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

CHAPTER SIX

AN ALLIANCE IN DISARRAY
In the late Eisenhower period, the NATO allies were given effective control over many of the American nuclear weapons deployed in Europe. But this was by no means regarded as a final answer to the nuclear sharing question, and from Eisenhower's point of view a great deal remained to be done. A de facto arrangement that did not correspond to any clearly articulated strategy--indeed, one that skirted the edge of legality--was obviously not a permanent solution. A more stable system had to be put in place. Allied control over the weapons had to be overt, straightforward and legitimate. And the way to do this was to set up some kind of NATO nuclear force. Eisenhower's idea was that the American presence in Europe would eventually wither away, perhaps down to the single division level, conceivably down to zero, and the NATO force would become a European nuclear force. The assumption was that this force would ultimately be truly independent: its use would not be subject to an American veto.⁶⁹⁶

How would this NATO or European force be organized? The issue of the war-making power--that is, the question of who would authorize the use of nuclear weapons--was fundamental. In a system dominated by the United States, the answer was relatively simple: the Americans would make the key decisions. In the 1950s, everyone knew that this was the case, but the NATO countries preferred not to deal with this question explicitly. The issue of control, the argument ran, was "academic." It would only be resolved "in the event." To focus on such questions would reflect distrust and would accomplish little of real value.⁶⁹⁷ But with a force divided more evenly among a number of NATO powers, this sort of approach would no longer be viable. More explicit arrangements for the control of that force would have to be worked out.

There were two basic ways of dealing with the issue of the control of a NATO, and eventually a European, nuclear force. In both cases the problems were enormous. The first alternative was for this force to be organized the same way the rest of NATO was--on a national basis, under ultimate national control, but with plans worked out within the NATO structure, and with a unified command becoming fully effective in the event of war. Planning, and especially targeting, could be done primarily on an alliance-wide basis, although there was no reason why arrangements for various fallback contingencies could not also be worked out on a national basis.

But there were two great problems with this relatively loose approach. There was first a problem of military efficiency. Nuclear decisions might have to be made quickly. Authority over nuclear operations therefore had to be centralized. The basic trend in NATO, in fact, was toward a greater degree of military integration. As the British ambassador to NATO pointed out, this trend was a "quite straightforward technical consequence of the increased speed of modern warfare and the increased violence of modern weapons." Air defense was the obvious case in point: "If you have central control both of the information that is coming in from the long-range early-warning system that guards the Alliance and of the fighter forces and surface-to-air missiles that are ready to fight off an attack, you have some hope of success. If each country relies on the information available to itself and on the forces it can itself put into the air, the attack will be over in most cases before anything can be done to repel it." The NATO Military Committee had studied the issue and had reported in November 1958 (in MC 54/1) that SACEUR needed operational control of NATO air defense forces "in peace and war." Anything short of that, General Norstad said, would be a "loose ineffective co-ordination of forces."⁶⁹⁸ Norstad's basic assumption was that a strategy of preemption was Europe's only hope: "the real air defense of Western Europe would not so much be in the air battles over Western Europe but what we did to the Soviet Air Force on its bases"--a strategy which, of course, would be meaningful only if the enemy force was destroyed before it launched its attack.⁶⁹⁹ The NATO command, Norstad thought, therefore had "to have the power to attack certain targets immediately."⁷⁰⁰ The Americans were thus serious about nuclear war-fighting, and this was a major reason why they were drawn to the idea of a tight, centralized NATO command structure, especially in the nuclear area.

The second and more basic problem with a NATO or European nuclear force organized on a national basis was that it meant a German finger on the nuclear trigger.⁷⁰¹ A German state with a nuclear capability of its own would no longer be locked into a purely defensive policy. And if it looked like Germany was developing a nuclear force under national control, the Soviets might be tempted to act before it was too late. It followed, or so it seemed to many western leaders, that the three western powers had a certain interest in preventing the situation from developing along these lines--that is, that they had an interest in keeping Germany dependent on her allies, and without nuclear forces under her own control.

This was certainly the British view in the late 1950s, and to a certain extent the French view as well. As for the Americans, while Eisenhower personally was quite relaxed about a buildup of German power, leading officials in the State Department and elsewhere were increasingly hostile to the idea of a German nuclear force.⁷⁰² From their point of view, if a German force was to be avoided, national nuclear forces (other than America's, of course) had to be opposed as a matter of general policy. The idea of a British or a French nuclear force was not particularly troubling in itself. The problem was the spillover effect on Germany. For how could one say yes to the French, but no to the Germans? And if one said no to the French, how could one go on cooperating with the British nuclear program? If the goal was to keep Germany non-nuclear, then national nuclear forces in general would have to be discouraged. The idea of a NATO or eventually a European force built up from national components which in the final analysis would be under national control thus cut against the grain of this whole way of thinking.

