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

So the U.S. government gradually moved away from the earlier policy of helping the British develop a force under national control. The 1957 Anglo-American IRBM agreement, for example, had said nothing about NATO control. But by early 1960 NATO strings were being attached. The American government started to link the question of missiles for Britain--the Skybolt air-launched and the Polaris submarine-launched missiles--to the NATO MRBM question.⁷⁶¹ On March 29, 1960, Eisenhower and Macmillan reached an agreement. If Skybolt turned out to be worth producing, the British could buy those missiles. But Britain would in any event be able to "acquire in addition or substitution a mobile MRBM system"--meaning Polaris--"in the light of such decisions as may be reached in the discussions under way in NATO." Macmillan was satisfied with the arrangement he had reached with the president. As he told his defense minister, he was confident that "we shall get what we need."⁷⁶² The new U.S. Secretary of State, Christian Herter, in fact had just told the British that after America had gone through with the charade of the Gates two-option plan for NATO MRBMs, "the way would be clear for bilateral arrangements" to provide the British with the missiles directly; Polaris was mentioned in this context as the preferred weapon. This implied that the British MRBMs--Skybolt or Polaris or the two together--would not be under tight NATO control.⁷⁶³

By June, however, the U.S. government was placing somewhat greater emphasis on giving the British MRBMs a "NATO flavor." The Americans were claiming, without much evidence, that the British had committed themselves to support "some kind of European MRBM scheme"; the U.K. contribution would be two Polaris submarines (with sixteen missiles each) which the Americans would sell them. This was still no problem for Macmillan: as long as the weapons would be "under the sole ultimate control of the United Kingdom Government," there was no reason why they should not be regarded as the British contribution to the NATO MRBM project.⁷⁶⁴

By the end of the year, the Americans--now meaning mainly the State Department--had gone a bit further. They were by this point placing even greater emphasis on NATO control over the MRBMs. The Skybolt program, it seemed in December, might not work out, and the British wondered whether they could get Polaris as a straight replacement--that is, as weapons under full national control. Secretary Gates told them that "he doubted whether supplying the U.K. with Polaris submarines for use outside a NATO force would be consistent with current State Department objectives as he understood them." But he still left the door open a bit: "If, however, discussion of the U.S. offer in Paris broke down"--meaning the December 1960 proposal for a multilateral force--"the U.S. might then be readier to contemplate bilateral arrangements, though such arrangements might not be confined to the United Kingdom."⁷⁶⁵

The British did not like the drift of U.S. policy on this issue, and especially the way the American were backing out of their commitments. But in a sense they had no real basis for complaint, since the new American policy was in line with fundamental British thinking. The British had from the start been against the idea of western Europe standing on its own, and thus against the idea of an independent European nuclear force. They had therefore disliked Eisenhower's December 1957 pledge to support European production of IRBMs, and when the issue of a joint Anglo-Franco-German program to develop and produce an IRBM (with American technical and financial help) came up in 1959 and 1960, they were determined to "kill this project"--but not openly, since they did not want to harm their relations with the French and the Germans.⁷⁶⁶ And as for the more general idea of a NATO nuclear force, the British, as their defense minister noted in April 1962, "always believed this to be nonsense."⁷⁶⁷

But they were not going to push their opposition to the point where the Americans became really irritated with them. The British government very much wanted to remain America's closest ally. Another note to Macmillan from his defense minister, Harold Watkinson, captures this attitude quite nicely. "Whatever price we have to pay," he said, "to be regarded by the Americans as being closest to them in defence matters and to whom they will talk frankly and freely as I believe they talk to none of their other allies, is well worth paying." It was therefore important that the British participate, "even if in a very small way, in all their major projects," because this was the only way they could make sure that their views would continue to carry some weight with the U.S. government and that they would thus be able to exercise "a restraining influence" on American policy. The "peace of the world," he added, might well depend on Britain continuing to play this privileged role as America's closest ally.⁷⁶⁸ So no matter how absurd they felt the NATO MRBM scheme to be, they were not about to oppose the United States directly on this issue. They would "play it long"--i.e., drag their feet--hoping that the project would sooner or later just fade away.⁷⁶⁹

There was one overriding reason why the British were so deeply opposed to these projects: they, far more than any other major western power in the late 1950s, were worried about Germany getting her finger on the nuclear trigger. This was the great taproot of British thinking on the whole complex of issues relating to NATO and nuclear weapons. They understood that the Germans sooner or later wanted to throw off the constraints that had been worked out in 1954.⁷⁷⁰ The Germans, they assumed, were interested in ultimately developing a nuclear force under their own effective control. The German defense minister, Franz-Josef Strauss, had begun in late 1958 to press for IRBMs to be deployed in Germany, and this, the British felt, would be a major step toward Germany acquiring an "independent deterrent."⁷⁷¹ The British were very much opposed to any movement in this direction. This was the main reason why they were so hostile in particular to the idea of European production of IRBMs. The 1954 constraints, they thought, could not survive German participation in such a project.⁷⁷²

