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

As Kennedy saw it, the general French attitude was the key to the whole problem. Was there any way that de Gaulle could be brought back on board? The puzzle here was that in spite of all the signs of conflict, France and America did not really differ much on the most basic issues of policy. Both were happy to leave things as they were in central Europe--that is, both favored détente with Russia on the basis of the status quo--and neither really wanted to see Germany develop a nuclear capability of her own. So why were the two nations at odds? There was of course the nuclear problem, but the U.S. government opposed France in this area only because of fears about the effect of a French force on Germany. So maybe a deal was possible. If the United States helped France in the nuclear area, would de Gaulle cooperate more with America's German policy? Would he be content to work within the NATO framework? American nuclear assistance would save the French a good deal of money. Would he be willing to plow those savings back into the kind of conventional buildup people like McNamara thought was so important? Or was he so set in his anti-American ways that he would refuse even to consider an arrangement along these lines?

The British, of course, wanted Kennedy to see whether some sort of understanding could be worked out with de Gaulle. From their standpoint, it would be most unpleasant if they were forced to choose between America and "Europe." It would be much better if Macmillan could negotiate with de Gaulle with America's blessing. And the policy of trying to reach an understanding with de Gaulle had important sources of support within the American government as well. In military circles especially, the course of action laid down in the April 1961 Policy Directive was thoroughly disliked--and on essentially political grounds. Norstad, for example, thought that "Washington's arrogance was turning all Europe against us."¹³⁰⁸ And Colonel Lawrence Legere, General Taylor's right-hand man, thought it absurd that the Europeans would ever accept a policy which, "stripped of camouflage and verbiage," was based on the idea that they should be "rational enough to see" that total dependence on the United States "for the defense of their existence" was their only real option--and absurd also that mid-level officials like Henry Owen had found it so easy to get official sanction for this "arrogant policy."¹³⁰⁹ The top civilians at the Pentagon, on the other hand, tended to emphasize military considerations, especially the importance of getting the French to contribute to the conventional buildup and the key role that nuclear assistance could play in this regard.¹³¹⁰ This was the fundamental consideration for McNamara, but he was also out of sympathy with the State Department line for political reasons. In his view, an MLF subject to an American veto not only had no military value, but he could not see how it served any major political purpose either.¹³¹¹

So the Acheson policy never had universal support in the government, and Kennedy himself, with his essentially pragmatic approach to these issues, was becoming increasingly disenchanted with it. The critics, in fact, had been strong enough to mount a major attack on the policy in the spring of 1962. But the Acheson line had prevailed, at least temporarily. The policy laid out in the April 1961 policy directive was reaffirmed. That "process of reaffirmation," as Richard Neustadt says, produced a whole series of fundamental policy documents, the most important of which was McNamara's Athens speech in May. "Essentially the choices had been negative," Neustadt writes. Fundamental policy was not going to be changed, and "by action or inaction three decisions followed: not to base MRBMs in central Europe, not to aid the French, and not to back Bowie's idea of MLF in any form which might confer substance on European nuclear status--or divert funds from conventional goals."¹³¹² But even at this point Kennedy wanted to keep the door somewhat open: the U.S. government approved the sale to the French of twelve tanker aircraft which would enable the French Mirage IV planes to refuel in the air, thus giving them for the first time the ability to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.¹³¹³

By the end of the year, Kennedy was ready to abandon the April 1961 strategy in its entirety and to try to work out some kind of arrangement with France. One early sign of this was a "directive" he issued during the missile crisis to "reverse our policy on nuclear assistance to France"; his goal, he said, was to make sure that the French sided with America in the crisis.¹³¹⁴ Nothing much, however, came of this; and it was only in December that the president was able to engineer a real shift in American policy in this area.

The Skybolt affair provided the occasion for this change of course. Skybolt was an air-to-ground missile which the U.S. had been developing, and which the Eisenhower administration had promised to provide to the British if the development process was successful. That promise had been loosely tied to a British agreement to allow the United States to build a submarine base in Scotland. Now in late 1962 the American government had reached the conclusion that for technical reasons Skybolt was not worth producing. This raised the question of what, if anything, the British would be offered as a replacement. The obvious alternative was the Polaris submarine-launched missile. But the State Department objected. Skybolt, as an air-launched weapon, would only prolong the life of the British bomber-based deterrent a few more years, but Polaris would allow Britain to move into the missile age. To provide Polaris was therefore inconsistent with the existing policy of trying to "get the British out of the nuclear business." If the British were helped, then the French and eventually the Germans would also have to be helped; a German force was out of the question; therefore the British had to be made to bite the bullet. They could not be given Polaris.¹³¹⁵

