7. Letter From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Jandrey) to the Minister in the United Kingdom (Barbour)0
Dear Wally: In view of the fact that Euratom has now come into effect, it may be useful to you and others in the Embassy if I outline informally the position we are taking in the Department with respect to Euratom, the OEEC, and bilateral agreements, particularly with regard to the Six countries.
As you know, the President and the Secretary have both reiterated in the past this Government’s sympathy and support for European integration in general and specifically with reference to these two new institutions. Our somewhat restrained public position has been based on a conviction that open support or U.S. involvement in the negotiations which led to the drafting of the Treaty or interference in the ratification process would be distinctly contraproductive.
We are now at a point, however, where it may be possible to work more directly and openly with the new Community. We see many unique advantages to an intimate association of the U.S. with Euratom: given the political flux on the continent, the disparity in political stability and economic strength between France and Germany and other factors about which you are all too familiar, strong institutional ties of the sort implicit in Euratom and the Common Market appear to us to be of infinitely greater importance today than in past years. In the critical and sensitive atomic energy field anything that could be done which puts that development within a regional as opposed to a national context is clearly of greater importance to the achievement of our broad objectives. In purely practical terms we feel that the Six nations cannot individually exploit successfully atomic energy to the extent that it can contribute significantly to the energy problems confronting Europe—a problem almost identical to that of the U.K. [6 lines of source text not declassified]
If Euratom is to realize its true potential with respect to European integration in general and the pooling of national atomic energy efforts in particular, it will be necessary for it to demonstrate conclusively and soon that it is an entity capable of deciding and carrying through a program of major importance in the nuclear energy field. The report of the [Page 12] Three Wise Men1 is obviously the background against which a decision of this sort needs to be taken, and Armand’s idea at the present time is that of securing a Commission decision to undertake a major power demonstration program. If this decision is in fact taken, and if we are so requested, we envisage a close association of the U.S. with this program. The manner and details of such association are of course not worked out at present, but we have been giving a great deal of thought to this matter here, and I feel sure that the U.S. will be able to move without delay to meet whatever Euratom decision may be made.
In light of the foregoing our broad tactical approach is to lend every possible support to the efforts of the new Commission, but to do this in such a fashion as not to create the appearance of leading the Community or dictating to it. This means that in any choice between action bilaterally in the atomic energy field with the Six in contrast to dealing with the countries through Euratom we shall elect the latter course. This is going to be difficult because the atomic energy officials of the countries concerned understandably prefer the bilateral system and our efforts to work with and through the Commission are undoubtedly going to be a source of some friction. In due time and in keeping with the provisions of the Treaty we anticipate negotiations with the Six nations with the objective of transferring the rights and responsibilities of the existing bilaterals to the new Community. In line with our past confidential commitments to the countries concerned we anticipate an overall agreement with the Community of broader scope and perhaps with more liberal terms than is the case under existing bilateral agreements for cooperation.
As far as the OEEC nuclear energy program is concerned it would not appear that with Euratom in existence the relationship between the Six and the other members of the OEEC would be eased. In its simplest terms we have felt that the best relationship was one whereby the Six, in effect as a single atomic energy entity, would cooperate with the other members of the OEEC through the OEEC nuclear energy agency. It seems likely that the OEEC atomic energy activities may in the future turn more in the direction of those things that the OEEC can do best and concentrate to a lesser extent than has been the case in the past on such things as physical facilities which have tended to exacerbate the Six. We have not in the past felt it necessary to establish any preference as far as the Euratom and the OEEC were concerned, arguing that they were theoretically complementary; but, were we nonetheless forced to make a choice, it seems clear that our national interests would be best served by a strong Euratom.
[Page 13]One final point ought to be mentioned, and that is the matter of security control. The Department has not brought this issue to a head with the AEC, which in essence is whether we are to have an arrangement with Euratom similar to the agreements now in effect with Canada and the UK under which we accept their guarantees regarding the uses to which atomic energy materials are put, as opposed to the provisions under existing bilaterals whereby the U.S. obtains rights to inspect and verify these guarantees. In this situation the basic motivations of the Six in developing the Euratom concept are highly relevant, namely their fundamental interest in creating an atomic energy complex comparable to that of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Euratom countries have left little doubt about their desires for arrangements similar to those in effect between the U.S. and the U.K. We shall shortly have to face the problem within this Government as to whether we should insist on retention of rights as set forth in Article XII of the Agency Statute2 and in the existing bilateral agreements, or whether a more liberal arrangement is not only inevitable but desirable. Meanwhile, of course, this is a subject which should not be discussed with the British.
Obviously the foregoing is for your background information and that of other officers in the Embassy working on these problems. We would not expect that the British could be persuaded to come around to our positions on these matters and we certainly would not envisage any effort on your part to persuade them. I hope the preceding analysis will be useful, however, in giving enough of our thinking on these interrelated subjects so that in discussions with the British the Embassy can reflect the Department’s point of view.3
With all best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
- Source: Department of State, EUR/RPE Files: Lot 70 D 315, UK. Confidential; Official-Informal. Drafted by Schaetzel and cleared with Cleveland and Timmons and with Farley in draft.↩
- See footnote 3, Document 1.↩
- For text of the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, signed at the United Nations on October 26, 1956, and ratified by President Eisenhower on July 29, 1957, see 8 UST 1093. Article XII dealt with the question of safeguards.↩
- In his reply of March 18, Barbour raised several questions about the points which Jandrey had made and noted that the views expressed by Jandrey “will be particularly useful to the Embassy in discussing these matters with the British, although I doubt very much that our comments will materially affect the essentially pragmatic British attitude toward Euratom, which limits the cooperation they can extend to the six members acting as a group or as individual states to that aid and collaboration which can be assigned from the limited amount available for all international programs.” (Department of State, EUR/RPE Files: Lot 70 D 315, External Relations)↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