The British government was therefore relieved when in late 1960 the Americans backed off from the idea of manufacturing the missiles in Europe. The allies would no longer be forced to choose between two distasteful alternatives: easing the 1954 constraints or discriminating overtly against the Federal Republic. Deploying the missiles at sea would further reduce the risk of their falling under national (i.e., German) control, so that aspect of the new American thinking was also welcome. But the risk had not disappeared completely. Land-based weapons might still be deployed in the future, especially after a missile smaller and more mobile than the land-based variant of Polaris was developed. Norstad did not intend to deploy those missiles in Germany, but there was no telling what his successor might do. And even with a seaborne deterrent, there was the "danger that the Germans may contribute a German manned ship" to that force. Any scheme that seemed to give the Germans effective control over nuclear weapons "would arouse serious disquiet in the U.K. and, to a lesser extent, abroad." But the British had to tread carefully: "Open discrimination against the Federal Republic would, however, be contrary to our policies."⁷⁷³

More generally, the British sought to keep German power limited. They were quite comfortable with the status quo in central Europe--a divided Germany, a West German state dependent on the western powers for protection, a state locked into the NATO system, incapable of independent military action. "The division of Germany," Bevin had declared in early 1949, "at all events for the present, is essential to our plans." In July 1961, Lord Home, the British foreign secretary at that point, took exactly the same line: "Nor, in fact, do we really want German reunification, at least for the time being, though we cannot abandon the principle of self-determination for the Germans." Macmillan felt the same way. In June 1958, de Gaulle asked him point blank how he felt about German reunification, whether he was in favor of it in reality or simply in theory. "In theory," he replied. "We must always support reunification in theory. There is no danger in that."⁷⁷⁴

A powerful Germany was seen as a threat to stability, and one of the reasons the British were so attached to the NATO system was that it kept the Germans in line. As Macmillan explained to the French ambassador in early 1959: "France and England had suffered a great deal in the past from the Germans cutting loose, and his own feeling was that one of the great advantages of NATO and other European institutions was that they mixed the Germans up very thoroughly with the West and made it difficult for them to escape."⁷⁷⁵

At the same time, however, the British were pushing for policies that would reduce the western military presence on German soil--for a reduction in British force levels there, for a revision of NATO strategy that would rationalize those cutbacks, and for negotiations with the USSR that would provide for at least a degree of military disengagement from central Europe. Britain was in fact by now the only major western power to support the general idea of "disengagement." A March 1958 British plan, for example, called for a "zone along the present demarcation line in Germany from which nuclear weapons would be barred and from which non-German troops would be withdrawn." That zone would evidently include both parts of Germany, and Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well, and the scheme would take effect even if Germany remained divided. But didn't these ideas cut against the basic thrust of British thinking about how NATO prevented Germany from "cutting loose"? As the State Department pointed out in its comments on the British proposal, disengagement would be destabilizing, in large part precisely because the presence of U.S. and British troops acted "as a restraint on the possibility of any independent German action."⁷⁷⁶

And how could the British expect Germany to remain non-nuclear when they themselves were so determined to hold onto their own independent deterrent? The Americans--or at least some State Department officials--were coming to the conclusion that to keep nuclear weapons out of German hands, they would now have to try to get the other allies, including Britain, "out of the nuclear business": the United Kingdom should merge her nuclear force into a broader NATO or European force over which no single country could exercise effective control. And in fact there were some influential people in England--in particular, a group around Sir Norman Brook, the Cabinet Secretary--who saw the logic in this position and began to argue along precisely these lines.⁷⁷⁷ But not Macmillan: he was determined to keep the British force under the "sole ultimate control of the United Kingdom government."

From the American point of view, these different elements in British thinking just did not add up to a consistent policy. What Macmillan was doing did not make sense in terms of Britain's most fundamental foreign policy goals. He instead was pandering to the domestic political pressure for "peace" through disengagement, and was clinging for prestige reasons to a role in the world which British power was no longer sufficient to sustain. And indeed it was a common (and not unwarranted) assumption in the West that British policy on every important issue was to be understood to a quite extraordinary degree in terms of domestic political concerns.⁷⁷⁸ Dulles especially had soured on the British during his last few months in office in early 1959.⁷⁷⁹ But these American views had little impact on British policy. The United Kingdom was not going to alter the heart of her defense policy: Britain was determined to hold onto a nuclear force under national control.