And according to the standard interpretation of the Skybolt affair, the American government accepted the State Department line. McNamara was responsible for working out the issue with his British counterpart Peter Thorneycroft; he supposedly agreed not to offer Polaris, but instead decided to wait for the British to "press Polaris on him." The British defence minister "had the same notion in reverse." He could not "step out" on Polaris until the Americans offered it; he was "immobilized" by McNamara's failure to make the offer. The American and British governments thus faced each other like frightened rabbits, each unable to utter the magic word "Polaris," each hoping and waiting for the other to make the first move. The British, the argument runs, did not want to appear to be coming to the Americans hat in hand, and American representatives, bound by the State Department line, did not want to offer Polaris until every alternative had been explored. The result was that the British, frustrated by America's unwillingness to offer an acceptable substitute for Skybolt, and suspecting that the Americans were using the technical problems as a device to force the British to give up their independent deterrent, angrily brought the issue to a head when Kennedy and Macmillan met at Nassau just before Christmas. Macmillan, in an impassioned plea to Kennedy, demanded Polaris and threatened an "agonizing reappraisal" of British policy if he did not get it. And Kennedy, the argument continues, valuing America's "special relationship" with Britain, seeing a fellow politician in trouble, and not fully realizing the broader implications of what he was doing, improvised a deal--the Nassau agreement--which essentially gave the British Polaris under ultimate national control. The whole Skybolt affair was thus brought on by a series of misunderstandings, themselves in large part a product of bureaucratic politics within the two governments; the Nassau agreement was not to be interpreted as resulting from, or even as marking, a truly fundamental shift in basic American policy on the NATO nuclear issue.¹³¹⁶

This interpretation, however, does not stand up in the light of the evidence that has become available in recent years. The first problem is that from the start neither Thorneycroft nor McNamara had any trouble bringing up the idea of Polaris as an alternative to Skybolt. The two men first discussed the issue on the telephone on November 9; Thorneycroft, in that conversation, actually "used the word 'Polaris.'"¹³¹⁷ McNamara, for his part, told Thorneycroft that the United States was willing to supply Polaris "without political strings."¹³¹⁸ President Kennedy himself told the British ambassador in early December--that is, well before the crisis came to a head--that "if we all came to the conclusion" that Skybolt was no good, "then the Americans ought to provide us [the British] with whatever weapons system suited us, and he mentioned both Polaris and Minuteman."¹³¹⁹ And when McNamara came over to London to discuss the problem with Thorneycroft on December 11, he hinted broadly that the United States would be willing to sell Polaris to the British. "Would you buy POLARIS systems if we could make them available?" he asked Thorneycroft. Would the U.K. consider "the possibility of utilizing a POLARIS-type fleet that would be set up in coordination with other forces, such as U.S. forces"?¹³²⁰

And Thorneycroft wanted to pursue the Polaris proposal. The problem was not that the Americans were unwilling, but that Macmillan vetoed the idea. "The Prime Minister," one of his secretaries noted at the time, "thought the right course would be to take a very cagey line." Even though the British had been warned that the U.S. government was about to drop development of the missile, Macmillan thought as late as December 9 it would be best "to try and play Skybolt along for another year to eighteen months in order to avoid political difficulties at home. It was clearly in our interests to get on to a Polaris deterrent at some stage but we had made a number of statements about Skybolt and it would be a little easier if that continued for the time being."¹³²¹

So when McNamara came over to London and hinted broadly that the British could have Polaris, they seemed determined to reject the offer. What was odd about this was that the British took this position even after McNamara had made it clear in public that he no longer thought much of Skybolt and that the U.S. government would probably not continue to develop the weapon. The Skybolt option was thus no longer viable, and McNamara, in his meeting with Thorneycroft, now suggested an alternative arrangement: the British would get Polaris missiles; those weapons would be part of the western defense system. This corresponded quite closely to what Macmillan had often said he wanted, but when McNamara put it on the table, the British did not seem at all interested in closing the deal. Yes, Thorneycroft told McNamara, Polaris was a possibility, but only if it were built in Britain. And an arrangement linking the British force to American and perhaps other forces might be possible in the future, but only if the British freely chose to accept an arrangement of this sort. It could not be imposed as a condition; Britain's nuclear independence first had to be guaranteed.¹³²² And that very evening the British newspapers carried a distorted account of the McNamara-Thorneycroft conversation. The Secretary of Defense "was featured in them all as a man who had assaulted British interests but had been stood off by Thorneycroft in a 'tempestuous' meeting" in which the British minister had threatened a "complete reappraisal of British policy and defence commitments."¹³²³ So from the start the Skybolt affair was a little odd. As a U.S. official later noted, "the thing was whipped up into a crisis on purpose by Thorneycroft and Macmillan."¹³²⁴

