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

232. Telegram From the Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Regional Organizations to the Department of State¹

Paris, December 17, 1966, 1733Z.

9350. NATUS. Subj: NATO Ministerial Meeting—summary and appraisal. Newspaper reporting on NATO Ministerial Meeting this week suffers from the usual myopia of the Paris bureau. And our delegation reporting is necessarily so voluminous that it has strained the attention span of most of our addressees. It may therefore be useful to summarize what we think happened here this week.

1. The Fourteen, glued together now in a formal way as a Council level Defense Planning Committee (DPC), went ahead in a business-like way to make a series of important decisions about NATO defense system. Specifically:

A. They established the Nuclear Defense Affairs Committee (NDAC) and its seven member Nuclear Planning Group. (The New York Times locally is unhappy because they used a Paris dateline to predict a six-member committee though we told them to be cautious.) Since the Germans at Brandt’s level are relaxed about “hardware” and even the much debated “European clause” in nuclear defense affairs, this means that for the time being at least we can stop debating how to cut the allies in on nuclear matters, and proceed systematically to do so.

B. They laid the doctrinal basis for a system of communications and data exchange that could make a great deal of difference in meaningful consultation among governments in time of diplomatic or military crisis.

C. They agreed (subject still to a Portuguese reservation which is not crucial) to common funding of future exercises by the ACE mobile force.

D. They approved, on schedule, the first stage of a NATO communications satellite program—an R&D link between SHAPE’s new headquarters and AFSOUTH in Naples.

2. The Fourteen got back to the subject of strategy, which has been taboo in NATO since the mid-1950’s because France was not willing to abandon formally the doctrine of instant massive retaliation. Now, the DPC, Military Committee, and NATO commanders, newly and fruitfully related to each other, are engaged in a fundamental new look at NATO strategy as related to forces and budgets. As a result of trilateral, NPG and DPC “studies” (in this business, the word “studies” is a euphemism for inter-governmental negotiations about strategy and military policy), we should be able to develop during 1967 a thorough-going revision of the concepts for NATO military and force planning, and base on them NATO’s first real five-year plan. There will be many disagreements, and on some points we may never achieve unanimous consent even without France. But a great deal of fresh air has been let into NATO through the force planning exercise, and it was blowing freely here this week.

(The chief uncertainty in NATO defense plans is still the United States of America. The decisions we make about our own forces, and the time scale in which they are carried out, will make or break the NATO defense system. Decisions by others, notably the British and the Germans, are also important in themselves, but their greatest significance lies in the way they affect US domestic support for our NATO commitment.)

3. The NATO-France issues were not front and center in this conference. On the defense side, of course, the group of Fourteen was in unembarrassed charge of the proceedings. The “boundary line” between France and NATO has been largely drawn, and never even needed to be discussed by Ministers.

It seemed earlier that we might find the French defecting to some extent from the political side of NATO using the discussion of East/West relations as the proximity fuse. But, French apparently decided that it did not serve their interest to pick a fight on the basic issues—which are whether NATO has a role to play in working toward East/West detente and whether NATO members of the Alliance should try to develop a common line to guide their pluralistic approaches to the Eastern Europeans. Thus, Couve de Murville did not press the objection that had been made at lower levels to the report by the Permanent Council on East/West Relations² (which clearly projects a NATO role). He also did not interfere with, and indeed agreed to, the Belgian proposal for studying the future tasks of an Alliance that clearly proposes to be in business after the magic 20-year deadline of 1969. The French also raised no problems about NATO picking up for action the Italian initiative about technological cooperation.

In short, the French delegation clearly had instructions not to recreate on the political side the French-NATO split which is already a fact of life, expressed in institutional arrangements, on the defense side of Alliance affairs. An indication of resulting atmosphere was sardonic question by de la Grandville when the communique committee was discussing the Belgian initiative. He called attention to the provision in Belgian resolution that Europeans should consult with each other within the framework of the Alliance, and asked with a show of virtuous incredulity “does that mean we are going to consult about these matters without the presence of our American friends?”

