232. Memorandum of a Conversation Between President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles0
I said to the President that I assumed there would be three major points of possible disagreement or differences of emphasis between the British and ourselves: Whether to agree now to a Summit conference; whether to accept the principle of the Rapacki Plan; and what to do about the testing negotiations. I said that I would like to present briefly my own views on these points to be sure they coincided with those of the President and that he would therefore be agreeable to my presenting them to Macmillan tomorrow:
As to the Summit meeting, I recalled that we had in May 1955 agreed to a Summit meeting after the urging of the British Government that this was for them a political necessity. But also we had agreed to it not just on this account but because in a sense the Soviets had paid the price which the President had been demanding as proof of willingness to do something for peace in terms of deeds as against mere words. They had agreed to and signed the Austrian State Treaty which was the one point which the United States had most strongly emphasized as necessary to demonstrate Soviet honorable intentions. Also at that time the Soviets had accepted without question our concept as to the character and composition of the meeting. At the present time the Soviets were trying to bring about a Summit meeting not through good behavior but by coercing us with threats and with violations of our established rights. Furthermore, there were strong indications that they would seek as part of such a meeting to establish the so-called principle of “parity” which would have for them very considerable political advantages and for us very considerable political embarrassments. It seemed to me that it was of the utmost importance to the integrity of our position not to give in to the kind of pressures to which we were now subjected, but to continue to take the position which heretofore we have consistently taken that there must be a prospect of some useful positive result out of a Summit meeting before we agree it should be held. This was the more true because the agreements of the last Summit meeting had almost immediately been repudiated by the Soviet Union.
The President indicated he was in full accord with this view. He had at Mr. Herter’s request somewhat diluted his phraseology in his Monday night speech but he recalled that he had instructed Mr. Herter [Page 508] to tell the British Ambassador that the President assumed that the “developments” that he referred to would be “favorable” developments. The President was firmly of the opinion that we should not at this time agree to a Summit meeting.
With respect to the Rapacki Plan or some “thinning out” proposal, I recalled that I had pointed out to Macmillan in London1 that from a political standpoint some thinning out seemed to me acceptable provided that it did not involve discrimination in terms of any particular country and provided it did not involve rejection of the principle of collective security and of the right of one country to send its troops onto the soil of another at its request for self-defense. As to the military aspects, I had no judgment. I did however have in mind that it so happened in the case of the Western Allies that our principal strength was in the forward positions where were the forces of the Germans, the British and ourselves and that there was no very good alternative position in Europe to which these could be shifted. In view of General de Gaulle’s attitude, I did not think we would want, and I doubted whether he would be willing, that more American troops should be stationed in France. Therefore the thinning would dislodge the main body of our strength and dislodge it very seriously, whereas in the case of the Soviets this was not the case because they could put their troops anywhere in the area they dominated.
The President indicated general agreement with this point of view although he pointed out that there might possibly be some advantages in the thinning out program which involved inspections and controls of the kind we had been trying to get in various aspects of our disarmament talks.
I then referred to the nuclear testing negotiations.2 I said it seemed to me quite clear by now that the Soviet Union would never accept within its national borders a genuinely independent group of inspectors with mobility and independence of action. Therefore I suggested that we should call off the present negotiations or at least shift their character by stating that the Soviet position on controls made the original project wholly unrealistic but that the United States would be willing to initiate a suspension of atmospheric testings in the hope and expectation that the Soviet Union would do the same. It might in this connection be possible to have some international posts outside of the territorial boundaries of the countries in question as on some of the Pacific islands, etc. The President indicated his general accord with this point of view.
[Page 509]The President said he thought there was a fourth point that might come up which was the British tendency to recognize de facto the GDR. I recalled that I discussed this with Macmillan in London and emphasized that in my opinion this was a very dangerous thing to do because it undermined the basic principle which gave us our rights in Berlin. We were in Berlin as sovereigns and to the extent that we had reserved our rights in Berlin we were as much sovereign there as we were in Washington, D.C., or any place else in the United States. It seemed to me we could never accept the concept of the Soviet Union being able to give the GDR rights which would override our own sovereign rights in Berlin. If we did this, our basic position would, as I had said, be jeopardized and could lead to a chain of consequences which would be extremely serious to us. I recalled that Macmillan had seemed to accept this thesis when we were in London although he had not gone so far as to say that he had actually committed himself to a degree so there would be any lack of good faith in his now taking a different position.
We then turned to a discussion of some of the practical arrangements of the proposed meeting on Friday.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Memoranda of Conversation with the President. Secret; Personal and Private. The conversation was held at Walter Reed Hospital.↩
- See Document 158.↩
- Documentation on the nuclear testing negotiations at Geneva is scheduled for publication in volume III.↩
- Joseph Greene initialed for Dulles.↩