And, indeed, appearances to the contrary, there was no real confrontation at Nassau. Kennedy, in fact, conceded the fundamental point at issue at the very beginning of the conference. Although he went through the standard State Department arguments, he wasted no time in making it clear that a "Polaris arrangement" would be possible. The Polaris missiles to be sold to Britain would be part of some kind of multinational force, possibly including France as well as Britain and America; the purpose of this sort of multinational packaging was to avoid upsetting "other members of the alliance." But the missiles would be under ultimate national control: "Of course, in extremes they could be taken out." These statements, it is important to note, were made well before Macmillan made his impassioned plea to Kennedy at the end of that first meeting for precisely this sort of an arrangement, and a full day before Macmillan threatened an "agonizing reappraisal" of British policy in the event agreement was not reached.¹³²⁵

It was as though a kind of charade was being acted out--for the benefit of the British public, who were being shown that a strong British prime minister, willing to lay everything on the line, was able to bring about a major change in American policy, that he was able to do battle with and defeat those who sought to get Britain "out of the nuclear business" or thought the U.K. was played out as a world power and could be treated as an American satellite; for the benefit of the Royal Air Force and its supporters who might have resented a simple, behind-the-scenes deal to substitute Polaris for Skybolt without any fuss; and for the benefit of people like George Ball, Henry Owen and the whole MLF clique in the State Department and elsewhere, who could be told that it was the intensity of British feeling and the need to save America's relationship with her only remaining friend among the major European countries that had made the change of course necessary.¹³²⁶

In reality, a basic and far-reaching shift in American policy had taken place. This, certainly, was how McNamara understood the Skybolt/Nassau episode. As he pointed out soon after returning to Washington from the Bahamas, the Skybolt affair had made it possible to "cast off the old program and to begin the new."¹³²⁷ And indeed he thought that "if 'Skybolt' hadn't happened, it should have been invented to get us set on this new track of viable policy."¹³²⁸ The line laid out in the April 1961 Policy Directive was bankrupt; he had in fact thought for some time that the MLF made no military and little political sense--and he made a point of saying so to both the British and the Germans at a time when the U.S. government was officially still pressing for that project.¹³²⁹

And Kennedy saw things much the same way. He was certainly well aware of the fact that a good deal more was at stake in the Skybolt affair than the Anglo-American "special relationship" or Macmillan's political position in Britain. It was the whole policy laid out in the Acheson report that was on the line. Given his prior involvement in these fundamental issues, especially the key role he had played in deciding the issue when that policy had been challenged in the spring of 1962, there was no way he could not have understood this. This was, in fact, how the issue had been defined in internal U.S. government discussions right before Nassau. Under Secretary of State George Ball, the highest-ranking champion of the April 1961 line, had spelled out for Kennedy what the real issue was at a White House meeting held a few days before U.S. leaders were scheduled to fly off to the Bahamas. At this December 16 meeting, when McNamara called for selling Polaris to the British as a straight substitute for Skybolt, Ball "expressed his grave concern." He pointed out that "any arrangement which appeared to give the British a national capability in this field would lead us at once to the question of what we would do to the French, and so, inexorably, to the question of the role of the Germans. A decision in favor of a national force in this range of weapons would change our entire policy and would represent a major political decision." He told the President "that this might be the biggest decision he was called upon to make." But Kennedy was dismissive: "That we get every week, George."¹³³⁰

Kennedy did not, however, want to set policy by simple presidential fiat--that is, to make it clear that he was shifting course and that dissidents in the State Department and elsewhere would either have to follow his lead or resign. He preferred to take a more indirect approach. The "true believers" in the State Department could be kept at arm's length. Important messages revealing American flexibility on all these NATO nuclear issues could be sent through military channels or CIA channels, so that State Department officers would not know what was going on until it was too late to do anything about it.¹³³¹ Kennedy might support the State Department line in Rusk's presence, and especially when Rusk's subordinates were in attendance; but he could express his real views when he was talking with the officials (like Bohlen and Harriman) who would be doing the actual negotiating.¹³³² McNamara even used the very simple technique of lying--for example, about what went on in his December 11 meeting with Thorneycroft. When the British defense minister had asked him whether the U.S. government would state publicly that it would do all it could to help Britain maintain an independent nuclear deterrent, McNamara's answer had been unambiguous: "Yes, I would." But a few days later, at the White House meeting with Ball, he gave a very misleading account of his encounter with Thorneycroft. He noted "the insistent desire of the British to obtain a categorical assurance that the United States was in favor of the independent British nuclear deterrent, and his own refusal to give such an assurance."¹³³³ He obviously had no intention of allowing Ball to see how far he had gone in London. But McNamara was not conducting policy on his own; the position he took was thoroughly in line with what the president wanted.