4. It should be possible to make something important and interesting out of this Belgium initiative. We have insisted here that this is not “just another study,” but that it can become a serious effort by governments, with the participation of responsible political executives from capitals, to reformulate our collective aims in a way that fits the increasing fluid international situation, and is more likely to appeal to the generation that does not remember why we got into an Atlantic Alliance to begin with.

5. There can also, in our view, be considerable nourishment in a North Atlantic Council process on technological cooperation which takes both an internal look at what NATO itself can do, and an external look at whether the diverse bilateral arrangements and international organs which supposedly cover this field are concentrating on what most needs to be done to get results. In particular, the drive for more and better technology in Europe can perhaps be channeled into more support for a (wider) Common Market in Europe.

6. The reaction to our continuing stress on the responsibilities of NATO countries outside the NATO area was distinct change from a year ago. Then, the idea that Europeans should worry about world order (by which they thought we meant Viet-Nam) was actively resisted, in private conversation if not formal statements. Today, the Europeans are less excited about the Viet-Nam war, more impressed by the fact that it does not seem to be inhibiting all forms of US–USSR cooperation (outer space treaty, non-proliferation), generally certain that American power is committed and that Hanoi cannot win, and less convinced that the war is bound to escalate into a general conflagration.

Moreover, Chinese Communist behavior in the past year has reduced current support for detente with China, and increased longer term worries about Chinese capacities and intentions. We may be several years from the time when the major European countries will be willing to invest time, effort, and money in post-colonial external policies. But a sluggish trend away from the post-war pattern of regional isolationism is already visible to the naked eye in the politics of most European countries. By-product and evidence of this trend was the almost total absence in this NATO meeting of official criticism of the US role in Viet-Nam—except, of course, by the Foreign Minister of France.

7. There was a brief flurry about NAC relocation when the Germans (with more or less Canadian, Danish, Norwegian and Portuguese support) suggested NAC remain in Paris until a permanent building could be built in Brussels. But they added the proviso that next year’s December Council session should be held in Brussels. When the Germans put this to the French, Couve said NAC was welcome to stay in Paris but could not then treat Paris as a forbidden place for NATO Ministers to meet. The stay-in-Paris movement thereupon collapsed, and permanent and provisional sites were readily agreed. If we can avoid forming too many committees on the subject, NAC should move to Brussels by the end of next year.

8. All in all, this meeting produced more action, less conflict, and a more definite pattern for the future than even NATO’s well wishers had assumed. The balance of benefits and disabilities which may be produced by combining a more cautious France, a more robust Germany, an impecunious Britain, a less obstreperous Denmark, and a Greece and Turkey seriously seeking a basic accommodation, cannot yet be predicted. But through basic collective process, in the Fourteen on defense and the Fifteen on detente, we will learn much about the opportunities, and will have to be in a position to take advantage of them in carrying out the mandate in the President’s October 7 speech.

That mandate is for continuing US interest and activity in Atlantic, and therefore in European, affairs. There is always an inherent danger our leadership will show too much, though on this score the recent NATO Ministerial Session was outstanding: so many of our ideas were blended with those of other nations in the advance preparations and this week’s corridor consultations, that nobody was heard to complain about US “lecturing”, nobody objected to the trilateral talks, and the word “hegemony” was not even used by press spokesmen in those semi-public gripe sessions called “backgrounders”.

In any case, our impression is that most thoughtful Europeans are worrying less about the continuity of US leadership than about its discontinuance due to US domestic pressures. The best way to deal with this nameless fear seems to be to advise our European friends to read the President’s October 7 speech again, and to note the evidence, in Viet-Nam and elsewhere, that the USA means what the President says.

Cleveland

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, NATO 3 FR(PA). Secret; Priority. Repeated to the other NATO capitals and Moscow.
2. A copy of this report is ibid., Conference Files: Lot 67 D 586, CF 115.