Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, The Near and Middle East, Volume IX, Part 1

State-JCS Meetings, lot 61 D 417

No. 93
Department of State Minutes of State-Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting¹

top secret

[Washington,] October 8, 1952.²

Present

• Mr. Matthews
• Mr. Byroade
• Mr. Nitze
• Mr. Stabler
• Mr. Stelle
• General Bradley
• General Vandenberg
• Admiral Fechteler
• General Collins
• General Lemnitzer
• Admiral Wooldridge
• General Hull
• General Lee
• Admiral Fife
• General Cabell
• Colonel Carns
• Mr. Nash

Mr. Matthews: I have been on leave for several weeks and am not familiar with the details of the aspects of the MEDO problem scheduled for discussion.

General Bradley: Should we begin by discussing the MEDO question? Perhaps Paul Nitze could lay out the situation.

Mr. Nitze: Last week we came over and talked with General Bradley. We were concerned that in a situation in which there may be some possibility of making progress with the Egyptians, we should be ready and able to move forward with MEDO if an opportunity should occur. At present the block to progress on MEDO is the French refusal to circulate their comments on the paper which the UK has produced.³ The French say that they want first to have a three-power meeting, the chief subject of which would be discussing the role of the standing group in MEDO coordination. The French want the standing group to also take on the running of MEDO. We have thought that it would not be helpful to have a three-power meeting. We do, however, need to reply to the French aide mémoire.⁴ We thought that possibly General Bradley might be able to help by discussing the question with General Ely and this might possibly soften up the French position. We also were concerned that we should do what we could to avoid the British and the French ganging up on us on this question, and we thought that possibly one thing that might influence this was to get the British to feel happier about their relationsip with us. During the Slessor talks,⁵ the British made a suggestion that there might be a more formal setup for guiding the ground strategy of the cold war. I suggested to General Bradley that it might make the British feel better and thus help to avoid a British-French joint position on the standing group question if Elliot’s staff had some special man on it who could talk with the JCS on matters other than NATO, and particularly perhaps Middle Eastern questions.

General Bradley: I haven’t talked with Ely yet and also I haven’t discussed this general question with the Chiefs. I do have one worry about talking with Ely. Ely stands very well with the French Government and also he is very useful to us. His general attitude has been cooperative and I can’t think of anybody that it would be easier for us to work with. You might say that this would be a good reason for talking with him about the question of the three-power conference but on the other hand if he should be persuaded by our views, wouldn’t there be the possibility that he might hurt his own position with the French Government if he argued for the US case.

Mr. Matthews: He wouldn’t have to agree with our views or argue our case with his government. You could just tell him what your thinking was and he could pass it along just as a matter of information.

[Here follows discussion dealing with a press conference Secretary Acheson was having that day.]

General Collins: On the MEDO question, have we had any further ideas as to how planning for MEDO can be tied in with planning for NATO?

General Bradley: Our thought all along has been that we have been opposed to setting up a standing group in peace time primarily because of its effect on the other obligations we have which are not European. We have this ANZUS thing and we have our Inter-American Alliance and we would have real difficulties if we had a peacetime standing group with the British and the French. There might be overriding political considerations which would make it necessary to have a standing group in peace time, but from the military point of view we don’t like it. However, even if we did set up a standing group for MEDO, we think it would be bad to have it composed of the UK, France, and ourselves with the exclusion of the Turks and the Arabs. They would get the idea the three powers were making all the arrangements and that they had no say on what was going to happen. Another possibility is that we might set up a small group here in Washington to discuss Middle Eastern and Far Eastern questions with the British and the French. That presents the difficulty that is a step in the direction of the combined Chiefs of Staff, which we take a very dim view of. …

Mr. Matthews: The French objective is fairly clear. They are obviously trying to work toward the establishment of a world-wide combined Chiefs of Staff on which they would have membership. And this, we agree, would not be helpful.

Mr. Stabler: The difficulty is that as of now we are stymied. Our plan was to coordinate our views with the French and the Turks and the British as to what we should discuss with the Arabs when we issue the invitation to them. The French by refusing to comment on the UK paper are making it impossible for us to present the Arabs coordinated views. We thought it would be most helpful if we could get an expression from the military point of view that a 3-power conference to discuss the relationship of the standing group with MEDO would not be useful.

General Collins: Should we tell the French that we are going to go ahead with discussions with the Arabs anyway?

Mr. Byroade: The difficulty is the French are holding out for this 3-power meeting. The first thing to do is to tell the French that there is not going to be any such meeting.

General Vandenberg: Why can’t we just tell them that we are going to make the approach to the Arabs anyway and we hope they will see fit to make such comments as they have on the UK plan before we actually make the approach, but that we are going to go ahead anyway.

