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

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

Paris, June 17, 1967, 1845Z.

20323. NATUS. Subject: NATO Ministerial Meeting: Evaluation.²

1. After two days reflection, post audit of all reporting cables, and a talk with SYG Brosio, I think the most striking thing about the NATO Ministerial Meeting in Luxembourg was that for first time in two years Ministers did not need to spend most of their time gluing NATO together. Government delegations and attending journalists alike seemed to assume that NATO is here to stay. So diplomats were not talking and journalists were not writing about collapse, anemia, demise or disarray. Instead, they were able to concentrate on major issues of foreign policy in which allies share common interests—though not common opinions.

Mid East Crisis and the UN

2. The Mid East crisis of course dominated both private discussions and public briefings. There seemed no doubt in anyone’s mind that NATO Ministers should be discussing Middle East crisis, and that NAC should continue to consult about it. Brosio’s summation made clear distinction between action in US and bilateral channels, and NAC as the “place where allies should consult among themselves”. Even if some members do not intend to reach common policy, he said, there should be as much consensus as possible in an attempt to avoid “open conflict”. Secretary’s emphasis on possibility of different allies being useful to Middle East peace-making in different ways (e.g., some with Israeli, some with some Arabs, some with other Arabs, some with Soviets) was well received and even drew an endorsement from Couve de Murville.

3. Ministers’ diagnoses of origins Middle East conflict were strikingly similar. There was clear consensus that U Thant had acted rashly and unwisely, and had helped bring on conflict; that while Israeli military victory was only the beginning of extremely difficult problems, these problems were not a patch on the problems that would have been created for most allied governments if the fighting had gone the other way; that domestic opinion in NATO countries greatly favored Israel; and the Soviet miscalculation was enormous in providing sophisticated machines without developing the sophisticated military men to use them. No one at Luxembourg thought anything but loud noise would come out of an emergency session of the General Assembly, but there was grudging admiration for Soviet tactical skill in selecting a forum in which they could embarrass Western nations while they themselves could look as if they were doing something big for their Arab friends.

4. But when Ministers moved beyond diagnosis to prescription, the consensus was limited to agreement that their representatives should keep consulting. Even on approach to the emergency General Assembly, skepticism about what the UN could accomplish did not prevent governments as varied in their basic opinions as France, Portugal and Denmark from predicting they would have to vote for convening of UNGA (Luxembourg 492).³

5. A recurring theme at Luxembourg was the threat of UN’s peacekeeping function which seems inherent in U Thant’s action on UNEF. Canadians and Danes, who are traditionally most reluctant to be seen consulting NATO allies on UN problems, were clearly troubled by UN’s peacekeeping potential, willing to discuss it quite frankly, and (along with Greeks and Turks) anxious to get allies’ endorsement of continuing UN presence in Cyprus. Fate of UNEF has clearly been a real jolt to UN’s best friends and supporters in the West, with full effect not yet predictable. Franco Nogueira (Portugal) of course tried to convert this disillusionment into a general vote of no confidence in the UN as peacekeeping agency, but tactical result was only to rally other Ministers to UN support faute de mieux.

6. Everybody (including French) regard the old “France-NATO” issue as a thing of the past. All comments on NATO defense matters reflected satisfaction with the organization’s success in growing past the crisis of French withdrawal, institutionalizing Les Quatorze, and moving rapidly to develop modern force plans, nuclear strategies, and crisis management techniques. But on the political side, this Luxembourg meeting provided the first important test of what French Government means by staying in the Alliance while withdrawing from NATO. Evidently it means exchanging views with allies but avoiding both the reality and the appearance of common Western actions or policies.

