Office of the Historian

235. Memorandum of Conversation1

Washington, February 8, 1967, 3 p.m.

SUBJECT

  • NATO Problems

PARTICIPANTS

  • Americans
    • The Secretary
    • Under Secretary Deming, Treasury Department
    • Under Secretary Rostow
    • Counselor Bowie
    • Ambassador McGhee
    • Assistant Secretary Leddy,EUR
    • Mr. Fisher, ACDA
    • Assistant Secretary McNaughton, Department of Defense
    • Mr. Bator, White House
    • Mr. Norwood, STR
    • Mr. Puhan, EUR/GER
    • Mr. Johnpoll, EUR/GER
  • Germans
    • Vice Chancellor Brandt
    • Egon Bahr, FRG Foreign Office
    • Ambassador Knappstein, FRG Embassy
    • Minister von Lilienfeld, FRG Embassy
    • Counselor von Staden, FRG Embassy
    • Dr. H. Arnold, FRG Foreign Office
    • Mr. Ruhfus, FRG Foreign Office
    • Mr. Schultz-Boysen, FRG Embassy
    • Mr. Weber, FRG Foreign Office
    • Mr. Soenksen, FRG Foreign Office

On NATO, the Secretary said that we feel reassured by the solidarity of the Fourteen in moving forward with integrated forces. Our own 200,000 troops on the central front are fully integrated and we have been thankful for the solidarity of the Fourteen in moving toward integration. We attach great importance to developing a common view on the nature of the threat, what we should do about the threat, and an equitable and reasonable sharing of the burden. We would be most concerned over the chain reaction from unilateral actions such as rumored reductions by the UK, Luxembourg, and Belgium. This would have an adverse effect on our own ability to meet NATO requirements; it would add to the feeling over here that Europe bases its own action on detente, but wants us to base our action on confrontation.

Secretary Rusk referred to newspaper headlines which could give the false impression that Viet-Nam pre-occupies us to the exclusion of everything else. The Secretary said that he had spent his first two years in office as a “Berlin expert”, with the possibility of war with the Soviet Union always present during that period as a result of Berlin and the Cuba missile problems. The Secretary said that we are, as a Government, much occupied with NATO, East-West relations, and other major European problems. The President spends more time on these problems than on the relatively straight-forward problem in Viet-Nam. The Secretary said that we had needed advice from our friends on things we should be doing in Europe, and said that he hoped Brandt would feel free at anytime to offer us advice.

Brandt reminded the Secretary that during a recent television interview for the American Broadcasting Corporation, he had been asked what he intended to take up with us in Washington; and that he had replied that one thing he did not want to do was to act like a girl who constantly has to be reassured by her boyfriend that he still loves her.

Brandt said that on NATO the Federal Republic is in favor of going on with integrated forces. He said that on the British problem, the Germans will have to see what they could do to contribute to a solution; the Germans want British troops to remain both for military and political reasons.

  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, DEF 4 NATO. Secret. Drafted by Johnpoll and approved in S and M on February 17. The meeting was held in Secretary Rusk’s Conference Room. The source text is labeled “Part 4 of 10.”↩