Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Western Europe, Volume VII, Part 2

139. Letter from President Eisenhower to President de Gaulle⁰

September 21, 1959.

Dear General De Gaulle: As I reflect on my visit and my discussions with you in Paris and Rambouillet, my feeling of gratitude—both for your hospitality and for the opportunity of considering with you questions that concern us both—continues to increase. I look forward to the time when we can renew our talks.

The limitations of time did not permit me to cover adequately several subjects of common interest. I would like at this time to comment on two particular points. The first is the Medieterranean fleet. We have discussed this previously, and I believe that it should be possible to attain a satisfactory understanding. I do not propose for the United States any special or favored status for its naval forces in the Mediterranean, and I think our naval experts should be able to devise arrangements which would place on the same footing the British, French and U.S. fleets—both in peacetime and wartime. With this in mind, I would suggest that both our people raise this matter with our British friends with a view to having the Standing Group consider with SACEUR and SACLANT arrangements that, when approved by the two of us and Mr. Macmillan, would meet the NATO needs in the Mediterranean as regards the naval forces of our three countries, while at the same time satisfying the particular needs of each nation.

Secondly, I would like to mention the question of the storage of nuclear weapons in France for the use of both U.S. and French forces assigned to NATO. I start from the belief that the purpose of storing these weapons in France would be to assure the most effective common defense of Western Europe, of course including France. If the arrangements were properly worked out, I cannot believe there would need to be any impairment of national sovereignty for either of us. The arrangements could rest on a firm agreement that the consent of the French Government would be required prior to the use of such weapons by either U.S. or French forces. [2–1/2 lines of source text not declassified]

This form of close cooperation is, to me, a logical necessity arising out of modern military technology, as is the whole concept of integrated commands. As I indicated when we were together, my own effort to reconcile the needs of modern weapons and techniques with the traditions of national patriotism and esprit led me in 1951 to the concept of joining national forces together into integrated commands. Developments since that time have tended, in my opinion, to strengthen this need. I believe the American forces in Europe, for example, while serving in their own national uniforms and under their own flag, feel also a considerable—and a growing—attachment to their collective force and to the North Atlantic Community.

Our talks clarified again, I think, the degree to which we both are attached to common ideals and ideas of Western security. I do not believe that there is any divergence in our objectives, and I present these thoughts as my ideas concerning the best means, in these special fields, of achieving them. I remain convinced that we can so solve these problems that NATO will function the better for it.

As you may have seen, at my press conference on September seventeenth,¹ I took the opportunity to say I am greatly encouraged by your courageous and statesmanlike declaration on Algeria, and hope that it will lead to an early peace.

Please accept, Mr. President, the expression of my highest consideration and sincere friendship.

With warm personal regard,

Sincerely,

D.E.²

0. Source: Eisenhower Library, Project Clean Up. Secret. Sent to Paris in telegram 1289, September 21 (Department of State, Central Files, 396.1/9–2159), and delivered to de Gaulle by Houghton on September 23. (Ibid., 711.11–E1/9–2359)

   In response to the President’s request, Dillon sent Eisenhower a draft letter to de Gaulle under cover of a memorandum of September 9. After revising the draft, Goodpaster asked Herter and Department of Defense officials to review it. In a memorandum of September 21 to Goodpaster, Calhoun explained that the Secretary of State and appropriate Defense officials as well as Ambassadors Burgess and Houghton and General Norstad had reviewed the revised draft, and he outlined their suggestions as well as his own. At the suggestion of the three U.S. officials in Paris, the first sentence of the second paragraph was revised in the final draft to avoid the possible implication that the points of common interest were limited to two. The White House did not follow Calhoun’s suggestion about rewording the last paragraph about Eisenhower’s response to de Gaulle’s September 16 declaration on Algeria. Copies of the drafts of this letter and of the memoranda concerning it are in the Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, International File.

1. For text of Eisenhower’s statement to the press on September 17 in which he praised de Gaulle’s declaration on Algeria as courageous and statesmanlike, see Department of State Bulletin, October 12, 1959, p. 500.
2. Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.