Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XIII, Western Europe Region

113. Telegram From the Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Regional Organizations to the Department of State¹

Paris, November 28, 1965, 1900Z.

Polto Circular 19. Defense for Secy McNamara and Asst Secy McNaughton and JCS. Subject: Special Committee of Defense Ministers. Brief summary of November 27th meeting of Defense Ministers already sent in Polto Circ 18.² Full U.S. notes on meeting being pouched to all addressees.³ This cable designed to give some highlights and sidelines of special interest.

1. We achieved our main purpose, which was to get special committee off the ground and divided into working groups of reasonable size for serious followup work. Immediate effect is public and private demonstration that Alliance is engaged in lively and serious endeavor, that this work has to do with enormous power already made available to Alliance by its members especially U.S., and that work is proceeding in spite of regrettable French abstention.

2. Advance arrangements for meeting worked well. All Ministers attending seemed reasonably clear what the meeting was and what it was not. Nobody tried seriously to convert meeting into a debate on collective nuclear force or on non-proliferation treaty. All procedural arrangements, including terms of reference of three working groups, were cooked ahead of time. With single Dutch exception, composition of working groups, with four nations on each, was also agreed by informal negotiation before meeting started.

Moral: When we are reasonably clear what we want to accomplish, we can accomplish much of it by informal negotiation among PermReps. Dutch PermRep Boon strongly recommended his govt be flexible, but unfortunately was overruled.

3. Insistence of Netherlands DefMin De Jong, backed by Hague Cabinet decision, broke the consensus otherwise established on composition working groups. Result was working groups with five members rather than four. (Dutch position was thus characterized by UK DefMin Healey: “If working group had only four members it would lack its fifth wheel”.) Canadians, Turks, and Belgians, all objected to implicit Netherlands assumption that it could represent smaller nations as fifth member working group on nuclear planning. Resulting deadlock was not resolved in spite of much luncheon discussion and some telephoning to The Hague. Ministers finally withdrew into a private room and applied to otherwise insoluble problem the oldest form of collective decision making: selection by lot. That was how Turkey became fifth member of working group on nuclear planning.

4. Status of Special Committee is now clear: It is a committee of the North Atlantic Council, chaired by SYG, with three working groups responsible to it. Special Committee will report to Ministerial Council, but (contrary to hints in French press backgrounding) Council can no longer be considered as being seized with question whether there should be a Special Committee. It simply exists as ad hoc committee whose duration, while not permanent, is indefinite. Further arrangements on procedure, including such issues as chairmanship of and staff work for working groups, will be in hands of steering committee of PermReps.

5. Procedural bridges already crossed include:

(a) Agreement that Brosio’s report to Council in December will be agreed with steering committee of PermReps;

(b) Date for next meeting already set for week of March 28, 1966;

(c) Members of working groups are DefMins or Deputies designated by them.

6. Briefings by SACEUR Nuclear Deputy van Rolleghem and International Staff ExSec Coleridge were not a notable addition to meeting, though Coleridge at least was brief. Written briefings and military replies to handful of questions were descriptive rather than analytical. They implied that existing arrangements for planning, communications, command and control, were well in hand and did not analyze gaps or failings requiring Special Committee’s attention. This contributed to feeling by several DefMins (notably U.S., U.K., and Germany) that leadership and staff work for working groups will have to come essentially from governments.

7. Secretary McNamara’s presentation on nuclear stockpiles, including numbers of warheads in Europe by type, country of location, and nationality of delivery forces (but no information on yields of weapons in Europe), and his revelation of total numbers and yields of U.S. strategic forces, laid down a serious and impressive factual basis for Special Committee’s work. Fact this information was made available, under security rules that enabled DefMins to use it in their own governments (on a “need-to-know” basis) added greatly to the sense that formation this Special Committee was an important moment in life of Alliance. It also indicated that U.S. really intends to consult more seriously with allies on nuclear questions that affect them. Neither during the meeting nor in informal conversations around its edges did we hear any skepticism of U.S. intentions in this regard. Secretary McNamara’s backgrounder, using summary numbers for both NATO and U.S. stockpiles, should help carry same impression to press and public at large.