7. Adamant French opposition (Paris 20205)⁴ to communique language on the Middle East which all other members (and French representatives in communique drafting committee) regarded as unexceptionable, could have provoked a kind of constitutional cirisis about NAC consultation, if we had carried it that far. When he left Luxembourg before communique session, Couve de Murville left in the French chair an instructed delegate with no authority to negotiate the disputed language. It was a hard and uncomfortable row for Jean de la Grandville to hoe. He had the unenviable assignment of explaining why the French Government would not agree to say that all NATO allies “seek good relations with all countries of the Middle East”. The reason this inoffensive morsel stuck in the French Minister’s craw was apparently his unwillingness to associate French efforts to woo Middle Eastern countries with parallel efforts of others, notably US and UK, with whom some Arab countries have just ruptured relations. But French representative could not very well say this, and his resulting efforts to skirt the issue yet stay with the instructed position made for a sticky hour and a half of debate.

8. French position on this seems however to be in line with “independent” position French were taking in OECD Petroleum Committee last week, with French behavior re special UNGA, with Couve de Murville’s speech to National Assembly June 15 (reported by Embassy in Paris 20240),5 with the more or less embargo of arms to Israel, and in general with De Gaulle’s pursuit of “disinterested path” (Paris 20242)⁵ in Middle East crisis. French unwillingness to be associated with anything that looked like a common policy, even an inoffensive one, was carried to the point of risking a break in Ministerial NAC; toward the end of the marathon communique session June 14, French Delegation checked with Couve in Paris and received instructions to stick to the position even if that meant the session had to adjourn without an agreed communique.

9. French intransigeance and unwillingness even to discuss compromise language incensed other delegations, though everybody was rigidly polite, and most of the remaining Ministers (Paul Martin was a notable exception) remained on the sidelines. Brosio was and still is furious. We pressed De la Grandville far enough to reveal the full enormity of French position; the process was not without its entertaining moments, as when we suggested simply footnoting a French objection to the sentence about allies seeking good relations with all Middle East countries. Eventually, because issue was non-negotiable, we stopped negotiating and accepted a Fanfani “compromise” which removed the offending sentence. Thereafter a number of Ministers who had been silent came over to thank us for pressing the issue, and to express their shock and dismay at what the little debate had revealed about French willingness to withdraw in practice even from political side of the Alliance.

Krag (Denmark), [1–1/2 lines of source text not declassified] was particularly vociferous to Brosio and myself afterwards in denouncing the French position and tactics.

10. At last December’s Ministerial Meeting Couve carefully avoided drawing this kind of issue on a question of political consultation (the East-West relations reports). Incident at Luxembourg meeting must therefore be seen as first substantial skirmish on the new NATO-France issue, about the nature and outcome of political consultation in the Council.

Non-Proliferation

11. Discussion of NPT was carried on in “private meeting” of Ministers, which meant that only 50 people were present. Discussion at that meeting, and Fanfani’s comments at luncheon afterwards (Paris 20212)⁶ seem to indicate some change in the atmosphere about NPT. Italian and German Ministers both were at pains to emphasize support, not only for principle of non-proliferation, but for a treaty. Neither Brandt nor Fanfani mentioned the idea of limited duration for an NPT; and Brandt put his main stress on the balance of obligations—an issue which, like the earlier German concern about discrimination in peaceful nuclear development, should be readily negotiable.

12. From public and private comments by several Ministers, it is clear that Middle East war has forced everybody to think hard about non-European reasons for NPT. We heard other delegations repeating Secretary Rusk’s speculation whether losing side in such a regional war could be expected to accept defeat without using nuclear weapons if it had any; and George Brown made essentially the same point in his press briefings.

13. Without trying to predict outcome of rough passage still ahead on NPT, it certainly seems that our investment in patient and extended bilateral and NAC consultations has paid off both in helping some Italian and German leaders to neutralize NPT opponents within their respective cabinets, and in producing more vigorous and vocal support Ger NPT from the other NATO governments than we had previously been able to count on.