A tighter, more centralized system, one in which it would be impossible for the Europeans to use their forces on a national basis, was thus the second major alternative. But here again the problems were enormous. How would such a force be controlled? Could the war-making power, the very heart of sovereignty, be turned over to some sort of international committee, or perhaps even to the commander of the force? In the first case, Germany would still be totally dependent on her allies--if not on America this time, then on Britain and France, which was scarcely an improvement from the German point of view. In the second case, the decision to go to war would be turned over to a high military officer. But that decision was political at its core: in a sovereign state, a state able to chart its own course in international affairs, this was a decision which the political leadership had to make. For Germany in particular, the basic problem, at least as Adenauer saw it, was her inability to control her own political fate. It was hard to see how in the long run this fundamental political problem could be solved by any arrangement that provided for tight, centralized control and made it impossible for the German government to act independently.
The Turning of the Tide

Eisenhower was drawn in both directions--toward the idea of a force built up from components under ultimate national control, but also toward the idea of a highly centralized NATO, and eventually European, nuclear force. On the one hand, he felt that a real alliance had to be based on voluntary cooperation and mutual trust. But as a military man, he also understood the importance of a strong, centralized command structure. And given his commitment to European unification and his belief in the importance of Europe becoming a "third great power bloc," a highly integrated system, one which might well devolve into a purely European system, was also desirable on fundamental political grounds.

It was this commitment that gave the State Department its opening.⁷⁰³ Many key officials there were deeply out of sympathy with the basic thrust of the Eisenhower nuclear sharing policy.⁷⁰⁴ National nuclear capabilities, in their view, were not just wasteful and militarily inefficient. The real problem ran deeper. Nuclear forces under national control were viewed with great disfavor, quite apart from the costs involved. An independent German force was the central problem, both in itself and because of the presumed Soviet reaction. But "Europe" clearly needed "something" in the way of greater control over nuclear use. A single, integrated NATO force, or European nuclear force, was thus the only way out.

These State Department officials did not all view the problem in exactly the same way. For some, an integrated NATO force not subject to an American veto was barely acceptable--a device to absorb European pressures for "something" in the nuclear area, and to deflect and channel Eisenhower's insistence on the need for a generous policy toward the NATO allies. For others, it was an important goal in itself, a means of bringing about a truly unified and independent Europe, which they viewed as the only permanently viable solution to the whole cluster of problems the U.S. government faced in Europe.

But no matter how divided these people were among themselves, they shared a common hostility to national nuclear forces, and therefore backed the idea of a highly centralized system. In this they were supported by the strong NATO lobby, led by General Norstad himself, which saw centralized control, meaning essentially SACEUR control, as vital for military reasons. And this general view also had strong support in Congress and in the more nationalistic parts of the U.S. defense and atomic energy establishment. There was a certain unwillingness to turn over America's nuclear secrets too freely, and, in the Congress especially, a certain anxiety about the spread of nuclear capabilities and a reluctance to be a party to that process. And on top of these general considerations, there was the growing problem with de Gaulle. The French leader, who had returned to power in mid-1958, was beginning to make trouble in NATO and was thus forfeiting whatever claim he had to American nuclear cooperation.⁷⁰⁵ From the administration's point of view, it thus seemed that if anything were to be done, it would have to be on an alliance-wide rather than on a country-to-country basis.⁷⁰⁶

So the American government was coming increasingly to favor the second basic approach. The nuclear sharing arrangements, U.S. representatives began to insist in the late Eisenhower period, would have to have a "NATO flavor." More emphasis was now placed on centralized control. Official U.S. policy was turning away, to a degree that Eisenhower himself never felt entirely comfortable with, from support for, or even acceptance of, national nuclear weapons programs.

In 1956 and 1957, the American government had by no means been opposed to the principle of European nuclear forces under national control. Eisenhower certainly never wanted the NATO allies to go off on their own and build forces that would be used in a totally independent way. But this did not mean that he was against the Europeans developing forces that would ultimately be under national control. In his view, it was inevitable that the Europeans would develop forces of this sort. His hope, however, was that the allies would act together and cooperate with each other--on production, deployment, targeting and so on--within the NATO structure. "Italy, Germany, France and Britain," the president thought, "would all want such weapons." But this was no problem as long as these forces were coordinated within the NATO framework: the weapons, he said, "should be handled as NATO weapons, to be utilized in 'over-all' or strategic purposes."⁷⁰⁷ And the further that process reached, the more of a "NATO flavor" and the more of a European flavor those nuclear arrangements had, the better from his point of view.

