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

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

Paris, December 18, 1965, 2035Z.

3491. NATUS. Subject: NATO Ministerial Meeting. The meeting of NATO Ministers has been reported in detail, for the record.² The European publicity on your comments and those of Secretary McNamara has also been fully and professionally covered through USIS. This cable is designed as a summary analysis of what happened here this week.³

1. The Alliance

This Ministerial session both summarized and confirmed the process of “getting the Alliance moving again” which has been going on throughout the autumn.

A. The new five-year force planning system is a major “reform of NATO.”

B. The prospect of nuclear consultations in the Special Committee of Defense Ministers and its three working groups obviously is developing a good deal of interest, and is regarded as forward movement by both friends and foes of farther-reaching nuclear sharing projects.

C. We have escalated the Allied mobile force from haggling over finances to fundamental reappraisal by NAC, with the presumption of proceeding to do what needs to be done on a “less than 15” basis if necessary.

D. We have begun to relate the NATO thinking about arms control to the thinking about NATO force planning.

E. In short, we have begun a vigorous effort to make more rational use of something like the level of defense expenditures now available to the Alliance. Whether that level rises or falls will depend more on what happens in the outside world than on what NATO Ministers and officials say to each other.

2. There were of course two ghosts at the feast: France and Vietnam. The spectre of French obstruction was exorcised with comparative ease. Your presentation on Vietnam was part of a fundamental shift in the terms of the transatlantic dialogue on the non-NATO responsibilities of NATO members.

3. France.

(A) The frustration of Couve’s effort to end the Special Committee next spring can be traced only in part to the reluctance of the French Government to have a major public row with its traditional allies a few days before the run-off election.⁴ It can also be attributed to the fact that nearly all the Allies, and most French Ministers and officials too, have concluded this fall that a NATO without France is a practical (if inconvenient) proposition.

(B) French bargaining power is not very strong with Allies who are increasingly willing to leave the French chair vacant and go ahead on moves to strengthen NATO. The British understand this clearly. The continental Allies sense it too; hence their stiffened posture both in Brussels and in Paris. And the French are increasingly aware of it. The results of the first round in the French elections can be read as providing some mild evidence of this—though Atlantic issues never loomed large in the campaign. More explicit evidence is to be found in Couve’s willingness during the Special Committee argument this week to settle for a one-day victory claim followed by a quiet capitulation which did not wholly cancel the impression of French leadership created in French media the first day.

(C) The Ministerial Meeting provided several useful tests of the French bargaining position. Couve’s fancy footwork tended to obscure the fact that his attack on the Special Committee was half-hearted and his original statement full of prepared positions to which he could retreat. On two other issues the French did not even bother to challenge positions with which they are known to disagree. They agreed to tentative force goals which carry NATO into its twenty-first year, beyond the magic date of 1969 which De Gaulle has mentioned so often. They did not speak up on the mobile force, although they had put into a recent military committee report an explicit objection to a statement that the mobile force was important for the defense of NATO’s flanks. And when the French tried to rally the other NATO countries against a German request for NATO backing against Soviet attacks, they gave up when they found even the Norwegians would not join them.

(D) We have of course not heard the last from the French Government on the duration and functions of the Special Committee, and we are not even at the beginning of the story of French attempts to “reform” NATO and reduce the American military presence in France—assuming De Gaulle is re-elected Sunday.

4. Vietnam and China.

Your stated concern about Vietnam, which was extended far into the future by Sec. McNamara’s remarks on China, formalized and dramatized for our allies and the world the attitude at which we have been hinting for the past three months.

(A) On Vietnam in the short run, there is grudging acquiescence that the United States has no honorable alternative to its present course, and we get an increasing playback of the notion that U.S. fidelity to its Far Eastern commitments is important to Europeans protected by the U.S. commitment here.

(B) But apart from a verbal dividend here and there, such as Spaak’s impressive statement on Belgian TV December 14, the sources of physical aid to South Vietnam do not leap to the eye. But continuing emphasis may produce a somewhat large non-military presence from Europe, which is something.

(C) Ministers can hardly have failed to get the point that increasing requirements for U.S. effort in Vietnam are bound to have some impact on U.S. deployment of NATO support forces. As practical political leaders they can see that with growing U.S. casualties in Vietnam, American opinion will be increasingly impatient with a detached European attitude toward our commitment in Vietnam while they press us to honor every scruple of our pledge to them.

(D) When and if we have to move sizable units out of Europe, it will be important to have made, vigorously and continuously, the point that the only way Europeans can prevent our increasing Far Eastern efforts from degrading NATO is to join that effort themselves. This meeting was an excellent start in that direction.

(E) The expressed interest of European Ministers in the conditions for peace has one meaning we should think about. Real military participation by Europeans in the Far East would I believe require a major change in the international framework of the defense of South Vietnam—at a minimum, a system of mutual international commitments that enable other substantial participants in the war to participate in decisions about bombing and peace negotiations as well.

(F) When it comes to the longer-run threat of a more powerful Communist China, the assembled Ministers were certainly not stirred into eager acceptance of responsibilities beyond the NATO defense area. But the eloquent and serious expression of U.S. concern has been planted deep in some European political psyches.

(G) From conversation around the edges of the meeting this week, I would judge that the most important thing that happened here was to bring home to governments a central fact about the next few years of international relations: that the United States would increasingly judge its bilateral relations with other nations by reference to the degree to which those nations feel responsible for joining us in building a dependable system of peaceful change in the more turbulent parts of the world. Most Europeans have in the first half of this decade started economic aid programs as partial recognition of this responsibility. I suppose it will take the second half of the 1960s to bring them fully into the peacekeeping business, and perhaps longer than that to find the formula for associating them with our determination to teach the Chinese Communists that military militancy doesn’t pay.

(H) To convert our continental allies from affluent protectorates to active participants in policing world order beyond Europe will be uphill missionary work for some time to come.

But I suspect that more than one Foreign Minister will be ruminating on your throw-away comment Thursday morning, that in a world where Chinese Communists have long-range missiles, NATO has to begin worrying about a “Western flank” in the Bering Sea.

Cleveland

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, NATO 3 FR(PA). Secret; Priority. Repeated to the NATO capitals, Saigon, and USUN.
2. U.S. Delegation records of the 36th NATO Ministerial Meeting, held at Paris December 14–16, 1965, including remarks by Secretaries Rusk and McNamara on December 14 and 15 respectively, memoranda of conversation, position papers, reports on the sessions, NATO documents, and telegrams to and from the delegation, are ibid., Conference Files: Lot 66 D 347, CF 2574–2583.
3. On November 10, in a telegram to the posts in the NATO capitals, the Department of State transmitted its views on the Ministerial Meeting. Stressing that the United States did not want a confrontation with France on fundamental issues, the telegram emphasized that because of the atmosphere of uncertainty about the future of the Alliance it was necessary to give the meeting a positive air to bolster confidence in NATO. (Telegram 886 to Paris; ibid., Central Files, NATO 3 FR(PA)) In an appraisal of the meeting on December 22, the Department of State noted that this aim had been met and two additional purposes fulfilled: 1) progress was made on several important pieces of Alliance business, and 2) Rusk had clearly conveyed the seriousness of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam as well as the view that Vietnam was important to the Alliance. The Department concluded that the meeting could be described as a successful holding operation for all parties, but with significant procedural movement on some of the Alliance questions. (Circular telegram 1202; ibid.)
4. The Embassy in France sent a more detailed report on the French efforts to limit the Special Committee in telegram 3444 from Paris, December 16. (Ibid.)