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

The great test of the Eisenhower administration's seriousness in this regard was its willingness to help France develop a nuclear capability. Of all the continental allies, France was the most interested in building a nuclear force and had in fact moved furthest in that direction. Eisenhower and Dulles did not strenuously object to that French policy. Indeed, from the start the president especially was sympathetic to French nuclear aspirations and understood why France should want nuclear forces under her own control. Dulles in early 1956 told the French ambassador, Couve de Murville, that he and Eisenhower wanted to help the Europeans arm themselves with nuclear weapons, that Congress was the problem, but that some way would be found to make sure that the allies would have access to those weapons in an emergency.⁷²¹ And when American leaders met with their French counterparts in November 1957, they made much the same point. The French wanted IRBMs and the Americans made it clear that they intended to help France get them, with the warheads only "nominally" in American hands.⁷²² It was clear that Eisenhower wanted to go as far as he could under the law, and perhaps a bit further still, in transfering these weapons to France.

After de Gaulle returned to power in the spring of 1958 and placed the nuclear issue at the heart of French policy, this aspect of U.S. policy remained intact. The American leaders wanted to explore with French officials "what could be done by a liberal interpretation of existing authority."⁷²³ In July 1958 Dulles flew over to Paris to explain U.S. policy on nuclear matters to the new French leader. If France wanted to develop an independent nuclear capability, that was "a matter for France itself to decide," but it would be terribly wasteful if one NATO state after another went down that path. The best course of action was to develop the NATO system, to make sure that all the major allies had access, in the event of an emergency, to the alliance's nuclear weapons--that is, to work out an arrangement that would guarantee that the "use of the weapons" would not "depend on a political decision from far way." Dulles therefore suggested that the two governments get together to see what could be done to "ensure that in the event of a major attack on French or United States forces in Europe, nuclear weapons available to NATO would be used immediately without having to depend on a United States political decision, concerning which the French might have some doubts."⁷²⁴ And with regard to the IRBMs, Eisenhower personally told de Gaulle in December 1959 that "France could at any time have the same arrangement as the United Kingdom under which missiles were given subject only to the 'key of the cupboard' [i.e., dual key] arrangement. In fact it would not be too difficult to obtain a key in a real emergency." The dual key arrangement, he pointed out, would not in reality enable the United States to prevent the weapons from being used: it was an "illusory precaution" because the host countries could "always arrange to seize control of the key."⁷²⁵

And even with Germany, the U.S. government--or at least the top American leadership--was willing to go along with the idea of nuclear forces under national control. The issue came up in two important NSC meetings in 1959. Dulles had been forced by illness to resign earlier in the year, and the basic post-Dulles State Department view was that the United States should try "to prevent any additional nations from achieving a nuclear capability." Eisenhower agreed that this was a good idea--that is, until the NATO allies "came into the picture." He supported the JCS view that the United States should help key allies develop a nuclear capability by exchanging scientific and technical information with them; better still, the U.S. government should make American weapons available to those allies, so they would not have to build them themselves. And it was clear that he considered Germany one of the "selected allies" to be helped in this way. When the Secretary of Defense, for example, objected to the idea of a German nuclear force, Eisenhower dismissed his concerns out of hand. "Germany," the president said, "had been his enemy in the past, but on the principle of having only one main enemy at a time, only the USSR was now his enemy."⁷²⁶

Dulles, whether out of conviction or out of loyalty to Eisenhower, had taken much the same line. In a May 1957 meeting with Adenauer, for example, he had advised the chancellor on how to respond to a Soviet note complaining about German nuclear aspirations. The Federal Republic, he suggested, should once again declare that it would not allow its territory to be used as a base for aggression. But "as for the means of its own defense," he advised Adenauer to reply, "the Federal Republic will not accept the dictates of any country; least of all of a country which forcibly holds some 20 million Germans in bondage."⁷²⁷ This was scarcely the sort of line someone firmly opposed to the very idea of a German nuclear force would have taken.

And when Dulles met with the German foreign minister in November 1957, he was even more explicit. He again emphasized the importance of guaranteeing that the weapons would be available to the allies in an emergency. This would be necessary if the Europeans were not to get involved in the costly and wasteful process of building nuclear weapons on their own. The weapons would be made available "on a basis of impartiality, in light of the military judgment of SACEUR." As far as America was concerned, it was not possible "to contemplate a situation in which there were first and second class powers in NATO." It was true, he said, that Germany had promised not to produce nuclear weapons on her own territory at the time of the Paris accords, but at that time those weapons "were regarded as something apart, both from a political and a moral point of view." Dulles, however, "did not think this would always be the situation." This again implied that Dulles was not ruling out for all time a nuclear force under full German control--or even a force built by the Germans themselves.⁷²⁸

