State-JCS Meetings, lot 64D563, box 728
Department of State Record of a State-Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting Held at the Pentagon, Wednesday, November 21, 1951, 10:30 a.m.1
Present
| General Collins | Mr. Matthews |
| Admiral Fechteler | Mr. Nitze |
| General Twining | Mr. Bonbright |
| General Bolte | Mr. Ferguson |
| General White | Mr. Lacy |
| Admiral Fife | Mr. Johnson |
| General Cabell | Mr. Marshall |
| Admiral Wooldridge | Mr. Tufts |
| Admiral Nalor [ Lalor ] | Mr. Lay |
| Colonel Carnes [ Carns ] |
General Ruffner
[Here follows discussion of an article in the New York Times, Korea, the Singapore talks, and Iran.]
Churchill Visit2
Mr. Matthews: We would like to take up the problem of preparing for Mr. Churchill’s visit. I thought it would be helpful for Mr. Nitze to present some of the background.
Mr. Nitze: We would like to expose our preliminary views on this matter. The first thing we ought to look at, I think, is the question of what we want to get from Mr. Churchill. Of course we will have to look at what he wants to get from us and what we can accept, what we will have to reject and what we can compromise about. The major problem in our view is the kind of relationship that we want with the British. We have in fact a special relationship with [Page 986] them. It has not worked well since Mr. Bevin became ill. It has not worked at all well with Mr. Morrison. The present government has not been organized long enough to work out the form of the relationship but I think it is working toward a closer one. The Churchill visit is a good opportunity for us to shape this relationship. Public opinion in the U.S. is more favorable to the U.K. now that Mr. Churchill has returned to office. I think we can hope for a sounder relationship with the Churchill government than we have had with Mr. Morrison. The thing we want to avoid, in our judgment, is the creation of new machinery. We have plenty of machinery now. Above all, we do not want to reconstruct the Roosevelt-Churchill relationship of the last war.
General Collins: We all agree with you on that.
Admiral Fechteler: There is no doubt that Churchill wants to use the trans-Atlantic telephone.
Mr. Nitze: We are concerned that he will want a Combined Chiefs of Staff in the economic and military fields. On the other hand we can not be negative. We will have to have our own idea of a better solution in order to head off a bad solution. We think that one thing that could be developed further is the joint political-military talks that we have been holding on such matters as the Yugoslav problem. These are not decision-making talks but consultative talks. It has occurred to us that we might build this up somewhat and hold them more often. We feel that they might be a helpful way to a concert of policies and to the building of a good relationship. Of course these talks would not be the only machinery. We have all kinds of machinery for economic affairs, for NATO affairs, and so forth. There is the relationship which Elliot has with you. …
General Collins: Hong Kong is another example of a problem on which we need to develop a joint policy.
Mr. Nitze: There seem to be two objectives which we ought to try to accomplish. In the first place, we want to assist the U.K. to strengthen its position and to gain additional prestige. There are some areas in which the British have got to take the lead. Egypt is one of these. In short we want the British to be an asset to us, not a drain on us. We want them to carry the load wherever they can and especially in those areas where we can not carry it. Secondly, we want the British to support us in areas where we are taking the lead. Korea is a case in point. By the same token we will have to be prepared to support them in some areas. I don’t think there is any one way to solve all these problems.
Mr. Matthews: There is an additional problem which we will have to consider, namely, the British economic problem.
[Page 987]Mr. Nitze: I should have mentioned that. It is a very serious and difficult problem. We have a number of people working on it. We are now considering ways and means of giving support to the British.
Mr. Matthews: We must expect that Mr. Churchill will want to talk about a Big Three or Big Four meeting. He still has the view that the meetings with Stalin during the war produced good results. He likes the face-to-face method of approach.
General Collins: Of course, I am not so sure the results were good.
Mr. Matthews: The point, though, is that Mr. Churchill believes that the results were good.
Admiral Fechteler: Where would the talks be held?
