Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XIII, Western Europe and Canada

181. Memorandum for the Record⁰

Washington, March 14, 1963, 5 p.m.

SUBJECT

• Minutes of the Meeting with the President, March 13, 5:00 P.M., on NATO Nuclear Forces

PRESENT

• The President, Secretary of State, Under Secretary of State, Mr. William Tyler, Mr. Jeffrey Kitchen; Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Paul Nitze; Mr. McGeorge Bundy, Mr. Carl Kaysen

The meeting was devoted to further consideration of what should be done about the paragraph 6 forces pursuant to the discussion between the President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense on March 9.¹ Three documents were before the group: Memorandum, Nitze to Bundy, March 12; Memorandum, Kitchen to Bundy, March 13; and Merchant’s views of paragraph 6 forces, as registered in London 3534 of March 13.²

The meeting opened with a statement of the problem by the President: What should we do to get the paragraph 6 forces under way and make what we could of this part of our post-Nassau plans. Messrs. McNamara and Nitze stated that our objective should be to get the military command structure under SACEUR for the paragraph 6 forces organized and agreed in time to be certified at the Ottawa meeting in May. In addition, we should explore the question of the political control group which would direct the use of these forces.

Mr. Kitchen raised some questions about how this letter could be done without suggesting to the Europeans that we were once again changing our direction, and that we had given up our interest in the multilateral force in favor of the paragraph 6 forces. Further, the paragraph 6 forces imposed no price of admission comparable to that required for the MLF and was therefore a most unsuitable basis on which to deal with the control issue. This view was endorsed and reinforced by Mr. Ball. Mr. Ball cited Merchant’s report as evidence that our concept of the MLF was meeting considerable favor in Europe, and that it would be dangerous to do anything which would signal another change in direction. Secretary McNamara argued the advantages of getting something done and indicated his view that the military command structure alone offered very little in the way of additional substance to the Europeans beyond what they already had, unless we discussed the political control issue.

The President expressed a desire that we put ourselves in a position to make as much of the paragraph 6 forces as possible, in the event our proposal for a MLF was not acceptable to the Europeans. In his own view our present proposal on the MLF, in which we continued to require unanimity on the political decision, as we should, and in which we offered merchant ships instead of submarines, did not represent anything very attractive to the Europeans.

Secretary Rusk argued the importance of careful timing on the whole process of decision. In his view, the right thing to do now was to stop at the discussion of the military command structure, leaving the political issue until later. In two or three weeks, we would have Merchant’s assessment of what could be done on the MLF and, accordingly, we should defer any consideration of the political control issue until we had Merchant’s judgment on how successful our efforts to create the MLF were likely to be. The President agreed that we should follow the course that Secretary of State recommended, and asked him to sum up his view of what Mr. Nitze should do now. The Secretary said that in effect Nitze should talk about the first question, the military command structure, and listen to what others had to say on the second, the political control issue. In response to observations of Secretary McNamara and General Taylor, the Secretary agreed that Nitze should not say anything that would stop us from coming back to a discussion of political control, based on the paragraph 6 forces, if in two or three weeks we judged that that was desirable in view of the prospects of the MLF as seen then.

Mr. Nitze then summarized his own understanding as follows:

a. He would negotiate on the military command structure for the paragraph 6 forces on the assumption that there would be a European four-star general as commander or chief staff officer of the NATO Nuclear Force under SACEUR.

b. He would not raise the issue of the political control of the nuclear commander, but he would be receptive to what was said on it, especially to what was said in response to the British, who would undoubtedly raise the issue.

c. He would so conduct his discussions that we would not be barred from coming back to the question of political control.

d. He would meet with the NATO Nuclear Committee and explain what we were proposing in terms of paragraph 6 forces and how this related to the problem of further transmission of information to NAC.

The President closed the meeting by remarking that the Secretary of State had two or three weeks to sell his MLF proposal.

CK

0. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings with the President. Secret.
1. For a summary of the conclusions reached at this meeting, see Document 180.
2. Bundy’s 4-page memorandum discussed what the United States could make out of paragraph 6; while Kitchen’s memorandum stated that the question was not “what” but “when” should the United States act. (Department of State, S/S-NSC Files: Lot 70 D 265, NSC 3/13/63) In telegram 3534 Merchant expressed his concern that discussion of paragraph 6 forces could adversely affect negotiations on political control of the MLF. (Department of State, Central Files, Def(MLF))