330. Message From President Johnson to Prime Minister Douglas Home1
CAP 64114. 1. Many thanks for your note.2 Our decision to abstain was indeed an act of solidarity, but I feel I must tell you quite frankly that I approved it reluctantly and only because as the matter finally came to me it seemed to me that you were entitled to expect that we would not oppose you directly. On the merits, in a future case, it would be hard for me to make the same decision again.3 We may have to pay heavily for the abstention in a loss of authority and an awkward precedent that can be used against us.
2. I, of course, have no illusions about Nasser or the mischievous game he is playing. But I quite frankly doubt that at this point in time abrupt challenges to the Arabs are useful for our joint interests.
3. So I agree that this incident and its aftermath make it more than ever important that we concert our Near Eastern policies more closely. I hope that Rusk and Butler will be able to reach some solid conclusions when they meet during the CENTO session later this month. We both have such great interests to guard in that tortured part of the world that we cannot afford to pursue divergent policies.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Komer Files, Yemen, December 1963-March 1966. Secret; Nodis.↩
- See Document 329.↩
- In a 4 p.m. telephone conversation with Ball on April 10, Bundy said that the President wanted to send a message on the post mortem of the Yemen problem to the Prime Minister, making it clear that the United States did not want to get into the habit of getting caught in an abstention it really didn’t believe in. (Johnson Library, National Security File, Papers of George W. Ball, Yemen, 4/9/64-2/23/66)↩