American policy in this area was thus extraordinarily liberal in 1957 and 1958. The Eisenhower administration was in principle ready at this point to help the European allies acquire a nuclear capability. But soon the tide began to turn. By 1960, whatever the president's personal views, the American government had come to place much greater emphasis on strong centralized controls. It was clear, for example, that the U.S. government was backing away from the commitment Eisenhower made about European production of IRBMs, and indeed also from the policy of supplying these missiles to the allies--even to the British--on a national basis. In late 1959, State Department officials began talking explicitly about adding "political conditions" to the offer of U.S. technical assistance. Eisenhower's offer, which was still recognized as a "commitment," had said nothing about NATO control, but now U.S. help would be given only for "NATO," and not "national," weapons. Some officials were worried that the Europeans would regard this as America defaulting on her December 1957 pledge. But in early 1960, that was the path the U.S. government chose to take.⁷²⁹

This shift in policy was tied in with what was going on in the military sphere. General Norstad, ostensibly for purely military reasons having to do with the increasing vulnerability of NATO aircraft on the ground and growing problems of penetrability in the light of Soviet advances in air defense, was calling for a sizeable number of intermediate range (the more advanced models now coming to be called medium-range) ballistic missiles to be placed under his command.⁷³⁰ In October 1959, Norstad had asked for 300 second-generation MRBMs, with a range of up to 1500 miles, to be deployed in western Europe in 1963-65; eventually about a thousand such missiles might be deployed. These would be targeted mostly at the "enemy's aircraft strike force"--that is, air bases, nuclear stockpiles, control centers and air defense centers--but eventually a variety of targets well within the USSR would be covered: ports and naval bases, "army bases and forces," missile bases, and "military and governmental centers." These missiles, Norstad said, were needed to allow the NATO command "to force a halt on an enemy penetration."⁷³¹

Given the location and nature of the targets, many people doubted whether this was a realistic objective. The MRBM was not a limited war-fighting weapon, and in a general war external forces--preeminently the U.S. Strategic Air Command, supplemented by the British Bomber Command and the U.S. Polaris missile submarine force, just beginning to be deployed at the end of the Eisenhower period--would provide coverage of those targets.⁷³² But Norstad, even in the case of general war, still wanted direct control over a missile force of this sort: the "value of external forces" was recognized, but the NATO command needed "the power to attack certain targets immediately; therefore external forces cannot be relied upon."⁷³³ This was in line both with the preemptive strategy and the idea of a semi-autonomous SACEUR.

The Norstad request for a NATO MRBM force now gave the State Department the opportunity it needed. The missiles the United States had promised to help the Europeans acquire would have to placed under NATO and not national control; this would be how the European allies would help Norstad meet his MRBM requirement. So on April 1, 1960, the same day that the French conducted their second atomic test in the Sahara, the U.S. government made a proposal. Secretary of Defense Gates offered the Europeans a choice: they could either buy MRBMs from America for deployment in Europe, which was the option the U.S. government preferred, or they could produce them in Europe, with American help, on a multilateral basis. In either case, these would be NATO, and not national, weapons.⁷³⁴ In the past, there had been a good deal of talk, especially with the French, about working out some kind of a deal: the weapons might be built in Europe, some would go to NATO, some would be under full national control. But now "America was ready to sell Polaris"--a land-based version of the one second-generation MRBM that would be available in the period in question--"to NATO and that was all."⁷³⁵ It was clear that American policy had shifted and that nuclear forces under national control were viewed with growing disfavor. The president had made a commitment, of course, but the State Department had been looking for a way to renege on it, and the Gates two-option offer meant that a way out had been found. On March 21, Secretary Herter bluntly explained the thinking to the British. The United States, he said, had "to make some offer which would at least appear to be honouring the pledge of December 1957, but he himself expected that the form of the offer would not be sufficiently attractive to be taken up." The idea was to tie the U.S. proposal "to conditions which, while reasonable in themselves, would be unlikely to prove acceptable to European NATO governments," conditions which would rule out national use.⁷³⁶

But what if the Europeans actually accepted one of the options Gates had offered? The view was beginning to take hold that even the April 1 proposal went too far. Robert Bowie, for example, who in early 1960 had been asked to conduct a major study of the whole NATO problem, "thought we should explicitly back away from that proposal," and he told Eisenhower so in September.⁷³⁷ It was not enough that the missiles would be assigned to SACEUR, or that the countries involved would promise to use them only in accordance with NATO plans and only when authorized by appropriate NATO authority. Physical control of the weapons was crucial; the great fear was that placing the weapons in western Europe might come dangerously close to giving the host countries (meaning mainly Germany) effective control over what were in reality strategic nuclear weapons: missiles with megaton-yield warheads able to strike at targets well within the USSR.⁷³⁸

It was clear that Europe, as Adenauer told Norstad, needed "something" in the nuclear area.⁷³⁹ If national nuclear forces, even forces coordinated within the general NATO system, were to be ruled out, then the only answer, Bowie thought, was for Europe to build up some sort of multinational force, a force under such tight centralized control that independent action on a national basis would be impossible, a force so thoroughly multinational in character that no participating "ally could withdraw units and employ them as a national force."⁷⁴⁰ To underscore its international character, the force would not be deployed on anyone's national territory: it would be put out to sea, with the missiles deployed either on submarines or on surface ships manned by international crews.