The French were far more outspoken in their opposition to the new American policy. Even before de Gaulle came to power, the French government had decided not to settle for half a loaf, and had come to the conclusion that France needed a nuclear force under national control. In early 1957 the French had been great champions of the stockpile idea: it was the French delegation that had taken the lead and proposed an arrangement of this sort at the Bonn NATO Council meeting in May of that year. And French officials were initially delighted that the Americans were so receptive to the proposal. But when a few months later the U.S. government came up with a plan that corresponded quite closely to what the French had initially suggested, they began to complain that the U.S. plan did not go far enough toward giving the Europeans full control over the weapons.⁷⁸⁰

Under de Gaulle this basic attitude became still more pronounced. For the new French leader, the nuclear issue was of absolutely fundamental importance, and the question of control was the nub of the problem. He did not insist from the start on developing a totally independent nuclear infrastructure. He was perfectly willing in 1958 to build a national nuclear capability with weapons provided by the United States. That capability did not have to be too large to serve French political purposes; the balance of France's nuclear force could be under joint French and American control.⁷⁸¹ (This was the British model.) But the key point was that France had to acquire a certain nuclear capability under purely national control. And that control had to be overt and explicit. Anything less simply would not do.

So de Gaulle rejected the early American overtures, which were based on the idea that American control would be nominal and that in reality the weapons would be available in an emergency. For the French leader, any system in which the Americans retained formal control was just not good enough. If the weapons could be used only if America or SACEUR gave the green light, he said, "this proposition had little interest" for France.⁷⁸² The Americans brought up the problem of the Atomic Energy Act, but for de Gaulle this was just a convenient excuse: he took it for granted that what was behind American policy was what he saw as a very natural desire to hold onto something close to a nuclear monopoly in the West.⁷⁸³ And the French president was in the final analysis prepared to take this American policy philosophically. It was as though a law of nature was at work: this was the way a great power more or less had to behave.⁷⁸⁴ Indeed, he himself would behave the same way if he were the one who had an effective nuclear monopoly.⁷⁸⁵ But if U.S.-European tensions were rooted in hard, unalterable political realities, there was little point to trying to deal with them through negotiation and compromise. Fundamental problems could not be swept under the rug. The simple fact was that the European countries, and France above all, were no longer going to remain American protectorates, without a distinct political personality of their own. France was going to develop a nuclear force under her own control, and by her own efforts, since the United States did not trust her enough to turn American nuclear weapons over to her directly.⁷⁸⁶ And since NATO was an instrument of American domination, France was no longer interested in cooperating within the NATO framework. In the NATO system, the "whole show was being run by the U.S."⁷⁸⁷ This was intolerable; fundamental changes were absolutely necessary; and non-cooperation on such matters as air defense and NATO nuclear stockpiles in France was a way of driving home the fact that France insisted on radical change in the structure of the alliance.⁷⁸⁸

From the American point of view, de Gaulle was becoming "increasingly troublesome."⁷⁸⁹ He had a "Messiah complex," Eisenhower said. He saw himself as a "cross between Napoleon and Joan of Arc."⁷⁹⁰ The French president thought in old-fashioned nationalistic terms, and his point of view, if carried to its logical conclusion, would wreck the alliance.⁷⁹¹ Modern military realities, if nothing else, made that kind of attitude obsolete. The premium they placed on rapid action meant that only a high degree of integration--above all, in the area of air defense--would be militarily efficient.⁷⁹²

An even more basic problem, in Eisenhower's view, was that de Gaulle had "no idea of what the U.S. is really trying to do."⁷⁹³ So he decided to give the French leader a little history lesson. The United States, he pointed out to de Gaulle, had never sought to "push itself into a place of prominence." It was the Europeans, he told his subordinates, who had "insisted there be an American command." It was their inability "to get together" that had led to an American SACEUR. De Gaulle seemed to resent America's "overpowering influence in NATO," but this situation, he noted, was "not a product of our own choice." Eisenhower certainly knew what he was talking about. The Europeans, and especially the French, had from the outset pressed for a major American military presence in Europe, for an American SACEUR and for a highly integrated defense system. America had cooperated, but from the start had no wish to play this kind of role on a permanent basis. Eisenhower wanted to tell de Gaulle quite bluntly that the United States did "not want command in Europe," and would be delighted to pull her troops out and see the Europeans take over responsibility for their own defense. What was grating was that after all these years of acting "in a spirit of allied helpfulness," America should now find herself dealing with Europeans who resented the system that had come into being in large part as a way of meeting their concerns, and refused now to act the way real allies were supposed to.⁷⁹⁴

It was clear what de Gaulle objected to, but not at all clear how he proposed to change things. The NATO system and the American presence had served the great political purpose of controlling German power. Had this fundamental objective, so central to French policy during the Fourth Republic, now been totally abandoned?⁷⁹⁵ Did de Gaulle really want to demolish the limits on German power embodied in the NATO system? On the one hand he made it clear to American and British leaders that the prospect of a resurgence of German power was a fundamental French concern, that he was (like the British) in no rush to see Germany reunified, and that he was against Germany acquiring a nuclear capability.⁷⁹⁶ On the other hand, the central thrust of his policy, and the rhetoric which surrounded it, was a standing goad to the Germans to reach for full independence and to go nuclear themselves. If France could not rely so heavily on America, why should Germany have to? If a France without nuclear weapons was nothing more than a satellite, why should Germany remain an American nuclear protectorate?

