862B.49/8–1853
No. 746
Memorandum by the Special Assistant
to the President (Jackson) to the Under Secretary of State
(Smith)
Many thanks for having asked W.K. Scott to send me the letter from Ambassador Conant.1 It is returned herewith as requested, so that you will have it for Foster’s return.
I was much relieved to read it because of press stories over the weekend reporting British and French displeasure over the German food program, and I was very much afraid that we might be overinfluenced thereby.
On a very small scale, this is a perfect illustration of our basic dilemma.
On the one hand, we are eager and quite sincere about sharing as much as possible with our allies, and not moving unilaterally. It is certainly no exaggeration to say that with particular regard to the British we are infinitely more sincere in this respect than they are. They don’t even give us an “oops, sorry” when they choose to move unilaterally without consultation.
At the same time, very little is going to be done in order to produce our kind of world if every single U.S. move has got to be watered down to the lowest common denominator of French timidity and British reluctance to have American international leadership displayed outside the limits of the District of Columbia.
You know perfectly well that had the food program been thrown into the tripartite hopper for unanimous approval before implementation, it would still not be in operation. You also know that if Adenauer wins a resounding victory with quite a number of German Socialists shifting over to the Adenauer foreign policy, it will have been due in large part to the food program, which in turn made the Communist regime make brutal asses of themselves, which in turn upset the Kremlin plans for upsetting the German elections.
As a footnote to this thinking, I wonder if, months ago, had we decided that further yakking with Downing Street on Iran would get us nowhere, and have very politely told the British that we intended to take our own measures, whether we would be in the terrible position we are in today in that country, and in that whole area.
[Page 1643]It is an irony of history and a triumph of British international public relations that they have the reputation for politeness and we have the reputation for doing silly things off the top of the head, when as a matter of fact we are internationally polite to the point of dangerous timidity, whereas they are constantly barging around doing silly things in the imperial sunset.
I still love them dearly, but I don’t see why we have to ask their gracious permission every time we want to blow our nose.
- Reference is to the letter from Conant to Secretary Dulles, Document 743.↩