188. Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Herter0
President telephoned and said the Secretary may want to study the last two messages from de Gaulle.1 He said one thing that struck him was that we had always refused to get into the tripartite thing but what we have now is wrecking NATO. He wondered if there was some way we could really get outside of this standing group into a real tripartite discussion of strategic and military questions in return for which de Gaulle would get on with NATO. The Secretary said we were having a study made of the whole question, particularly in the light of what he says about the strategic concept. The Secretary said that basically De Gaulle was interested in nuclear weapons. The President said if De Gaulle was talking about planning, that was something else. The Secretary said he had asked for a legal opinion. He said that under the law you can’t state that France has nuclear capability. This would put her in the same position as Great Britain and would be a very farreaching step. Sec. said he thought we ought to study it thoroughly. de Gaulle, he said gets a fixed idea and stays with it. There was danger of a real break in this whole picture.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Herter Papers, Telephone Conversations. No classification marking. Transcribed in the Secretary’s Office.↩
- Reference is to de Gaulle’s letters to Eisenhower of May 19 and June 10. See footnote 3, Document 173, and Document 182.↩