Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XIII, Western Europe Region

143. Memorandum From the President’s Acting Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Komer) to President Johnson¹

Washington, March 16, 1966, 6:30 p.m.

Do we want a full-blown war with De Gaulle? Bator will be sending a brief for the session tomorrow, but this matter is of sufficient gravity that I want to weigh in too. In presenting you with a series of last-minute tactical decisions (a letter here, a statement there), we may be showing you only the trees and not the forest, with risk that we end up backing you into a war you may not want.

For example, a cardinal issue in the draft thrust before you this morning² is not just its tone but what certain key phrases in it imply. We all have the natural impulse to get back at De Gaulle, and to explain to the French people why he is wrong. But the draft goes much further when it says that we not only intend to continue our past NATO policies “but to urge extension of these principles of common and joint preparation wherever they can be usefully applied” (p. 5), and that you dedicate us not just to preservation of NATO but “to the creative task of strengthening it …” (p. 6).

This is not just rhetoric. As Dean Acheson told you, his group feels that we must seek to strengthen NATO by something new, so that we don’t end up with “the same old NATO slightly weaker” (without France).³ In short, the best way to stop De Gaulle is to beef up the alliance—make it more integrated rather than less.

This is great stuff if we can do it. But will it work?

Before we announce that we’re going to the precise opposite direction from De Gaulle, let’s first look at “how.” To my knowledge, the only “new” idea we have for strengthening the alliance is the well-known MLF (or the UK variant—ANF). Query—is this proposed new strengthening of NATO simply an opening for a new push on MLF?

ANF/MLF has many advantages—you’ve heard the arguments. Moreover, the NATO country most spooked by Gaullists wrecking will be West Germany. What better way to reassure Bonn than to give it a finger on the nuclear trigger, or at least a greater sense of nuclear participation? Bonn itself is already talking up this line.

But there may also be real disadvantages which need full airing before we jump. That France’s withdrawal from the NATO structure inevitably enhances Germany’s role will worry many allies—Scandinavians, Italians, Benelux, UK. They may not be so eager to see a US/UK/German combination, without the continental counterbalance of the French.

Second, what we all fear now is new French initiatives toward the USSR. There are few issues in which Paris and Moscow might see a greater common interest—or one more popular in Europe—than in opposing a nuclear role for Bonn. So taking this road toward strengthening NATO may help bring about precisely what we want to avoid.

Third, and not least, does a political crisis in Europe help or hurt us at home? Exerting firm leadership of the Western Alliance is one thing, but what if all it leads to is a great ruckus with little concrete result? We already have one war in Asia, and I can see the Europe-firsters clamoring that Lyndon Johnson is leading us into trouble on both flanks. Don’t we also risk Republican charges that we’re losing two wars instead of one?

Finally, can we win a war with De Gaulle just now over more integration vs. less? I doubt it. He’s just been elected for seven more years and nobody believes we can get him to reverse course—whether what he’s doing is popular in France or not. Even to try may risk splitting NATO further by giving play to all the latent centrifugal tendencies in Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Turkey and Greece. Can we afford to have yet others play the same game as De Gaulle?

Indeed, the lessons of recent history all suggest that we stop, look, and listen before flinging down the gauntlet to De Gaulle. He may well be right in thinking he has us in a spot where we can’t react vigorously—let’s not underestimate him. Isn’t he dead right in appreciating that the threat of Soviet aggression is less and that he can thus get away with more? He also has a receptive European audience for his mischievous contention that we might drag NATO into a larger war emerging from Vietnam. Nor should the basic merit of our own grand design for European integration blind us to the likelihood that moving it further forward may be an uphill fight till Britain decides to enter Europe or De Gaulle passes from the scene.

So before answering State’s clarion call to propaganda battle, you deserve to be convinced that it’s one we can reasonably expect to win. If not, it may be wiser to outwait De Gaulle—while limiting the damage he can do. This alternative calls for a firm defensive stance whereby the rest of NATO proceeds with business as usual, while reserving an “empty chair” till France outlives De Gaulle. To thus prevent NATO from slipping backward may be the best that we can hope for just now. The real problem, as always, is not France but Germany—and the more we agitate the alliance the more we may bring this potentially divisive issue to the fore.

This memo deliberately accentuates the negative, and my worries may be overdrawn. But our staff job is to give you both sides of any story—and to show the options if others don’t. In any case I see no reason for precipitate action on a letter or a statement; this matter could well stand mulling over for a week or so. Counsels of caution need not be those of cowardice.⁴

R. W. Komer

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Files of Robert Komer, Box 2, Memos to LBJ. Secret.
2. No record of the meeting with the President at 11:05 a.m. on March 16 has been found. An agenda for it notes that there would be a report on the diplomatic situation and a discussion of the following five issues: 1) relocation of military facilities, 2) French forces in Germany, 3) U.S. nuclear support for French forces in Germany, 4) France and the treaty, and 5) the general U.S. attitude toward France. (Ibid.) Although the draft under reference has not been found, it was probably a draft of Document 146.
3. Dean Acheson headed a U.S. interdepartmental group that reported to Ball and was tasked with drafting a reply to De Gaulle’s letter. The particular conversation under reference here has not been further identified.
4. At 9:10 p.m. on March 16, Bator wrote a memorandum to the President for his meeting the following day on NATO and France. After reviewing the outstanding issues, he concluded that Komer’s memorandum was excellent. (Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Box 177, France-NATO Dispute, Vol. I)

   The President, Rusk, Ball, Acheson, Bohlen, Leddy, Bator, Komer, Cyrus Vance, Clark Clifford, and Jack Valenti met at 5:40 p.m. on March 17. The only record of this meeting is Valenti’s handwritten notes, which indicate that agreement was reached on the text of the reply, that some discussion of the best time of the release of the 14-nation declaration occurred, that the President was concerned about reaction in Congress, and finally that initial thought was given to the five points outlined in the agenda for the previous day’s meeting. (Johnson Library, Office of the President File, Jack Valenti Notes)