would they be willing to use force rather than to capitulate in the crisis? The answers to these questions would determine not just the meaning of this episode but also the basic structure of great power politics during the Berlin Crisis period.⁸⁷⁷

Soviet pressure on Berlin was rooted in the USSR's concern with Germany as a whole, and above all with what was going on in West Germany.⁸⁷⁸ Berlin itself was not the problem. The Soviet goal was not to drive the western powers out and eventually take over the city. If that had been the aim, the obvious strategy would have been the much less risky one of undermining the economic life of the city by cutting off civilian ground traffic with West Germany. It was clear that the West would not use force against them if they did so.⁸⁷⁹

Nor was the crisis essentially about East Germany--about stabilizing the situation there, or getting the West to accept the status quo in central Europe. Any purely internal problem in East Germany could be dealt with through police measures, backed up ultimately by Soviet military power. If the flow of refugees out of East Germany via West Berlin was a problem, the Communist authorities could deal with it by sealing the border. Anything of this sort, which involved action taken in their own sphere, would be a good deal less risky than an attempt to "liquidate" unilaterally the rights of the western powers in West Berlin. The East German leaders, in fact, asked in early 1961 to be allowed to close the border, but the Soviets held back. They made it clear that their real concerns lay elsewhere--that they had bigger fish to fry and wanted to go on using the Berlin problem as a lever.⁸⁸⁰