The result was that it was hard for Eisenhower to "understand exactly" what de Gaulle was "getting at" when the French leader complained about NATO. De Gaulle's theories were "so hazy," he said, that he had "never been able to respond adequately."⁷⁹⁷ France took a nationalistic line and rejected the concept of a strong NATO defense system. But de Gaulle had also called for a tripartite directorate: France, Britain and America would together work out policy for the West as a whole. Military plans would also be developed and implemented on a tripartite basis. This proposal, "with all the implications of the veto and of imposition of decisions on others which this suggestion holds," did not seem compatible with the basic nationalistic thrust of French policy.⁷⁹⁸ If the fundamental concern was that with American cities increasingly at risk, nuclear deterrence was becoming hollow, then presumably the last thing the French would have wanted was an arrangement designed to hold the Americans back. A system where each power had a veto would enable not just the French but the British as well to keep the Americans from using their nuclear forces; and in such a system the United States and even Britain would also in theory be able to prevent France from using whatever nuclear weapons she was able to build. Could de Gaulle really have had such an arrangement in mind? At first even Couve de Murville, now the French foreign minister, and Alphand, the French ambassador in Washington, took it for granted that this was not what de Gaulle intended.⁷⁹⁹ But it soon became clear that this was precisely what the French president was demanding.⁸⁰⁰ And de Gaulle was in fact making demands. Either the alliance would change in accordance with his proposals, he said, or France would withdraw from NATO.⁸⁰¹

What was de Gaulle trying to do? Was he deliberately picking a fight with America? On the nuclear question, Dulles was as forthcoming as any U.S. Secretary of State could possibly have been. The American aim, he had told de Gaulle in July 1958, was to create a system where the use of nuclear weapons would not depend on an American decision. Things would be set up in such a way, he said, that the Europeans could have "complete confidence" that the weapons would be used in accordance with NATO plans.⁸⁰² But the French leader showed no interest in pursuing the idea--a reaction so bizarre that even his ambassador in Washington thought that de Gaulle had not understood what Dulles was proposing.⁸⁰³ And the French leader later showed little interest in Eisenhower's idea of a European--and in fact a French--SACEUR in control of a strong NATO nuclear force. What exactly did de Gaulle want? On the one hand, he argued in September 1958 that it was vital that the three western powers cooperate in the formulation of military plans. But on the other hand, he was unwilling to proceed actively with joint planning for the use of force when the Soviets threatened in November 1958 to "liquidate" western rights in Berlin--the area where the right of the three powers to act as a bloc was most firmly established.⁸⁰⁴ If the fear was that the United States would not react quickly enough if war broke out in Europe, why was de Gaulle against the air defense measures that the rest of the alliance was ready to accept? This was a system that reflected American seriousness about nuclear warfighting and American willingness to take action very quickly.⁸⁰⁵ Why then was de Gaulle out to undermine those arrangements? And more generally, if de Gaulle was worried that the United States would eventually abandon Europe, why was he attacking the whole NATO framework, which the Americans viewed as the basis for their involvement on the continent? If he was so worried about a possible American withdrawal, why was he pursuing a policy that alienated the United States--gratuitously, in the American view--and thus made it more likely that America would in fact pull out? De Gaulle, it seemed--even to former high-ranking French officials looking back at the period--was more interested in posturing than in dealing with real problems.⁸⁰⁶ And in America the idea was beginning to take hold that the French president was insatiable, that it was pointless trying to "appease" him, that he was simply a problem that the other western countries would have to find some way around.⁸⁰⁷

But in spite of all this, Eisenhower personally always felt a certain sympathy for de Gaulle, and American policy toward France during his presidency was never marked by the kind of antagonism that took hold, especially in the State Department, during the Kennedy period. For at the most basic level, Eisenhower and de Gaulle wanted the same thing. They both wanted the Europeans to stand on their own, to move away from a situation characterized by excessive dependence on the United States. It was a source of intense frustration to the American president that de Gaulle was simply incapable of grasping this central fact--of seeing what Eisenhower really wanted, and understanding the various factors that kept him from moving quickly toward that goal.⁸⁰⁸