8. Apart from U.S. statement, most impressive contribution of substance was made by Denis Healey (UK). He forcefully described need for better political decision-making machinery by drawing from McNamara statement the conclusion that NATO arrangements contain “all the hardware we need for any conceivable purpose” and plenty of machinery at military level for release of weapons. But without better political arrangements, he said, both the power and the military release procedures are “irrelevant.” The enemy must know we are able to decide to respond, and allies must have the same confidence. He graphically described the kinds of questions that political Ministers would be bound to ask when death of millions their own constituents was at stake. Task of Special Committee, as Healey described it, was “to build the community of understanding among governments to the level of the community of understanding among their military advisers.” But he also implied that the military advisers were not asking the political authorities the right questions about nuclear warfare.

9. Healey came the closest to relating Special Committee to collective nuclear sharing projects. Describing the nuclear planning working group as a device “to consult on strategy involving nuclear weapons,” he said first task was work up realistic alternative plans for deployment and use existing nuclear weapons system, and face difficult issues about development future weapons systems. Only then, he said, can we consider “how to group existing or future weapons systems” in ways that involved collective ownership or control. It would, he said, be “futile” to do this before we know how nuclear weapons would be used.

10. Other statements by Ministers were both mercifully brief and of generally high quality. Von Hassel (Ger) said no country could depend entirely on decisions by others to ensure its own security, and made clear FRG does not consider steering committee as substitute for collective nuclear force. “Cannot do the job entirely by technical improvements,” he said. Costopoulos (Greece) put main emphasis on careful study of use of tactical weapons, emphasizing that veto by nuclear powers on nuclear use should be matched by responsibility of those in whose “sector” nuclear weapons were deployed and used. Turk DefMin Topaloglu, for whom PermRep Birgi was mouthpiece, presented a curious proposal to give advance authority to NATO commanders to use tactical weapons bypassing political consultation in an emergency—a proposal unlikely to be heard of again. Andreotti (Italy) made interesting proposal for a “political state of vigilance” as a form of alert to be decided and declared by NATO Council, a low-key alert designed to precede more far-reaching and alarming military alerts now contemplated by NATO procedures. Danish Minister Gram was silent except for brief justification Denmark’s presence on committee. Belgian Minister Moyersoen was helpful during argument about composition of working groups, when he emphasized these groups would not have a life of their own but would be under parent Special Committee.

11. Hellyer (Canada) asked some perceptive and difficult questions about NATO procedures in event of an emergency. SACEUR had said he would look to North Atlantic Council for guidance on use of nuclear weapons. But Hellyer wanted to know whether a unanimity rule would apply in the Council on this subject. Could one country veto employment of weapons by a NATO commander? What if one or two countries failed to decide or unduly delayed their decision? What are the military implications of SACEUR having permission from some but not all of the NATO countries? Nobody answered these questions directly. In later discussion of NAC role in nuclear decision-making, it seemed to be the prevailing assumption that governments would make their own decisions in their own capitals, but NAC represented useful facility to pool information on nature of crises and to consult rapidly with other allies on their own reactions to and intentions in a crisis.

12. Next steps:

PermReps will have to meet soon to clear up some of the issues of procedure that were left to them by the Ministers. In discussion with Secretary McNamara after meeting, we agreed that U.S. line on procedure for working groups should be to have one member of club assume the chairmanship (U.S. opting to chair working group on nuclear planning), and organize staff work to be done by governments. Thus in case of planning group, U.S. would draft papers, consult quite closely with U.K. and Germany in process, and call the full group in the latter part of January. Schedule for working groups can be readily arranged while Ministers are together here in mid-December.

13. All-in-all, this enterprise is well launched now. Our object will be to maintain sufficient momentum to keep it aloft.

Cleveland

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, DEF 4 NATO. Secret; Priority; Limdis. Repeated to the other NATO capitals, USUN, and the Department of Defense.
2. Polto Circular 18, November 27, reported that the meeting had established working groups on data and intelligence, communications, and nuclear planning with the United States and the United Kingdom members of all three. (Ibid.)
3. Transmitted in Polto A–276, November 29. (Ibid.) Attached to the notes were, inter alia, the text of McNamara’s remarks to the meeting, the terms of reference for the working groups, and the communique issued by NATO after the meeting. For text of the communique, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1965, p. 453.