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

62. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to the Ambassador to the United Kingdom (Bruce)¹

Washington, December 9, 1964.

The President has asked me to make his position very clear to Lord Harlech, in order that there be no misunderstanding of the forebearance and restraint with which he conducted his discussions of the Atlantic nuclear problem with Mr. Wilson. I am doing this, and I shall explain to Lord Harlech that I am doing it at the direct request of the President. As I said on the telephone,² I believe it would be helpful for you to say these things to the Prime Minister, although not on the basis of a direct Presidential instruction. I think you are right in worrying about the temptations Mr. Wilson may feel in the heat of debate, and you are the one in the best position to give him a personal warning on this specific point.

What I shall say to Lord Harlech at the President’s direction is the following:

1. The President wants to be very sure that the Prime Minister does not misunderstand his position on the nuclear force problem. The President and Senator Humphrey are both political men and the President in particular knows what a close election is like. It seemed to them that it would be unfair to force an immediate decision, against his previous record, on a man who has been in power less than two months, with a four-seat majority and a very grave economic and financial crisis on his hands. The President therefore decided not to force the pace with the Prime Minister, but rather to allow his advisers to explain American thinking as clearly as they could within a framework which the President deliberately set as one of discussion and not of decision.

2. The President also recognized and understood the importance of giving the British a free hand in finding out for themselves the real position and convictions of the Government in Bonn. The Laborites have been telling us for a long time that we do not properly understand the Germans. There is every reason for the Prime Minister to satisfy himself directly on this point, and if we have been wrong in our estimate of the Germans, no one is more interested than we in finding out.

3. But by the same token, we hope that the British Government will take very seriously whatever they do find in their discussions with the Germans, and our own first impression, after a very frank and entirely open-ended discussion with Schroeder,³ is that the British will find the Germans at least as firm on a number of basic questions as we have thought.

4. Meanwhile the President is gravely concerned by the risk that the Prime Minister may give others the impression that the U.S. has in any way backed off from its basic assessment of the situation as outlined in the paper of comments which was given to Her Majesty’s Government on December 8.⁴ The fact that the President himself did not press the argument was merely an indication of his desire not to force the judgment on the Prime Minister now. The President noted that the Prime Minister himself did not pursue the argument on specific points, and his assumption is that the two governments will eventually have to bring the matter to a decision after due allowance for discussions which are in prospect with others.

5. The President has asked me to emphasize particularly to the Ambassador the very great damage which could be done if the Prime Minister should take a line next week in the House of Commons that would make those eventual decisions more difficult. The President knows the temptations of debate, and he has already had one painful experience with a speech of the Prime Minister in the House of Commons.⁵

If the impression should be created in the United States that the Prime Minister was trying to strengthen his position by seeming to have “won a victory” over Washington, the President would find it necessary to take a very different attitude toward this whole series of discussions.

I will tell the Ambassador, as my personal judgment, that a man in the Prime Minister’s position would be extremely ill-advised to run any risks of this sort with a sensitive and determined man like President Johnson, since the President has plenty of cards to play if this becomes a public contest. I shall tell Lord Harlech that the President has shown great restraint in these last days because of his concern to avoid any appearance of running a power play against a weak opponent. But if his generosity is misunderstood, I doubt if it is likely to last.

McGeorge Bundy ⁶

1. Source: Department of State, S/MF Files: Lot 66 D 182, Memoranda. Secret.
2. This telephone conversation has not been further identified.
3. Schroeder visited Washington November 23–24. In addition to several bilateral topics, he and Rusk discussed the MLF with Schroeder saying that Bonn would not accept discrimination against Germany in the MLF and stressing the need to conclude negotiations by March of 1965. (Memorandum of conversation, November 26; Department of State, Central Files, DEF(MLF))
4. Attachment to Document 61.
5. Presumably a reference to Wilson’s November 23 speech.
6. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.