And Kennedy himself fully agreed that this issue had to be dealt with in this indirect way. He thus thought it was important to muddy the waters a bit, by continuing, for example, to use the term "multilateral force." Thus under the Nassau agreement, the British would get American Polaris missiles to be deployed on British submarines and armed with British warheads. This British force would be assigned to NATO and would become part of a "NATO multilateral nuclear force." Since the British force would be under national control and would be available for independent use when the British government decided that "supreme national interests" were at stake, the "multilateral" force in question was not the kind of multilateral force that the State Department had had in mind. But the use of the term was a sort of bone thrown to the MLF clique in the State Department; its continued use would also help obscure the embarrassing fact that the policy the Kennedy administration had been pursuing for almost two years was bankrupt and needed to be abandoned. And vague and somewhat confusing language would also help him deal with the problem he knew he would have with the major European allies. The Germans wanted assignment to NATO to mean as tight a commitment as possible, to play down the fact that the other major European countries would have forces ultimately under national control, and that Germany was therefore being discriminated against. The British and the French (assuming they too were brought in) would, on the other hand, want the term to be defined as loosely as possible, to underscore their nuclear independence.¹³³⁴ So a certain degree of ambiguity had to be built into the agreement. But Kennedy was quite clear in his own mind about what was going on. As he told Macmillan at Nassau, the two governments had the same objectives, but for "the next few weeks they might be saying different things. The United States had for some years been declaring their opposition to national deterrents and it was difficult to abandon this position."¹³³⁵

So although Kennedy was covering his tracks a bit, it is clear that he had decided to break with the policy adopted in April 1961. He was no longer really behind the MLF. McNamara had argued in the December 16 meeting with Ball that the MLF was bankrupt, that "our current position with respect to a multilateral force simply will not work."¹³³⁶ And after Nassau, McNamara's goal was to move to a system based on British and French national forces: he wanted to make sure that Britain obtained "a Polaris capability as quickly and economically as possible," and sought to "bring France up to parity with Britain by 1970," again, "as economically as possible."¹³³⁷ And Kennedy agreed with this basic approach. At his first meeting with Macmillan at Nassau, he laid out his basic thinking. "There was," he said, "more logic in the present arrangements"--that is, forces under ultimate national control--"than in a multilateral force."¹³³⁸ He told Macmillan that "it might be necessary to abandon the multilateral concept and for the United States and the United Kingdom to make an approach to President de Gaulle to see if France would be prepared to join with their two Governments as joint defenders of Europe"--precisely the sort of arrangement Macmillan had long sought, and which he continued to call for at Nassau.¹³³⁹

The point about France is fundamental. It again shows that Kennedy was aware of the broader implications of what he was doing--that he was trying to engineer a fundamental change in American policy, and was not just attempting to deal with a relatively narrow problem in Anglo-American relations. If the British were given Polaris, he understood that the French would be angered--unless they were given Polaris as well. He therefore raised the issue of nuclear aid to France repeatedly at Nassau, and there is no doubt that he favored the idea: "The President said that if de Gaulle were to ask whether the US was prepared to make the same offer to him as to the UK we should say 'yes.'"¹³⁴⁰

Saying "yes" to Britain meant saying "yes" to France. The standard U.S. view up to that point was that you could not do either of these things because of the effect on Germany. Kennedy was of course quite familiar with that argument, but he had his own answer, very different from the State Department view, but in line with the way the British were thinking. Up to now, he told Macmillan at Nassau, the Americans "had not supported the French in the nuclear field and the result of this policy had been to sour American relations with France. Rightly or wrongly they [the Americans] had taken this attitude because of Germany."¹³⁴¹ To change course now, to offer Polaris to Britain and maybe to France as well, would generate problems, especially with Germany. "Pressure in Germany for similar help would rise," he said. Earlier, the Americans had hoped to finesse the issue. The whole point of the MLF had been to deflect and absorb the pressure for national, and especially German, nuclear forces. But that policy had not been successful. The issue perhaps needed to be dealt with directly. "It might be possible to overcome these pressures," the president said, "and it might be necessary to face them."¹³⁴²

This was a very important remark. It meant that Kennedy was now ready in principle to draw the line after France. The three western powers would come together as "joint defenders of Europe," but Germany would not be admitted into that charmed circle. If the Federal Republic objected, the president was now willing to face that problem head on: if the Germans wanted American protection, they would have to accept a non-nuclear status, even if Britain and France had nuclear forces under their own control. In this new concept, the three western powers, Britain, France and the United States, would be acting as a bloc; faced with that unified front, Germany would have little choice but to fall into line. But if this policy was to be implemented, it was important now to rebuild bridges with de Gaulle, and the key to bringing him back on board was a far-reaching liberalization of American policy on nuclear assistance to France. The president had made his views on this point quite clear at Nassau. He had repeatedly raised the issue of what would have to be done with France. It was obvious that he thought France would have to be helped--but not unconditionally, only as part of a general understanding on basic political and military issues. This meant that the French would have to be told that the door was now open, that nuclear assistance was now possible, but that fundamental and far-reaching negotiations were now necessary.¹³⁴³