Eisenhower liked the idea, and a proposal along these lines was presented to the NATO Council in December 1960. The presidential election had been held the previous month; Eisenhower would soon be leaving office and the incoming president was from the other party. The December proposal was, however, taken very seriously. It was to be Eisenhower's "legacy": it would embody "the finest ideas and plans this administration could develop."⁷⁴¹

And in a sense the December 1960 proposals--more "a concept than a plan," as Secretary Gates pointed out--really did represent the culmination of the Eisenhower NATO policy.⁷⁴² The goal, at least in the president's mind, was by no means to perpetuate and institutionalize American domination of the western alliance. The NATO nuclear force would be centrally controlled, but for Eisenhower and other top officials, the system ultimately was not to be run by the United States. The aim was to pave the way for an independent European deterrent. The use of the force, Bowie stressed, would not be subject to an American veto.⁷⁴³ The project, as top American officials pointed out in late 1960, would "give NATO its own deterrent strength." NATO would be getting a "striking force of its own."⁷⁴⁴ Secretary Gates, for example, even suggested that the United States might be willing to do away with the "two-key system"--that is, with official American control over the warheads.⁷⁴⁵

The project was considered to be of fundamental importance, and the reason had to do with SACEUR: with SACEUR's powers and SACEUR's nationality. The heart of the plan was to delegate, this time formally, an extraordinary degree of war-making authority to the NATO commander, who would act on his own and would not simply be taking orders from the American president. And the delegation had to be formal, since the weapons themselves would no longer be solely in American hands. One could no longer rely on arrangements that the Americans had worked out among themselves, with SACEUR in his capacity as CINCEUR beginning "the fighting on the principle of the inherent right of a commander to defend his forces."⁷⁴⁶ So SACEUR was to be given official control over the force: when people referred to NATO getting a "striking force of its own," or to a force "responsive only to NATO authority," this was what they had in mind.⁷⁴⁷ Eisenhower's own views on this point could scarcely be clearer. On October 4, the NATO Secretary General, Paul-Henri Spaak, brought up this basic issue in a meeting with the president. "If the United States turned nuclear weapons over to NATO," Spaak asked, "who would have the authority to decide on their use?" Eisenhower's answer was unambiguous: "The President said that such authority should be vested in NATO and in particular in the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe."⁷⁴⁸

The British were soon given the same message. Under the new American plan, their ambassador reported on October 17, "the U.S. government could not block the use of those weapons in the event of an attack in Europe." The Americans made it clear "that their proposals to delegate authority to SACEUR to use the MRBM force at his own discretion will relieve him of any obligation to seek clearance from the President and the Prime Minister before declaring H-hour for that part of his forces." The U.S. government was thus willing to go very far in terms of surrendering "ultimate control" over the nuclear force they were willing to give NATO.⁷⁴⁹

In turning over formal authority, however, how much of a concession would the American government really be making, especially given the substantial degree of delegated authority SACEUR already had? As long as the NATO commander was an American general, one could fairly argue that not much was being given away. It is therefore important to note that Eisenhower sought to move to a system where SACEUR was a European officer. This was, of course, in line with his general philosophy of getting the Europeans to pull together and take over responsibility for their own defense.

From the very outset, Eisenhower had wanted to create a system where the defense of Europe was in European hands. When he assumed command of the NATO forces in 1951, he took it for granted that a European general would eventually become SACEUR. At that time, he had had no idea that "United States command of NATO forces" would last even through the late 1950s.⁷⁵⁰ By 1959, he was thinking increasingly in terms of "making the Europeans furnish the Commander for the European NATO command."⁷⁵¹ At Rambouillet in December 1959 he told de Gaulle flatly that he wanted a European--indeed a French--SACEUR. "When there was an American commander," he said, "other countries looked too much to the United States to help them and did not accept their own responsibilities."⁷⁵² And in September 1960, he was still thinking of "saying that we are ready to let a European take over the command of NATO in Europe."⁷⁵³

This was why the issue of giving SACEUR the authority to decide on the use of nuclear weapons raised such serious problems. The president had the right under American law to delegate this authority to American military commanders. But Eisenhower explicitly rejected the idea that the commander of the NATO force would have to be an American. "Such a condition," he said, "could not be justified and should not be contemplated."⁷⁵⁴ SACEUR therefore might well be a European officer. This was why the U.S. plan, as Secretary of Defense Gates pointed out, would ultimately "require fundamental changes in U.S. law, if not in the Constitution."⁷⁵⁵ It is a measure of Eisenhower's seriousness about creating a nuclear force independent of American control that he made so far-reaching a concept the centerpiece of his policy in his final months in office.

