196. Editorial Note
The question of increased nuclear sharing with the Allies was studied by the Departments of State and Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission in the summer of 1960 and discussed at several National Security Council meetings between August 25 and the end of December. President Eisenhower asked U.S. officials to make some decisions on this question, for he hoped his administration would develop a policy and a program before he left office.
France posed the most immediate and acute problem for the administration with respect to nuclear sharing. France’s refusal to accept the NATO stockpile plan and permit the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons for any forces on French territory unless it had primary control of the weapons, its demand for equal treatment in nuclear matters, and its determination to achieve its own independent nuclear capability at any cost created problems for the United States and for NATO. The question of how much to assist France and in what way, knowing that any policy established would create a precedent for U.S. policy with regard to other NATO countries and that France’s success in becoming a power with nuclear capability would establish a precedent for other countries, was, therefore, central to the question of nuclear sharing.
Despite Eisenhower’s wishes, this question was not resolved by the end of his term. Extensive documentation on this question is printed in Part 1. Additional documentation on this subject is in Department of State, Central Files 740.5611 and 740.5612 and in S/S-NSC (Miscellaneous) Files: Lot 66 D 95, NSC 6017.