East-West Relations

14. The forecast in Paris 20055,⁷ that Western disappointments, Soviet hardening, and Soviet role in Mid East would sober the more avid East-West detente buffs, was borne out in Ministerial statements at Luxembourg. There is still quite a wide spectrum of opinion, with Scandinavians, Canadians and British most hopeful that Soviets want peace and Germans, Dutch and Greeks most skeptical. But the whole spectrum has discernibly moved over toward pessimism about Soviet motivations, so that those Ministers who spoke of detente in hopeful manner felt constrained to balance their comments with emphasis on maintaining the NATO deterrent as well. Even the French, whose official line has been that detente was so obvious that integrated Western military strength is no longer relevant, have taken to endorsing Western defensive strength for its role in encouraging Soviets to co-exist peacefully in Europe.

15. Against this background, Brandt’s speech to the North Atlantic Council raised the steadiest voice of any European Minister. FRG, he said, would persist in a policy of gradual rapprochement with the East. Highlights of his contribution to the meeting were announcement of Kiesinger’s letter to Stopf;⁸ his embracing of US terminology by calling for NATO to pay attention not only to crisis management but to “management of detente”; and his successful effort to have Council declare itself against discrimination among allies in moving toward detente. Latter point was another that provoked argument with French in final communique session but French eventually accepted a formulation in which Council did not come out against “discrimination” in detente but instead “recorded its view that the detente should be extended for the benefit of all members of the Alliance.”

16. On the whole, therefore, the idea that NAC should use consultation to keep track of political contacts and coordinate so far as possible policies of member countries in improving East-West relations, an idea that seemed quite exotic to some a year ago, is now rather widely accepted—though with obvious mental reservations as far as France is concerned. And the increased realism about the Soviet military threat and political intransigeance should make it less difficult to fashion allied approaches to East-West relations that stay one clear step ahead of the Soviets on the road toward European settlement, without getting sentimental about it.

Technological Gap

17. The paper on technological cooperation,⁹ the “Fanfani initiative” of last December, was handled routinely but with general sense of satisfaction that the special group had successfully removed the political controversy from a potentially divisive trans-Atlantic dialogue. The striking thing about this exercise is that when governments had to think deeper and harder about the nature of the problem, they stopped talking about what America should do to expiate its guilt for being ahead, and started talking sense about what Europe could do about the fact that it is behind.

Future of the Alliance

18. According to plan there was no substantive discussion of the study of the future tasks of the Alliance (Harmel exercise). The many references to the Harmel study emphasized the importance of searching and wide-ranging review; but they also tended to define more explicitly the basic assumptions on which the subgroups are already working—that the Alliance needs to maintain credible deterrent for the indefinite future; that the process of detente cannot safely be left to individual Western initiatives and Soviet divisive tactics; that NATO must be deeply concerned, though in a non-operational fashion, about situations outside NATO defense areas such; and that broader and franker and more intimate political consultation is always part of the mix of actions required to pursue and protect the common interests of NATO allies.¹⁰

Cleveland

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, NATO 3 LUX(LU). Secret. Repeated to the other NATO capitals, USUN, Moscow, CINCLANT for POLAD, Vienna, Belgrade, Bucharest, Prague, Sofia, Budapest, Warsaw, CINCEUR for POLAD, SHAPE for POLAD, and the Department of Defense.
2. Documentation on the 39th Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council June 13–14 at Luxembourg, including telegrams to and from the U.S. Delegation, verbatim records of the sessions, memoranda of conversation, and briefing papers, are ibid., Conference Files: Lot 68 D 453, CF 186–192. For text of the communique issued at the end of the meeting, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1967, pp. 307–309.
3. Dated June 14. (Department of State, Central Files, NATO 3 LUX(LU))
4. Dated June 14. (Ibid.)
5. Dated June 15. (Ibid., POL 27 ARAB–ISR)
6. Dated June 15. (Ibid., NATO 3 LUX(LU))
7. Dated June 9. (Ibid.)
8. On June 14, Kiesinger rejected Premier Willi Stoph’s invitation for talks in East Berlin.
9. The resolution on technological cooperation is attached to the communique.
10. In circular telegram 212575, June 19, the Department of State commented that its impressions generally coincided with those expressed here. (Department of State, Central Files, NATO 3 LUX(LU))