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

63. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson¹

Washington, December 10, 1964.

SUBJECT

• The Value of Your Meeting with Wilson

1. A couple of times in the last few days you have strongly expressed to me your doubts about the value of having Harold Wilson here. Since I think that this was without doubt the most productive and useful two days that we have had in foreign affairs since President Kennedy went to Berlin,² I would like to urge the opposite view for a minute.

2. Let me begin with the obvious negative fact that there is just no way in the world that a President of the United States can avoid reasonably regular visits from the Prime Minister of Great Britain. If you had said to Wilson that you were unwilling to see him in December, the reaction everywhere would have been strongly critical. You may feel that this is outrageous, given the difference between his position and yours, but it is a fact. Winston Churchill made it so.

3. There can be real inconvenience in these meetings, because there is no certain way of predicting what issues will come up. The Nassau meeting³ was not set up to deal with Skybolt, which broke over its head because of the timing of our DOD budget. There was no such difficulty this time, because we knew that the Atlantic nuclear problem would be at center stage, but the handling of the matter was certainly very difficult.

4. In this situation the first achievement was to avoid a failure. You received a very strong recommendation to force Wilson to a decision, and you carefully walked around that and took a different and better course. This was a major achievement and it had several consequences:

(1) We have had a very straight and honest talk with the British back and forth on the hard elements of the problem, and they have gone off to talk on their own with the Germans. This puts the ball back in the European court, and places you as the firm but patient leader of the Alliance.

(2) You have laid basis for political education and political leadership with Congress as the progress of the enterprise justifies it. We have a major problem of communication with the Leadership and the relevant committees, but we have won time in which to go about it.

(3) Perhaps most important of all, this meeting has forced discussions between you and your advisers which has for the first time given both you and them a clear understanding of the problem and the way you want it treated.

(4) As a consequence, George Ball himself has reached the decision to reorganize the Department of State in this area, and no more important or constructive administrative decision has been made in the last 18 months in that Department. It is true that that decision should have been made a year ago, but it wasn’t. It may seem strange that an internal administrative decision should have to wait upon a meeting between you and the British Prime Minister, but that is how this Government has worked for a generation. The President signals his real beliefs at his convenience, and this is the time that was convenient and right for you. If I had sent you a memorandum on the way to handle the MLF last August or September, you would quite properly have ignored it, and without clear proof of your own personal view, George Ball simply would not have acted.

5. From now on, it seems to me, the progress of this Atlantic negotiation will need your own continued personal command, and I will make it my business to make sure that the state of the play is before you at every stage and that every significant decision is signaled as far ahead of time as possible.

6. So, in sum, the Wilson meeting has not only been a modest success in its own right, but a turning point in the process by which you take the effective command of a major issue of foreign policy. This is quite a lot for two days—and I am omitting the fringe benefit that at least a hundred of your warmest political supporters were given a thank-you dinner of the most fashionable possible sort, because glamour is one thing the British still bring with them.

Unrepentantly,

McG. B.

P.S. I am doing a separate memo on the exact negotiating position on this issue as I now understand it. This is simply an informal defense of the fact that we had a meeting at all.

P.P.S. I am also doing a memo on what you might say about this on Saturday if you have a press conference; I think there is quite a lot.

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. 7. Secret.
2. June 26, 1963.
3. December 18–21, 1962.