So by the end of the Eisenhower period a policy had taken shape. The American government favored the idea of an independent and ultimately purely European nuclear force, whose use would not be subject to an American veto. The NATO force, in the emerging view, would be effectively controlled by the NATO commander, who might not be an American officer. Indeed, the assumption was that a European general would eventually take command of the force. This was what was behind the December 1960 proposal for what was coming to be called the "multilateral force"--the famous "MLF." Eisenhower in particular was a strong supporter of a concept that was so clearly in line with his basic thinking about the defense of Europe and the future of U.S.-European relations. He "favored the theory of the proposal," he told his main advisors in October 1960. "He favored the establishment of a multilateral force. He felt it would help pull NATO together and raise the morale of the NATO members."⁷⁵⁶
The Western Allies at Cross Purposes

The new policy did not pull the alliance together. It had exactly the opposite effect. The U.S. government had turned against the idea of national nuclear forces, while the three main European allies were all determined to hold onto, or eventually to acquire, nuclear forces under ultimate national control. This conflict lay at the heart of a long crisis in the Atlantic alliance--a crisis that came to a head during the Kennedy period and which was to play a very important role in the larger story of great power politics during this climactic phase of the Cold War.

Even relations with Britain were strained by the new policy. America had long had a goal for that country. The British should give up thinking of themselves as a world power. Britain no longer had the strength to play that kind of role. She should instead view herself as primarily a European power and become along with Germany and France one of the three great building blocks of a united Europe.

The British had from the outset disliked that aspect of American policy. Britain was of course no longer strong enough to play a truly independent role in world affairs. This had been made quite clear at the time of the Suez affair in 1956. The new prime minister, Harold Macmillan, realized the British action in Egypt had been "the last gasp of a declining power." And although he resented the way Britain had been treated by America--he remarked bitterly to Dulles that "perhaps in two hundred years the United States 'would know how we felt'"⁷⁵⁷--he made the cultivation of a close relationship with the United States the centerpiece of his policy. The Americans had to begin trusting Britain again, and so Macmillan's first step was to apologize for "the deception practiced upon" the U.S. government in connection with the Suez affair.⁷⁵⁸ The implication was that this would not happen again, and that the two governments needed to be open with each other.

In Macmillan's view, Britain might not be strong enough to stand entirely on her own, but she could be a kind of smaller version of the United States, standing at America's side, helping her more powerful partner direct the affairs of the West as a whole. His great dream was for Britain to "play Greece to America's Rome." Britain would not be a mere regional power, but would continue to play a certain role on the world stage. This vision meant that Britain should not put her limited military resources primarily into building an army prepared to fight on the continent; the emphasis instead would be on the development of strategic nuclear forces. Britain needed an independent nuclear deterrent, a scaled-down version of the American Strategic Air Command. And this in turn implied the adoption of military strategies that would rationalize the development of forces of that sort, strategies that played down the importance of ground forces and strategic "flexibility," and that justified a heavy reliance on strategic nuclear deterrence.⁷⁵⁹

The Americans were never entirely happy with British attempts to play up their "special relationship" with the United States--to piggyback on American power and thus shore up their declining influence in the world.⁷⁶⁰ In 1956-58, a very important relationship did of course develop in the key nuclear area. But from the U.S. point of view, this was intended to be a prelude to a broader system. The original hope (as noted above) was that the sharing arrangements worked out with the British would ultimately be extended to the other main NATO allies. But then American policy shifted. The "specialness" of the nuclear relationship with the U.K. resulted from the new American coolness toward national nuclear capabilities in general, and not because the U.S. government thought that Britain should be an exception to the new rule. Indeed, the new policy implied a cooling of American support for an independent British nuclear capability. One could not discriminate so sharply between allies. One could not say yes to the British but no to the French and the Germans. To try to do so would poison America's relations with the allies getting the short end of the stick, and would also have the counter-productive effect of sustaining British illusions about their place in the world. Sooner or later, in the American view, British leaders would have to face reality and forget about playing a major role in global politics. Ideally, Britain should become part of a unified Europe, with military forces geared primarily to the defense of western Europe as a whole.