166. Memorandum of Conversation0
UNITED STATES DELEGATION TO THE MINISTERIAL MEETING OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC COUNCIL
Paris, France, December 16–18, 1958
PARTICIPANTS
- Secretary
- Mr. Reinhardt
- Mr. Merchant
- Amb. Burgess
- Mr. Timmons
- Mr. Smith
- Mr. Greene
- Secretary McElroy
- General Twining
- Mr. Irwin
- General Norstad
- Mr. Haskell
- General Guthrie
- Admiral Boone
- Mr. Scribner
SUBJECT
- MC 70
Mr. Irwin read the draft of Secretary McElroy’s presentation to the Ministerial Council,1 which Secretary McElroy had not previously seen. He found it rather too anodyne and said he was unwilling to give our allies any blank check on what we will do in the military field. He strongly felt the occasion calls for tough talk designed to jack up the European countries’ defense effort, including the threat that if they do not do better on their part, we will take another look at our own defense effort. Later in the discussion he withdrew the suggestion for threat.
General Norstad and Ambassador Burgess agreed on the necessity for stimulating the European NATO countries but felt it better done privately and bilaterally than in the Ministerial Council. General Norstad warmly defended the concept and content of MC 70.
Mr. Irwin noted that the Executive Branch compromised figures on the U.S. defense budget for FY 1960 will enable us to hold the present line for that year but not in the next two years and after. He cannot, therefore, afford to give a “business as usual” impression.
Secretary Dulles said that the President wants, to the extent it can be done without disrupting the alliance at this time of the Berlin crisis, to [Page 377] make plain that we feel we have been carrying more than our fair share of the defense effort and that our allies in Europe should increase their efforts. One difficulty in stimulating our allies is that in a year or two we may find ourselves unable, for fiscal and budgetary reasons, to meet our share of the goals of MC 70. He thought we should not be too eulogistic of MC 70 and should not keep citing it as the minimum necessary defense effort. For the present we should confine our presentation to the question of the annual review and indicate that we will meet the goals assigned us by MC 70 for calendar year 1959.2
General Norstad thought that in doing so we could refer to the obvious limitations of decreasing availabilities of funds and note that the United States Congress will not be disposed to keep appropriations at a high level unless it has the impression that our allies are doing their fair part.
- Source: Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 64 D 560, CF 1169. Top Secret. Drafted by Greene. The meeting was held at the U.S. Embassy Residence.↩
- McElroy’s draft statement has not been found. Regarding the statement as delivered on December 17, see Document 172 and footnote 2 thereto.↩
- In a memorandum of conversation between Dulles and Norstad on December 15 on the U.S. defense posture (USDel/MC/10), the Secretary “described in some detail the tightening in the United States fiscal and budgetary position, as this bears on our own ability to maintain a large and expensive military establishment and on MC 70.” (Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 64 D 560, CF 1169)↩