147. Memorandum From the Secretary of State to the President1
SUBJECT
- European integration and Atomic Energy
At the NSC meeting on November 21, you spoke of the great importance that should be attached to European integration. I have been giving consideration to specific measures in our power which might encourage such European development.
I believe that only the Community of Six offers promise of opening the way to a genuine United States of Europe. There are various other institutions, different in their scope of activity, their aims, and the degree of our involvement, which contribute to European cooperation but not to supranationality. NATO and the OEEC are made up of members drawn from the entire Atlantic Community and their objective is closer cooperation. WEU provides a cooperative framework for constructive association of the United Kingdom with France, Germany, the Benelux, and Italy.
The Coal and Steel Community, however, is a proven and successful institution in European political and economic life. The six member governments are now recovering from the EDC setback and beginning, anew, to explore possibilities for expanding as a Community into new fields, with great promise that they will succeed in the field of peaceful uses of atomic energy. Even in this field, however, there is influential opposition and the Community’s efforts may fail without concrete United States support.
If the six countries set up an integrated institution possessing effective central and inspection authority in the field of peaceful uses of atomic energy, control over military uses of atomic energy by these six countries would be simplified, and there would be set a precedent for similar regional arrangements elsewhere.
Success would bring the incalculable political and psychological advantage of tying Germany more firmly into a Western European community. It would confer upon the Community great technical and economic advantages.
Under these circumstances, I believe that we should prepare to take active measures to stimulate the six to come to a conclusion which offers real promise for consolidating and enlarging their integration. For us to seize this opportunity will require placing ourselves [Page 389] in a position to make a maximum contribution which may be required for creation of an integrated Community of Six program in the field of atomic energy. I believe we should act without delay to place ourselves in such position.
As you know, pursuant to NSC policy, we are now engaged in the early phases of bilateral negotiations with some of the six countries looking towards industrial nuclear power cooperation. Any resulting agreements should reflect in some way the possibility of U.S. approval of assignment of the bilateral agreements to the multilateral Community.
If you concur in the above conclusions, I suggest that you direct AEC and the Department of State to study on an urgent basis moves which the United States could make in the atomic energy field to encourage six-country integration, and in the meantime to take steps to assure that any bilateral negotiations with these six countries looking to cooperation in the nuclear power field will not take such form as to embarrass the larger objectives we have in mind.2
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 840.1901/1–956. Secret. Drafted by Barnett and Smith; concurred in by Hoover and Merchant. On January 6, Dulles, Hoover, Merchant, and Smith met to discuss this proposed letter to the President. A memorandum of that conversation, drafted by Smith, is ibid., 840.1901/1–656.↩
In a memorandum to Dulles of January 11, Eisenhower replied as follows:
“I am very much in accord with your proposals on European integration and atomic energy outlined in your memorandum of January 9th, and approve the recommendations for joint action by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of State in the last paragraph of the memorandum.” (Ibid., 840.1901/1–1156)
On January 12, Eisenhower sent a nearly identical memorandum to Strauss, and also enclosed for his information a copy of Dulles’ memorandum. (Eisenhower Library, Staff Secretary Records)
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