840.00/4–749
The United Kingdom Representative on the Brussels Treaty Permanent Commission (Jebb) to the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Kennan)
personal
Dear George: At one point during our recent conversations you said that you thought it possible that you, and perhaps some other representative of the State Department, might pay a visit to England during the summer for the purpose of exchanging views on long-term political problems with the Foreign Office. You added that if this proposal should be authorised you would prefer the discussions to take place in some unpublicised spot in the country, such as Oxford.
[Page 290]I have now consulted Mr. Bevin on this matter and he asks me to say that so far as he is concerned he thinks it would be an admirable thing if you came over for the purpose indicated above. If you could not do so, then he thinks that the necessary exchange of papers might take place through our Embassy here. But he feels, on the whole, that it would be greatly preferable if you could have a meeting with myself and one or two of my colleagues somewhere in England at a not too far distant date.
We suggest that the sort of problems on which we might exchange short papers would be the following:
- 1.
- How far is any form of political unity in Western Europe a possibility in the next five years?
- 2.
- How far should the United Kingdom be associated with a united Western Europe?
- 3.
- How do we envisage the future of Germany, and what part should Germany (or Western Germany) play in a United Western Europe?
- 4.
- Does the emergence of a United Western Europe (with or without the United Kingdom) postulate the formation of a Third World Power of approximately equal strength to the United States and the Soviet Union?
- 5.
- What exactly is meant by the conception of an “Atlantic Community”? Can this Community be stretched so as to embrace to some degree at any rate, the Middle Eastern countries, India, South East Asia, and Australia?
- 6.
- What possibility exists of creating further Article 51 treaties, similar in form to the North Atlantic Treaty, in other parts of the world?
There may well be other similar questions which you, for your part, would wish to place on the agenda of any possible meeting between us, and it may also be that when I get home I shall find that my colleagues will suggest further general problems suitable for discussion.
I shall be most grateful if in any case you could send a reply to this letter to Hoyer Millar—or if it should seem preferable, arrange for the Secretary of State to send a letter to the Ambassador. Needless to say we quite realise that you may, on reflection, feel that the time is not yet ripe for a joint study of the sort of questions to which I have referred.1 But we are becoming conscious of the fact that our own long-range thinking is hardly likely to lead to any very good result unless we are aware of basic American intentions; and it may [Page 291] even be that you, for your part, are conscious of a similar feeling as regards ourselves!
Yours ever,
- Certain financial aspects of the talks envisioned in this letter were partially realized a few weeks later during informal U.S. talks with the British in London. Far more substantive discussion occurred during the French-British-U.S. preparatory and Ministerial meeting in London in late April and early May 1950.↩