Mr. Matthews: That is a problem. The President has taken the position that he is prepared to meet Stalin in Washington any time Stalin is willing to come. Of course, Stalin will not come to Washington but if he is interested in a meeting he might come to Berlin or some other place where he had control over his communications. In our view it would be extremely dangerous to hold conversations with Stalin unless we had made most careful preparations. If Churchill finds that he cannot obtain our agreement to a Big Three or Big Four meeting, he may decide to go to Moscow alone. During the election campaign Churchill was pictured as a war-monger by the Labor Party. He is very sensitive on this point. It would help him politically in Britain if he went to Moscow in all humility. In our view, this too holds great dangers. He has a propensity to speak for the Americans as well as the British. We have had some experience of that during the war. The question that this raises is whether a U.S. representative should accompany him on such a mission.
General Collins: I think there would be even more danger of his speaking for the U.S. in that event.
Mr. Matthews: That is a point to consider. Of course, Churchill rather favors the idea of spheres of influence—he thinks that the world can be divided up in such a way that Stalin will agree to stay here and we will agree to stay there.
Mr. Nitze: I think there is a basic difference in our points of view. Mr. Churchill and the British are much more concerned than we are to obtain a simple relaxation of tensions. They think it is very important to reduce tensions somehow. I suppose this derives from the vulnerability of the U.K. in the event of war. We feel, on the other hand, that until we have built up our strength and can secure some retraction of Soviet power it is dangerous to freeze an unsatisfactory situation. In other words, our objectives are farther forward and longer run in character.
[Page 988]Mr. Matthews: Our Secretary feels that a Big Four meeting would be a mistake.
General Collins: With reference to the possibility of more frequent meetings with the British on special areas, how would we follow these meetings up with the French? The fact of the meetings is bound to become known to them. What will their reaction be? Will we just ignore their reaction or will we hold meetings with them also?
Mr. Matthews: I think we would have to have some meetings with the French. Our efforts with the French would be to underemphasize the importance of our special relationship with the British.
General Collins: In our dealings with the British we must reserve the right to talk with whomever we want to about any problems whatsoever.
Mr. Nitze: We agree. For example, we have got to talk with the Canadians. We did talk with them regularly for a while and we soon ran out of topics.3 For that reason we found that meetings with the Canadians presented no real difficulties.
Admiral Fechteler: What about atomic energy questions?
Mr. Matthews: Mr. Churchill will clearly want to take this range of questions up with us.
Mr. Nitze: I thought that we should adhere to the position which we took in our previous talks—the talks that Mr. Matthews, General Bradley, Elliot, Franks and I had.4 That position flowed from our talks with the JCS and JSSC.
Mr. Matthews: We think there is an advantage to consider this in the context of the joint policies needed in the event of war. I do not think that Mr. Churchill will be prepared to accept our position. He still thinks in terms of the war-time agreement and full cooperation we had at that time. He will want to return to that situation if he can and probably believes that had he stayed in office, that cooperation would have been maintained.
Admiral Fechteler: In his Guild Hall speech Churchill stated that the British were entitled to special consideration in this matter because of the bases problem.5 What does he mean in your opinion by special considerations? Does he want financial assistance or something else?
[Page 989]Mr. Matthews: No, I think he wants information and consultation regarding all atomic matters.
Admiral Fechteler: Surely he knows our law, and that led me to wonder whether he would have made this proposal public if what he had in mind was information and consultation.
Mr. Nitze: Of course the law has now been modified in some respects.
General Collins: We are working on this problem with State at the request of General Eisenhower. He has got to be able to talk with some of his staff people about atomic energy matters if they are going to plan intelligently. A position on this is being worked up regarding a modification of the law.
Mr. Matthews: It is clear that Churchill is going to raise these questions since he is bringing Lord Cherwell with him.
[Here follows discussion of Spain and the Singapore talks.]
- The source text bears the typewritten notation “State Draft. Not cleared with any of the participants.” The Department of State-JCS meetings, begun in January 1951, were held on a regular basis with either side bringing up topics which it wanted to discuss. Records of the meetings for 1951 are in lot 64D563, box 728.↩
- Regarding Prime Minister Churchill’s visit to the United States, see Document 452.↩
- For the records of the conversations with the Canadians during May, June, and July, see vol. i, pp. 802 ff.↩
- Presumably a reference to the meeting on September 13; see vol. i, p. 83.↩
- For an extract from Churchill’s Guildhall speech on November 9, dealing, inter alia, with the question of bases in East Anglia, see Folliot, Documents on International Affairs, 1951, pp. 136–138.↩