166. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson1
SUBJECT
- Military Aid for Tunisia
Secretary Rusk may raise at lunch one of the trickiest small problems we face—how to answer a year-old Tunisian request for military aid. Our government has divided sharply.
Bourguiba wants a closer relationship with us to offset his deteriorating relations with De Gaulle and Nasser and the Soviet-backed arms-buildup next door in Algeria. Last fall, his government gave us a $100 million shopping list. To bring it back to reason we sent a survey team which recommended a $25 million program over five years to develop a Tunisian force that could hold off the Algerians just long enough for outside help to arrive.
Secretaries Rusk and McNamara have vetoed the five-year commitment and are recommending a one-year slice of the $25 million program. The deciding factor in their minds is that they don’t think the Congress will stand for any new long-term commitment right now.
However, they feel there are strong reasons for doing something:
- —Tunisia is a small country next to a big neighbor with a lot of Soviet equipment.
- —Bourguiba has been remarkably good on Vietnam, and we can’t expect our friends to stick up for us if we don’t take their legitimate defense concerns seriously.
- —He has isolated himself in the Arab world by standing up to Nasser, and he is a moderate voice on Israel and African issues.
- —It doesn’t make sense to force Bourguiba to buy arms in the open market while we’re helping with his successful development program. He has nowhere else to turn.
- —We have gone far enough by offering a survey team to lead Bourguiba to expect a positive response.
Dave Bell felt strongly that we should not go ahead with this program and appealed right up through the Senior Interdepartmental Group to the Secretary. He argued that:
- —Tunisia’s natural relationship lies with Europe, not with the US. Moving into any long-term program now would reverse our policy of gradually disengaging from Tunisia and nudging it toward its natural partners.
- —By balancing the Tunisian side of the North African arms imbalance, we would appear to be fueling a Tunisian-Algerian arms race. The examples of India-Pakistan, Greece-Turkey, Jordan-Israel teach that we should be drawing back from this kind of program wherever possible.
- —Ambassador Korry’s recommendation for your African program capitalize on natural sub-regional groupings like Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. With both neighbors suspicious of Algeria, economic cooperation may be a pipe dream. However, we ought to be urging cooperation—maybe even arms limitation—not undermining it by helping widen the Tunisian-Algerian gap.
- —Tunisia needs to concentrate every last ounce of talent and money on economic development.
The Secretaries’ proposal contains one big hooker. There’s no sensible military rationale for a one-year $5 million program. We must either go on with the next four years, year by year, or stop before we’ve finished the job. Cutting off the program a year from now would be harder than not starting at all. So we re talking about a one-year program only for the sake of Congressional appearances.
We are all uncomfortable about this program especially if there’s any thought of stopping after one year. At best, it’s a 51–49 decision. However, on balance I think we ought to go ahead. If we had something promising to offer Bourguiba in the way of arms limitation, I’d give it a try, but there’s little chance of that now. In the final analysis, it’s tough to tell a friend like Bourguiba that we won’t help him defend himself when he has so willingly backed our cause in Vietnam.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Tunisia, Vol. I, Memos & Miscellaneous, 12/63–9/68. Secret.↩