77. Memorandum of Conversation0
Memorandum of Conversation between the President and Ambassador Dobrynin, Tuesday, July 17, 1962, 6:00 p.m. (prepared from the President’s account and approved by the President July 18)
The President met alone with Ambassador Dobrynin and talked with him for just under an hour. The atmosphere of the conversation was agreeable. After some pleasantries the conversation turned on three subjects: Berlin, nuclear testing, and developments in Southeast Asia.
On Berlin, the President told Dobrynin that he had prepared and would soon have delivered a reply1 to Chairman Khrushchev’s recent communication.2 The President emphasized that the presence of Allied troops in West Berlin is a vital interest of the United States. For this reason none of the Soviet proposals for alternative arrangements could be accepted; all of them, in one way or another, implied the departure of Western troops—they would get us out, and without so much as a fig leaf of concealment. This would mean a major retreat. Europe would lose confidence in U.S. leadership. It would be a major victory for the Soviet Union and a major defeat for the West.
Ambassador Dobrynin said that Chairman Khrushchev would be greatly disappointed in this response to his most recent proposal. He asked whether the American position was related to German interests or American interests. The President said again that he was speaking of a vital U.S. interest. There might well be other issues on which we would be willing to press the Germans quite hard—as, for example, on the structure of an access authority. But on the question of our presence in Berlin, there was no argument among the Western Allies; it was of vital interest to all. The President remarked that he had made this point clear to Foreign Minister Gromyko in the fall of 1961.3
Ambassador Dobrynin argued that in its present condition Berlin is a potential source of dangerous friction and conflict and that a removal [Page 224] of Western troops would lessen the dangers. The President stated that while he could understand Soviet objections to the presence of Western troops, he must emphasize again that the removal of Western troops would be a disaster for us, while their presence was not a disaster for the Soviet Union.
The President also emphasized that Soviet-created tensions in Berlin had caused increases in Western rearmament and that any new crisis would have a similar effect. The President noted the disagreement which the United States has with its Allies on the diffusion of nuclear weapons, and said that Soviet-created tensions could only increase the danger of results which the Soviet Government would not like. Ambassador Dobrynin argued in reply that it was the fact of Western troops in West Berlin which created these dangers. This was the one point of direct confrontation between opposing great powers, and it was naturally a source of danger. If the confrontation could be ended, the dangers would be reduced. The President repeated that the real cause of danger was the Soviet effort to change the existing situation, that the way to reduce tension was to reach an understanding, and that the presence of Allied troops was a vital interest. The Ambassador repeated that the Chairman would be disappointed.
(Comments on nuclear testing are on page 3, and on developments in Southeast Asia on page 4)4
- Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 77 D 163. Secret. Attached to a July 18 memorandum of transmittal from Bundy to Rusk, which stated that Bundy had prepared the memorandum of conversation at the direction of the President who had approved it. Bundy also instructed Rusk to limit access to the memorandum “to those who really must know about it,” since the President wanted “Dobrynin to have confidence in the privacy of such talks.”↩
- Document 78.↩
- Document 73.↩
- For a memorandum of the President’s conversation with Gromyko, October 6, 1961, see vol. XIV, Document 170.↩
- Neither printed.↩