297. Memorandum of Discussion at the 299th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, October 4, 1956, 9 a.m.1
[Here follow a paragraph listing the participants at the meeting and agenda items 1 and 2.]
3. Significant World Developments Affecting U.S. Security
[Here follows discussion of unrelated subjects.]
At the conclusion of General Cabell’s intelligence briefing Secretary Dulles said he wished to revert for a moment to the French situation. He said that the relations of the United States with France had lately become strained to a degree not paralleled for a very long time past. The French had apparently been eager to resort to the use of force in the Suez area on the ground that this course of action was vital to them in their own war in North Africa. They believed that they had had lined up the British behind this point of view but that we had pulled the British back. The tendency ever since in [Page 633] France had been to blame the United States for not going along with French policy and with the French assumption that since France and the United States were allies in NATO, they must therefore be allies everywhere else in the world. Secretary Dulles remarked that even if we had accepted this French assumption, it would have been very difficult to provide appropriate support to the French because we really did not know what their plans were except that these plans involved the ultimate recourse to force in the Suez area if other means of settling the difficulty were unavailing. For example, said Secretary Dulles, he was not even privy to the British-French decision to take their case to the United Nations Security Council until after that decision had been made. We still did not really know whether this move to bring the case to the UN was designed to find a solution through negotiation, as the British insist, or whether taking the case to the UN was merely a cover for the ultimate use of force which seems to be the French position. Thus even the British and French did not seem to have coordinated their views as to the real purpose of the UN move. Never before in recent years, said Secretary Dulles, had we faced a situation where we had no clear idea of the intentions of our British and French allies. The repercussions of this situation with respect to public opinion in Britain and France were not good from the United States’ point of view. These two governments tend to use the U.S. as a scapegoat for the popular disapproval of British and French policy.
Secretary Dulles indicated that he would be talking with the Foreign Ministers of France and Great Britain tomorrow morning in New York before the British-French case came up for action in the Security Council in the afternoon. He repeated that the situation was difficult for us because we were so much in the dark. He hoped to straighten matters out tomorrow morning but was doubtful of his success since neither Pineau nor Selwyn Lloyd could be regarded as strong men who spoke clearly for their governments. In any event all these things should of course have been ironed out before the British-French case was ever taken to the UN Security Council.
The President commented that he had recently read in the newspapers reports indicating that the Egyptians were in a mood for negotiation. Secretary Dulles replied that he believed that the Suez case could be negotiated if the British and French really wanted to follow such a course of action. The President concluded the discussion by stating with great emphasis that the United States would be dead wrong to join in any resort to force. We should instead hold out for honest negotiations with the Egyptians. Secretary Dulles expressed his agreement with the President’s point.
[Page 634][Here follow discussion of unrelated subjects and the remaining agenda items.]
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, NSC Records. Top Secret. Prepared by Gleason on October 4. The time of the meeting is from the record of the President’s Daily Appointments. (Ibid.)↩