231. Record of Meeting With President Johnson1
PRESENT
- Secretary McNamara
- Under Secretary Katzenbach
- Ambassador Harriman
- Ambassador Lodge
- Ambassador Goldberg
- W. W. Rostow
[Here follow 4 pages of discussion of Vietnam. The President asked Secretary McNamara to report on the bombing situation in North Vietnam and the NATO meeting. After his brief report on Vietnam, McNamara turned to NATO.]
As for NATO, the 14 met without France and proved they could do a substantial amount of business.
The Permanent Nuclear Committee was set up after a year and half of work. The task was to drive it forward fast. He discussed with both Brosio and Cleveland how this must be done. It is important work. This will reduce the German pressure for a hardware solution to their nuclear role. Brandt said the hardware issue could be set aside; but there was disagreement in the German government. Brandt also believes the Germans will not stand in the way of non-proliferation agreement; although there will be dissension within the German government.
The Foreign Office will suffer greatly from Carstens movement to the Ministry of Defense with Schroeder—Carstens being the “best European diplomat we deal with.”
On the offset issue, there was considerable evidence that the Germans would find it difficult to offset fully. He didn’t discuss the shortrun issue but did talk with Schroeder on the long-run issues—after June 30, 1967. Schroeder was depressed about both the future size of the defense budget and the problem of offsetting by other means U.K. and U.S. expenditures in Germany. The U.K. insisted that it would act on or before June 30 unless its foreign exchange expenditures in Germany were fully offset.
Aside from the Nuclear Committee, a second constructive development was the agreement to proceed with realistic force planning looking ahead 5 years. The finance and military authorities will work together to achieve that realism.
[Page 523]The Belgian proposal for complete review of the future of NATO was accepted. It was not clear, however, whether this would include military as well as non-military matters. The U.S. preferred that it confine itself to the non-military aspects of NATO. It was also not clear what the fate would be of the idea of Europeans joining together to achieve a consensus within NATO which they would then discuss with U.S. Secretary McNamara believed this not in the U.S. interest in military affairs.
[Here follow 1–1/2 pages of discussion of U.N. matters.]