650. Message From the President to the Secretary of State1
Dear Foster: Thank you very much for your cable report that I received yesterday morning.2 I am of course delighted that our friends seemed to accept our conviction that bilateral are preferable to tripartite talks and conferences.
[Page 1297]I hope that our NATO friends will understand clearly that we have no intention of standing idly by to see the southern flank of NATO completely collapse through Communist penetration and success in the Middle East while we do nothing about it.
I am sure that they know that we regard Nasser as an evil influence. I think also we have made it abundantly clear that while we share in general the British and French opinions of Nasser, we insisted that they chose a bad time and incident on which to launch corrective measures.
Most important of all, I hope that our friends in Europe will see the necessity, as we see it, of beginning confidentially and on a staff level to develop policies and plans whereby the West can work together in making the Middle East secure from Communist penetration. I have no doubt that for some time to come we would have to be, at least in the public eye, the spearhead of any such movement. But it does seem that at long last we could get a pretty good general understanding among us as to what must be done and how we should go about doing it.
I continue to believe, as I think you do, that one of the measures that we must take is to build up an Arab rival of Nasser, and the natural choice would seem to be the man you and I have often talked about. If we could build him up as the individual to capture the imagination of the Arab World, Nasser would not last long.
A couple days ago I received a message signed by General Weygand and Marshal Juin, sent to me,3 they said, on the basis of our former association as comrades-in-arms. I think the State Department will probably cable to you certain extracts from the letter. It may not be too important, but it does show at least one kind of thinking that is prevalent in Western Europe, especially in France.
New Subject. Yesterday Prime Minister St. Laurent stopped at Augusta to visit with me. While the visit was largely social, he had some ideas about the forthcoming visit of our Asiatic friend.4 There was nothing particularly new in them, so I do not bother you here with their repetition. I shall probably see you Saturday.
[Page 1298]With very warmest regard and the hope that you are suffering no ill effects about going back to work so soon after your recent illness.
As Ever,
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 684A.86/12–1256. Secret. Transmitted to Paris in Niact Tedul 16, December 12, which is the source text. The message was drafted in Augusta, Georgia, where President Eisenhower was taking a working vacation. Goodpaster transmitted the text to the Department of State through the White House communications center with the instruction: “The President requests that Secretary Hoover look this message over, and if okay, send on to Secretary Dulles at once.” A copy of the message is in Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Dulles–Herter Series.↩
- Transmitted in Dulte 7, December 10, not printed. (Department of State, Central Files, 396.1–PA/12–1056) In his message, Dulles briefly reported that he had met with Lloyd and Pineau separately on December 10 (see Documents 643 and 644), that the meetings had been cordial, and “the strain has, I think, been ended”. He noted that nothing of great significance emerged at either meeting.↩
- A translation of the Juin–Weygand joint letter to President Eisenhower of November 30 is in Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, DeGaulle, Mollet, Gaillard exchange of corres. with Pres/Sec/2/53/ thru 1/61. The letter conveyed Juin’s and Weygand’s concern over the effectiveness and future of the Atlantic Pact. Marshal Alphonse Pierre Juin was the Commander in Chief of Allied Forces in Central Europe. General Maxime Weygand (retired) was a former Commander in Chief of the French Army and Director-General of Algeria.↩
- Reference presumably is to the official visit to Washington of Indian Prime Minister Nehru December 16–20, 1956.↩
- Tedul 16 bears these typed initials.↩