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

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

Paris, March 22, 1966, 2244Z.

6118. NATUS. Subject: NATO and France.

1. PermRep lunch today featured an adversary proceeding between de Leusse and everyone else present (US, UK, FRG, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and Brosio).

2. It started when Brosio asked De Leusse why French newspapers were reporting French Government expects substantive replies from the fourteen recipients of French aide-memoire. De Leusse said French on their side were baffled by absence of response, expecting at least some of their allies would want to ask questions about the stated French intentions.

3. Brosio and PermReps of UK, FRG, Italy, Belgium and U.S. all asked De Leusse in various ways why he expected to receive in reply to French note anything but a polite acknowledgment and a reiteration of the principles already published in fourteen-nation declaration. De Leusse kept repeating French assumption that allies would express their curiosity about “modalities” of carrying out French “decisions.” French would then satisfy curiosity by indicating timing and other conditions for French withdrawal from NATO and NATO withdrawal from France.

4. We asked De Leusse repeatedly what question he would suggest we ask, that he would be in a position to answer. He conceded that any question we asked (for example in tomorrow’s NAC meeting) would have to be answered by saying he did not know the answer.

5. We told De Leusse it was reasonable to expect allies to reply to the note but fanciful to expect them to ask substantive questions in reply.

6. This theme—that French were entitled to a reply but not to an answer—was picked up by most of the others. De Leusse said in absence of replies to French note, General De Gaulle would probably start ordering actions to be taken.

7. This led to a frank discussion of the various avenues of action open to the French. Brosio, with interjections from others, produced the following categories:

(A) Withdrawal of French officers and other military personnel from “integrated commands.” There was general agreement that French could and probably would do this first, since it requires no real consultation with anybody. However, de Leusse made sharp distinction between “Generals” and “telephonistes,” saying that French purpose was not to paralyze NATO activity and implying French may leave some service personnel, particularly in the communications field.

(B) Withdrawal of commitment of French ground troops and air squadrons to NATO. This was an action French can take without consulting anybody. However, it clearly would require countervailing action on the part of other governments (for example, US decision about nuclear weapons available for French troops, and decision by Germany and other allies about whether France has the right to station forces in Germany if they are not committed to NATO).

(C) Eviction of SHAPE and AFCENT from French soil. Here French Government is no longer giving orders to Frenchmen but to officers and officials of other governments. Unless France has in mind physically ejecting SHAPE and AFCENT staffs (“You really can’t treat us as if we were Formosa’s UNESCO delegation,” said Brosio), this action will require some negotiations about dates, ultimate size, cost-sharing, and the like.

(D) Bilateral evictions, notably of U.S. and Canadian installations. Here, too, France has to negotiate with other nations unless it is prepared to use its gendarmerie.

8. In discussing these categories, particularly (C) and (D), other PermReps including Cleveland kept emphasizing the narrow limits within which French Government could unilaterally make decisions that would be binding on its allies. Essentially the line drawn in the discussion was between actions in which the French Government is ordering Frenchmen around, and actions in which the French Government proposes to affect the lives, functions, or locations of non-French personnel.

9. Woven into this long dialogue were frequent references to financial implications of prospective French moves. At one point Cleveland said, and De Leusse in effect agreed, that French Government could not make “decisions” to increase the amount of money budgeted and appropriated by allied governments for NATO and European defense purposes. Decisions on sharing costs of French moves must obviously be negotiated and agreed to by Ministries of Finance of all allied governments, unless France “decision” had attached to it a check for the full additive cost it would entail. Other PermReps chimed in with some alacrity on the same theme.

10. De Staercke (Belgium) raised some even more fundamental questions, which were not thoroughly discussed. He said essential issue was degree to which other allies need feel obliged to worry about the defense of France, in view of the French declaration of intentions. There would be Belgians, he said, who would advocate Belgian neutrality under these circumstances; the larger nations in NATO would have to act with a certain sense of responsibility, but perhaps the smaller nations could show what nuisance value they still retained in relation to France. He raised particularly the question whether the NATO air defense system, which provides early warning information to French defenses, including the force de frappe, should perhaps be withheld from France unless reasonable attitude was shown on such issues as use of French air space.

11. Dialogue on this subject was not fully engaged, which was just as well since De Staercke was overstating his case in the heat of discussion.

12. Comment: De Leusse will probably report to Quai that French can expect replies but no real answers to French aide-memoire. All PermReps present seemed to be clear that it did not make sense for allies to do anything but acknowledge French note at the same level of generality in which it is written, and await further “precisions” from the French side.

Several of his colleagues were very frank in telling De Leusse that De Gaulle could not escape taking the initiative in making detailed proposal to open the negotiations on specific issues.

Cleveland

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, DEF 4 NATO. Secret; Priority. Repeated to the other NATO capitals.