General Collins: It is not clear to me how much we are in accord with the British and the Turks in what we want to say to the Arabs.

General Bradley: There are some points of difference between the UK and ourselves. …In general, however, I think we are, on practically all important points, fairly close to the British.

Mr. Stabler: The Turks, by and large, go along with our position.

Mr. Nitze: The real problem is whether we are ready to say that we will approach the Arabs without having secured French comments.

Mr. Byroade: I think there is a real question as to whether the British would go along with us in talking to the Arabs without having first secured French agreement.

Mr. Nitze: I agree that there is a real question. Basically we have two alternatives. We can have the 3-power meeting or we can propose to proceed without the French in getting MEDO started. In making the decision we should take into consideration the tactics which the USSR now seems to be employing. They seem to be preparing a major effort to isolate the US from its Allies, while at the same time they continue the kind of direct pressure on the US that may be indicated by recent offensives in Korea—the buzzing of 47’s in the corridor and the attack of B-29’s over Hokaido. We are already in difficulties with the British over Egypt and Iran and we are also in difficulties with the French over the Tunisian question in the UN. I think we have to think very carefully about how we are going to conduct ourselves in leading our coalition so that there will not be danger that the Russians will succeed in isolating us from our Allies.

General Bradley: This is why I said that there might be overriding political reasons for having a standing group in peace time.

Mr. Matthews: I don’t think that we feel that that is called for as yet.

Mr. Nitze: We do, however, have to give real thought to the question of how we can conduct ourselves so that our Allies will feel that they are really part of an alliance and not feel that they are kept on the outside in matters which concern them very directly.

Mr. Byroade: It seems to me that what we need is an expression by our military that from the military point of view there is no reason to have the 3-power meeting to discuss the role of the standing group.

General Bradley: I can tell Ely informally what my views are without asking him either to agree to them or to pass them on to his government. He obviously would report our views to his government anyway. But this leaves the question of what approach we should take towards the British. I have thought that what I might tell Elliot is that he is perfectly free to talk informally with me at any time on anything which is of concern to him or the British. And I could also tell him that he should feel perfectly free to talk with any of the Chiefs on the same basis.

General Collins: How about having Elliot’s staff talk with staff officers over here.

General Bradley: That actually was Nitze’s suggestion and an arrangement which we were trying to avoid.

Mr. Matthews: Oliver Franks⁶ says that in the political field his officers can go around and talk to people at lower levels in the State Department and find out, without any commitments on either side, what the general thinking of our people is on various questions. On the military side, however, he says there isn’t any such possibility of informal discussions at anything other than the very highest level.

General Vandenberg: It seems to me that we would get into a lot of trouble if the British start talking with subordinate officers over here. They are apt to take the views of the subordinates as being the official position of the US Government.

Mr. Nitze: Admittedly, there are some dangers just as there are when our subordinate officers talk with representatives of foreign countries. But when you are running a coalition you do have to pay attention to your Allies. It seems to me that our position of strength and our leadership of the coalition is firm enough so that in general the benefits which we would gain from discussing matters more fully and openly with our Allies would outweigh the dangers which such discussions might raise.

General Collins: I don’t really see how we can expect to get anywhere without having talks between our staffs at the staff level. We need the information as to what the British position and the British thinking is apt to be, and they need the same thing from us. I think someone on Elliot’s staff could talk usefully and informally, say, to General Eddleman for the Army and the equivalent officers in Navy and Air. I don’t think, though, that we should go below our Operations Deputies.

General Vandenberg: If that is the case, I don’t see why we might not just as well set up a regular combined Chiefs of Staff. The arguments that we have always had against that were just that we wanted to avoid the kind of staff talks which it seems to me you are really talking about.

General Collins: I would be against setting up a formal combined staff. The Russians could make such good propaganda out of that by saying that we were fully engaged in planning for war and it probably would worry our other Allies.

General Bradley: Could we leave it this way. Why don’t I say to Elliott that he is free to come and talk to me at any time, that he is free to come and talk with any one of the Chiefs at any time and that if he has a special officer on non-NATO matters, that officer would be free to talk to the operations officer of anyone of the three services.

Admiral Fechteler: I have no objection, but I don’t know what real use it would be.

Mr. Matthews: It might at least educate the British to realize that we really don’t keep things from them.

[Here follows discussion dealing with Iran.]

1. A notation on the first page reads: “Draft. Not cleared with any of participants.”
2. The meeting was held at 11 a.m. in the Pentagon.
3. The British paper under reference here is the one transmitted in telegram Secto 24, Document 79.
4. See Document 87.
5. Regarding the talks held when Air Marshal Lord Slessor was in the United States in January 1951, see Foreign Relations, 1951, vol. IV, pp. 914 ff.
6. British Ambassador in the United States.