Kennedy

by Ted Sorensen

  He wanted the Europeans to decide whether or not they wanted an MLF in their own interest, not to accept it as a favor to the United States or because he had coerced them—that would only renew their complaints. Total abandonment of the effort, he felt, would renew French charges against the unreliable American monopoly and West German pressures to obtain their own nuclear force. Moreover, many of the State Department professionals, enthusiastic about MLF as an instrument for European integration, were optimistic about its acceptance. They pushed it harder than the President intended, in the belief that Western Europe would embrace it if we did. Kennedy, while still backing MLF within the Alliance, was increasingly skeptical. “How does it feel,” he asked one chief advocate, “to be an admiral without a fleet?” The very issue giving rise to the plan—the distribution of nuclear decision-making—was also its most insurmountable difficulty. “To do something more than merely provide…a different facade of United States control,” he said candidly, “will require a good deal of negotiation and imagination….”

  The negotiations continued intermittently throughout 1963, but showed no burst of imagination that impressed him. To Richard Neustadt, whom he commissioned to write a comprehensive account of the Skybolt-Nassau-MLF affair (in his most serious organized effort to meet his responsibility to future historians as well as to review the adequacy of his policy-makers and methods), he expressed his growing doubts:

  There is no “Europe.” I understand their objection to my speaking for them on nuclear matters, but who’s to be my opposite number? I can’t share this decision with a whole lot of differently motivated and differently responsible people. What one man is it to be shared with—De Gaulle, Adenauer, Macmillan? None of them can speak for Europe.

  Since 1958, however, General Charles de Gaulle did presume to speak for Europe—at least for continental Western Europe. The Cuban missile crisis and its outcome enabled De Gaulle to argue that Berlin and Western Europe were no longer in real danger from a chastened Khrushchev, that nuclear, not conventional, forces made the difference and that the defense of Europe had “moved into second place” in American military priorities.7 Nassau enabled De Gaulle to argue that continental Europe’s chances for nuclear independence were about to be submerged in the Atlantic Alliance, that Europe was being asked to pay part of the cost of America’s deterrent, and that Macmillan (with whom he had met only a few days earlier at Rambouillet and who had not offered him any nuclear assistance) had chosen to tie “insular, maritime” Britain to the United States instead of to Europe. Further emboldened by continuing weakness in this country’s balance of payments position, he moved with more speed than tact—beginning with a caustic January, 1963, press conference—(a) to reject the Polaris offer and the MLF concept, insisting once again on an independent French nuclear force; (b) to veto Britain’s entry into the Common Market, just as the long negotiations for that entry neared success, suggesting that Britain was too closely tied to the United States; (c) to sign with Adenauer a new treaty of unity, thus implicitly tying West Germany to his position; (d) to withdraw still more French forces from NATO; and (e) to frustrate the efforts of the Common Market countries to proceed more quickly to political integration.

  In his famous press conference as in subsequent statements in defense of these bombshells, De Gaulle cleverly played on European resentment of both the American nuclear monopoly and the influence in Europe’s affairs of our massive military, economic and political presence. He also appealed to European pride in refusing to rely on a distant nation for the means and decisions of survival and to European suspicions that England and America wished to dominate. He exploited European fears that the U.S. would not risk its cities to save theirs, that Kennedy’s nagging about nonnuclear forces meant a weakening of our nuclear commitment and that Kennedy’s stance at Cuba proved the danger of a Soviet-American deal or war in which Western Europe could be sacrificed. He appealed to European complacency and parsimony to forget the build-up of ground troops and rely on the French nuclear force’s presence to convince Moscow that the American nuclear force would be dragged in. Now that America, too, was subject to attack, said De Gaulle, “no one in the world—particularly no one in America—can say if, where, when, how and to what extent the American nuclear weapons would be used to defend Europe.”

  The angry initial reaction in the United States and Great Britain was due in part to surprise—not at De Gaulle’s attitudes, which were old, but at his tactics, his willingness to act so abruptly, brazenly and brutally, and with so little notice to his allies, when he might have blocked all the same efforts more subtly and gradually. De Gaulle had originally taken the position that Britain belonged in the Common Market. The American Embassy in Paris had recently reported that the French were resigned to U.K. membership in the Common Market. Even after Nassau, De Gaulle’s Foreign Minister had flatly stated that “no power on earth could keep Britain out of the Common Market.” (It was later speculated that this may not have applied to the General.) At Nassau Macmillan had assured Kennedy that nothing more than a dispute on agriculture stood between his somewhat dilatory negotiators and admission to the Common Market.8

  Macmillan had also argued to Kennedy that De Gaulle, as a believer in national deterrents, would have no objection to a U.S.-U.K. deal on Polaris. The General himself, less than two weeks before he slammed the door on JFK’s “similar” Polaris offer, had indicated that it would take two months to evaluate. Moreover, wholly apart from the events at Nassau, optimism in Washington on the prospects for European integration had long been on the rise. This was partly because the administration’s deep admiration for such advocates as Spaak and Jean Monnet had produced a false expectancy that their logic would prevail. It was also because De Gaulle’s own political position the previous year had seemed so shaky, after the loss of Algeria, that much of the State-CIA-White House speculation had been not how he would block Western unity but who or what would succeed him.9

