Office of the Historian

338. Letter From Prime Minister Macmillan to President Eisenhower0

London, February 16, 1958.

My Dear Friend: I was very glad to learn, on returning from my tour of the Commonwealth,1 that the negotiations which have been going on for a good time between our people for an agreement for stationing intermediate range ballistic missiles in the United Kingdom are about to come to a satisfactory conclusion. We hope that the final details can be settled in time for the agreement to be published in this coming week.

This will be a subject of the most intense interest in this country and every word in the terms of the agreement will be scrutinized both in Parliament and in the country.

I want to secure the greatest possible measure of support for the agreement among our people here, and I am therefore writing to you to explain certain political difficulties which we have about one or two points.

  • First, it is very important to reassure our people that the actual operation of these weapons will be handled by British forces. It would therefore be a great help if paragraph 4 of the draft memorandum of agreement could read as follows: “4. The missiles will be manned and operated by the United Kingdom personnel, which will be trained by the United States Government for the purposes of this project at the earliest feasible date.”
  • Second, paragraph 7 of the draft memorandum of agreement will, in its present wording, lead some people to think that the missiles will be launched automatically if any of our allies is attacked. I know that this impression is not justified by a careful study of this paragraph, but I feel that we must revise it to make the position absolutely plain. This could be done by wording the paragraph as follows: “7. The decision to launch these missiles will be a matter for joint decision by the two governments. Any such joint decision will be made in the light of the circumstances at the time and having regard to the undertaking the two governments have assumed, in article V of the North Atlantic Treaty.” Of course, I would explain if asked to do so in Parliament precisely what our undertaking under article V means, but I do not see any object in provoking unnecessary discussion.
  • Third, the word “indefinitely” in paragraph 10 of the present draft of the memorandum of agreement has political danger here, since this would give ammunition to our critics. I would like to revise this paragraph as follows: “10. This Agreement shall be subject to revision by agreement between the two governments and shall remain in force for not less than five years from the date of the agreement but may thereafter be terminated by either government upon six months’ notice”.2

I do hope that you and Foster will feel able to agree to revise on these lines. We want to get the best possible reception for this important development in the defence of the free world.

I understand that your people have suggested that if these missiles are installed before the British personnel who are to operate them have completed their training, they should be manned by United States personnel in the interval. This situation may or may not arise. If it does, we can deal with it quietly between ourselves. But when the agreement is published it is important (as I have pointed out above) that we should be able to say that the missiles will be operated by British personnel, and that nothing to the contrary should be said on either side of the Atlantic. The impression that these new bases would be manned and operated by your people instead of our own would unfortunately arouse intense criticism. I realise that this is quite illogical in the light of the present sphere of United States strategic bombers. Nevertheless it is a fact and I trust that it can be ensured that no suggestion of this sort is made. If anything were to be said, either by one of our officials or of yours, in a press conference or elsewhere, about United States personnel operating the missiles to begin with, there would be hell to pay.

When I have caught up with immediate problems I hope to send you a few thoughts from my recent tour. It was arduous but extremely interesting and even exciting.

Yours ever,

Harold Macmillan3
  1. Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204. Top Secret.↩
  2. The Prime Minister visited the Commonwealth countries January 7–14, 1958. For his account of this tour, see Riding the Storm, p. 384.↩
  3. The final text of the agreement incorporated all of the language proposed here by Macmillan. For text of the agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom, executed by an exchange of notes and memoranda between Herter and Caccia on February 22, see Department of State Bulletin, March 17, 1958, pp. 418–419.↩
  4. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