Eisenhower always favored cooperative arrangements, even multi-national arrangements worked out just by the continental countries. This was clear during the Euratom affair in 1955 and 1956, but Euratom never got off the ground, mainly for economic reasons. In 1957 and 1958, however, France and Germany, later joined by Italy, embarked on the path of nuclear cooperation. A number of agreements, the so-called FIG [France-Italy-Germany] agreements, were signed at this time.⁷⁰⁸ The goal was to create a "European strategic entity": the continentals would develop some sort of nuclear capability of their own.⁷⁰⁹ After returning to power in May 1958, de Gaulle officially put an end to these efforts--they had in fact been effectively abandoned by his predecessors--but it is important to note how the Americans viewed the FIG project. Some State Department officials, Gerard Smith for example, were hostile to the idea.⁷¹⁰ But Dulles was more supportive.

The matter came up when Dulles met Adenauer at the NATO meeting in Paris in December 1957. Adenauer referred to the FIG proposal for nuclear weapons research and wanted to make sure the United States was adequately informed. Dulles said he would like to know more, but his tone was not the least bit hostile. He brought up the possibility of broadening the arrangement and creating "something like a nuclear weapons authority" which would include the three continental countries plus America and Britain. The State Department officials who worked on this idea in early 1958 tried to make sure that the plan would not result in the European countries getting nuclear forces under their own control. The whole point of the proposal, as they were developing it, was in fact to "deter the creation of additional national nuclear capabilities in Europe." But it is not at all clear that this corresponded to what Dulles had in mind.⁷¹¹

As for Eisenhower, his attitude was probably reflected in some remarks Secretary of Defense McElroy made at the NATO defense ministers' meeting in April 1958. The United States, McElroy said, had "no objection" to such arrangements as the "French-Italian-German collaboration, provided that the work is carried out under the aegis of NATO. In that event the U.S. would be able to furnish technical and certain financial assistance."⁷¹² Given that this position was a good deal more liberal than what McElroy personally favored, one assumes that he was taking this line out of loyalty to, or upon the instructions of, the president.⁷¹³

The U.S. government took another major step at this time which reflected support for an independent European nuclear capability. The Americans were not only willing to help the Europeans get control of U.S.-built ballistic missiles, they were even prepared to help the Europeans build those weapons in Europe. In November 1957, Dulles told the French leaders that the Americans intended to turn over blueprints for IRBMs to their European allies, and Eisenhower made the formal offer at the NATO Heads of Government meeting the following month. The American government, he said, "believes that the follow-up development and production of IRBMs could advantageously be undertaken in Europe. To this end, we are prepared to make available under appropriate safeguards blueprints and other necessary data relating to the IRBM delivery system, if this Council decides that the further development and production of the IRBM should be undertaken on a cooperative basis by NATO countries in Europe."⁷¹⁴

The United States was not at this time insisting that the missiles the Europeans would be building with American help would be subject to SACEUR control.⁷¹⁵ Eisenhower instead was taking a big step toward helping the European countries acquire a strategic nuclear capability of their own on what was essentially a national basis. He obviously hoped that resources would be pooled to avoid a senseless duplication of effort, and that in an emergency the allies would use their forces in a coordinated way--that is, within the NATO framework. But he was not insisting on a tight institutional structure that would make independent national use impossible.

This was reflected in American policy on sharing with the main allied governments. In early 1957, Eisenhower formally accepted the principle of providing the British with IRBMs. He did not insist or even suggest at the time that these missiles would be subject to NATO control.⁷¹⁶ The agreement with Britain simply called for missiles to be "made available by the United States for use by British forces" and said nothing at all about NATO.⁷¹⁷ It was clear that Eisenhower intended to treat the British generously. In late 1957, he wanted to "take the British into the fold on the basis of mutual confidence," and called for a full exchange of information. Each side "should be able to expect to receive whatever the other has."⁷¹⁸ The president's attitude was so positive that the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission was worried that Eisenhower had decided "to turn everything over to the British irrespective of whether or not this involved information of a very secret character." Dulles, however, thought that the president had not intended to go quite that far. Eisenhower did not want to risk compromising "highly secret information" that would not do the British much good, but had simply wanted a practical program to be worked out.⁷¹⁹

In developing this relationship with the British, Eisenhower and Dulles were not trying to set up a special Anglo-American nuclear alliance. The British were always trying to stress their "special relationship" with the United States, Dulles pointed out, but the American government had to "demonstrate an interest in all of our allies." In dealing with Britain, the U.S. government needed to take "the kinds of action that we can broaden to the whole alliance." He felt, in particular, that the time had come "to close up the IRBM agreement with Britain and then to extend it to other countries."⁷²⁰ The arrangements with Britain were thus seen as a kind of opening wedge. They would be more acceptable to Congress than a more general sharing policy, so this clearly was a good place to start. But the administration was not aiming at an exclusive Anglo-American nuclear partnership. The sharing system, in its view, would eventually have to be extended to the main continental allies as well.

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