  De Gaulle’s tactics, however, had often surprised even his own Cabinet with their unexpected turns. Thus Kennedy was briefly startled early in 1963 by a foreign intelligence report of doubtful authenticity. “Rumors from regular and reliable sources” maintained that De Gaulle and the Soviet Union had made or were about to make a secret deal, calling for a demilitarized Central Europe, including all Germany, Greece and Turkey, the progressive withdrawal of American troops from France as well as Germany, and a recognition of the Oder-Neisse line. The report was sufficiently consistent with the needs and desires of both Khrushchev and De Gaulle—to spite the U.S. and dominate Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals” (a favorite De Gaulle phrase)—to deserve checking. Fortunately it proved groundless; but this possibility motivated many of Kennedy’s inquiries in the round of meetings that followed.

  Commissioning papers by David Bruce and Dean Acheson, summoning to a series of lengthy conferences in January and February all the ambassadors and experts on the West, the President explored, probed and reappraised. On the basis of these meetings, he decided that no basic change in strategy was required for four reasons:

  1. Even the proudest and most suspicious Europeans refused to join in De Gaulle’s attacks on NATO and the Americans, whose ties they valued and whose association was preferable to Russia’s in the long years before De Gaulle’s dreams could be realized. Nor would their interest in European unity be satisfied by a paternalistic De Gaulle-Adenauer domination.

  2. De Gaulle’s goal of a united Europe enveloping a reconciled Germany was Kennedy’s goal as well. They fundamentally disagreed over means and over Anglo-American participation; but “the unity of freedom,” said the President,

  has never relied on uniformity of opinion…. Whatever success we may have had in reducing the threat…to Berlin, we pay for by increased problems within the Alliance…. [On] those questions that involve the atom…there are bound to be differences of opinion—and there should be, because they involve life and death.

  Moreover, con
trary to press talk about De Gaulle’s “Grand Design” frustrating Kennedy’s “Grand Design,” Kennedy had never looked upon either MLF or British entry into the EEC as pillars of American policy. Nor had he regarded the pace, process and personalities of European integration as matters for us to decide.

  3. Although he quietly withdrew an earlier arrangement to sell nuclear-powered Skipjack submarines to France, any effort to punish the General, to trade insults with him or to compete with him for the allegiance of Germany and others would only play into De Gaulle’s hands. No previous American President had been able to curb De Gaulle’s disrespect for NATO and insistence on his own nuclear force; and all the proposals to isolate him now by new military or economic arrangements with others, or withdrawals of American pledges, would only retard long-range progress toward Atlantic Partnership.

  4. Finally, he saw no value in appeasing De Gaulle by offering him nuclear weapons on his terms. A year earlier, despite the General’s repeated assertion that France was asking (and offering) nothing, the President—at the urging of the Pentagon and our Ambassador in Paris, and over the opposition of most White House and State Department advisers—had re-examined this nation’s opposition to aiding the French nuclear development. He had decided then that such aid would not win General De Gaulle to our purposes but only strengthen him in his. While minor military benefits might have been received in return, the General’s desire to speak for all Europe, free from British and American influence, would not have been altered. His desire to be independent of NATO, and to form a three-power nuclear directorate outside of NATO, would only have been encouraged. And the West Germans, more pointedly excluded than ever, would surely have reappraised their attitude toward the Atlantic Alliance and toward the acquisition of their own nuclear weapons. “I do not believe it is in the interest of the United States,” the President wrote to a prominent critic in February, 1963, who demanded that he give France nuclear weapons (thus enabling De Gaulle’s tiny force to trigger our own),

  to view the possession of a nuclear arsenal as a legitimate and desirable attribute of every sovereign nation…. If we are to be caught up in a nuclear war, should we not have a voice in the decision that launches it? Is not my first responsibility…to protect the interests of the United States?

  Nevertheless he had been prepared after Nassau to open full discussions with De Gaulle on nuclear matters, to recognize France as a nuclear power and to provide assistance on weapons, and perhaps even on warheads, if the French aligned their force with NATO under something like the Nassau formula. He would similarly be prepared later in 1963—after the atmospheric Test Ban Treaty had been signed—to help France with techniques of underground testing in exchange for her signature on that treaty. But De Gaulle’s negative response on both occasions—no doubt heightened in January by his suspicions of MLF—made serious negotiations impossible.

  In short, concluded the President, little could have been done to avert De Gaulle’s actions and little should be done in response. It was an uneasy conclusion, which he privately re-examined often. But as Western Europe and Red China became stronger and less dependent on their respective big-power backers, he decided splits within both the East and West camps had become inevitable; and lower tensions after Cuba had been certain to widen those splits. He had no desire to raise tensions and reunite the Communists to patch over Western splits.

  A decision not to change American strategy, however, did not mean total inaction. Kennedy began wooing more Europeans more assiduously, expressing sympathy for their desire for a larger voice in East-West and nuclear affairs, and paying particular attention to the West Germans. Aware that history would look kindly on the reconciliation of France and Germany, he rejected all suggestions that he pressure Adenauer into choosing between the U.S. and France or putting off ratification of the new French-German Treaty of Friendship. But he did encourage moves in Bonn to associate its ratification with a preamble restating, much to De Gaulle’s discomfiture, Germany’s pledge to NATO and Atlantic unity.

