Editorial Note
Throughout 1953 various planning agencies within the Department of State continued their interest in seeking possible alternatives to EDC should the treaty fail of ratification. This interest had first arisen in the autumn of 1952. See editorial note, page 693. The RA paper of November 4 under reference in the memorandum by Jones of December 7, infra., has not been found in Department of State files, but a further draft, dated November 21, is in file 740.5/11–2153. This paper raised three possible alternatives to EDC and found fault and favor of various kinds with all three. The alternatives were: German membership in NATO as currently constituted; German membership in NATO with amendments to the North Atlantic Treaty which would incorporate a closer integration of forces approximating those found in EDC; U.S.–U.K.–German arrangements to rearm an independent Germany, which the RA paper found most attractive of all but “completely unsalable to France”. The second draft of a lengthy S/P paper entitled “Alternatives to EDC”, drafted by Fuller, November 20, 1953, is in PPS files, lot 64 D 563, “Record Copies, Sept–Nov 1953”, along with a lengthy summary drafted by Fuller on December 1 and sent to Bowie, Director of the Policy Planning Staff. The summary raised and discarded a number of alternatives, including German membership in NATO, unilateral German rearmament, modification of EDC into “a looser association of national forces in order to satisfy French opposition elements”, outright neutralization of Germany, and retreat to a peripheral defense of Europe. The paper closed with a series of [Page 860] proposed recommendations which stressed a series of interim steps that might salvage at least a part of the EDC objectives, including sounding out the French Government on German membership in NATO while making parallel efforts to realize European integration by other than military means (i.e., through economic union, the EPC, etc.), implementation of the Contractuals apart from the EDC Treaty, authorization of a German defense force, salvaging and application within the Community of Six of selected provisions of the EDC Treaty embodying self-imposed limitations on the size of defense forces, expenditures of war material and the like, and finally, implementation of the Contractuals with the further proposal that a modest German defense force be recruited “to be temporarily attached to the forces of the three powers.” The paper concluded that the above proposals about exhausted the avenues of approach available.
A lengthy commentary on the initial S/P paper of November 20, submitted by Merchant to Bowie and drafted by Hay, Morris, and Palmer on December 23 is in PPS files, lot 64 D 563, “Europe, 1952–53”, along with a memorandum prepared by Henry Owen of OIR dated November 24, 1953 entitled “Alternatives to EDC”.