  He also proceeded with MLF negotiations, leaving the door open to France and to an eventual all-European nuclear force, which would be aided but not restricted by the U.S. and represented on a two-man (U.S. and Europe) Western nuclear directorate. The May, 1963, NATO meetings created an inter-Allied nuclear force (not an MLF, but British bombers and five American Polaris submarines, retained in their national force structures, under NATO command). Arrangements were made for European military officers to participate more fully and equally in nuclear target planning at SAC headquarters in Omaha. He also sought to strengthen the dollar against further balance of payments weaknesses, and pushed ahead on tariff negotiations under the Trade Expansion Act, on consultations for monetary reform and on other small, steady steps in building Atlantic ties. Progress was slow; but in a long evolutionary process altering the basic structure of the world’s political architecture, the United States could afford to be patient. The long-range movement, he felt, was irreversible.

  Kennedy’s most striking and successful answer to De Gaulle—and one he came perilously close to calling off—was his June, 1963, trip to Western Europe and particularly West Germany. Hailed as even De Gaulle had not been hailed on his earlier triumphant tour, the President summed up the purpose of his trip promptly upon his arrival at the Bonn airport:

  I have crossed the Atlantic, some 3,500 miles, at a crucial time in the life of the Grand Alliance. Our unity was forged in a time of danger; it must be maintained in a time of peace…. Economically, militarily, politically, our two nations and all the other nations of the Alliance are now dependent upon one another….

  My stay in this country will be all too brief, but… the United States is here on this continent to stay so long as our presence is desired and required; our forces and commitments will remain, for your safety is our safety. Your liberty is our liberty; and any attack on your soil is an attack upon our own. Out of necessity, as well as sentiment, in our approach to peace as well as war, our fortunes are one.

  Two days later, in the historic Paulskirche in Frankfurt where the first German Assembly had been born, he expanded the theme of Atlantic Partnership in one of the most carefully reworked speeches of his Presidency. The Western Allies, he said, faced not only common military problems but similar internal economic problems. They were bound not only by threat of danger but shared values and goals.

  It is not in [the U.S.] interest to try to dominate the European councils of decision. If that were our objective, we would prefer to see Europe divided and weak, enabling the United States to deal with each fragment individually. Instead, we look forward to a Europe united and strong, speaking with a common voice, acting with a common will, a world power capable of meeting world problems as a full and equal partner….

  The United States will risk its cities to defend yours because we need your freedom to protect ours…. Those who would doubt our pledge or deny this indivisibility, those who would separate Europe from America or split one ally from another, would only give aid and comfort to the men who make themselves our adversaries and welcome any Western disarray.

  Restating these convictions throughout West Germany, Italy and on European television, and in effective private talks with leaders in those countries and with Macmillan in England, he left the continent the following week convinced—on the basis of citizen, leader and press responses—“that our commitment and its durability are understood.”

  Back on his own side of the Atlantic, earlier in 1963, another Allied leader had brought Kennedy headaches, Canada’s erratic John Diefenbaker. But the President, while concerned about his relations with Canada, was less concerned about Diefenbaker. Having troubled himself to learn more about Canada than any previous American head of state, wrote one Canadian observer, Kennedy “expected more of us than his predecessors ever had.” With Diefenbaker his expectations had swiftly vanished.

  Their difficulties had begun long before 1963. The Canadian Prime Minister,
who embraced anti-Americanism both as a personal view and as a political tactic, was annoyed when his rival, Lester Pearson, talked privately with Kennedy at the White House dinner for Nobel Prize winners. A Diefenbaker-Kennedy meeting in May of 1961 had proceeded harmoniously; but Kennedy had inadvertently left behind one of the staff papers he had been using. Diefenbaker not only expropriated the paper but threatened to expose it publicly, claiming that it referred to him as an s.o.b. (Apparently this was a typically illegible reference to the OAS, which the President was urging Canada to join. “I couldn’t have called him an s.o.b.,” commented Kennedy later. “I didn’t know he was one—at that time.”) Kennedy was his sternest when threatened.10 To Diefenbaker’s threat he replied simply: “Just let him try it.”

  In 1963 Diefenbaker and his government not only refused to fulfill their commitments on the location of nuclear warheads on Canadian soil but, in a Parliamentary debate, consistently misrepresented both their position and that of the United States. The Cuban missile crisis had re-emphasized to all the vital importance of rapid readiness to North American defenses; and the State Department, obtaining clearance from the White House but not from the President, issued a press release making clear the inaccuracy of Diefenbaker’s claims about the American request and his response. Kennedy “hit the roof” when he read it in the newspapers—and Diefenbaker hit the ground. His government fell. The President had been anxious to help Harold Macmillan when he had a domestic political crisis that had stemmed partly from U.S. action, but he had no similar sympathy for Diefenbaker. New Canadian elections were held; Pearson was elected; and a nuclear warhead agreement was promptly reached.