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# CHAPTER IV - NATO'S Nuclear Dilemma

## I. Background

The Franco-German treaty of collaboration was interpreted in Washington as a means by which France might establish its hegemony in Europe and as a precursor of nuclear collaboration between France and Germany. After a brief period in which Washington's outrage seemed to be directed equally at Bonn and at Paris, an assiduous wooing of the Federal Republic began. American policymakers decided that in order to contain the French challenge it was necessary to isolate France within Europe. The Administration chose the problem of nuclear control for the main thrust of its effort partly because the French challenge had been presented most explicitly in the nuclear field, partly because this seemed to be the most effective way to dispose of the twin specters of a German national nuclear program and Franco-German collaboration in the nuclear field.

The nuclear issue had been before NATO almost since its beginning. It became particularly acute when the New Look defense policy of the Eisenshower Administration caused NATO to rely increasingly on nuclear

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weapons. A diversified nuclear arsenal grew up on the Continent; it included weapons assigned to front-line units with a range of less than 100 miles and yields below 100 tons as well as tactical aircraft of a range of close to 1000 miles and equipped with weapons many times as powerful as those which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons were deployed on the Continent on the theory that the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) should have in his own control whatever was necessary to destroy or neutralize weapons aimed at Europe. Inevitably, as the range of weapons increased this produced an overlap between the mission of the Strategic Air Command and that of SACEUR. Weapons aimed at Europe could be neutralized only by the destruction of some targets deep within the U.S.S.R. Some of SACEUR's weapons were therefore tactical only in the technical sense that they were based in Europe and not under the command of SAC. Even in the Fifties, the nuclear deployment in Europe raised serious issues of how a nuclear war was to be coordinated between SACEUR and the Strategic Air Command.

Even more importantly, as nuclear weapons became an integral part of NATO strategy the issue of how to control them grew pressing. Who would

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give the order to fire and against what targets? In an alliance of sovereign states how was it possible to reassure allies that America's nuclear monopoly **could be reconciled with** European **concerns**: (a) that the United States might act precipitately and thus involve our allies in a nuclear war against their will; (b) that the United States might not take the interests of its allies as seriously as its own and not go to nuclear war when some of its partners thought their vital interests were at stake.

The control problem became acute when the Soviets deployed a massive force of Medium Range Ballistic missiles (MRBM's)--numbering about 700-- in Western Russia and aimed at Europe. The increasingly bold use of Soviet nuclear blackmail against Europe coincided in time with the development in the United States of the concept of "flexible response." The essence of this strategic concept was to reduce the automaticity of the American nuclear protection and to make the American reaction depend on a decision which was to be taken in the circumstances of the moment. Since the circumstances of the unprecedented stress of nuclear conflict could not possibly be foreseen, our European allies began to press for assurances that weapons to counteract the Soviet medium range missiles would be

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available when needed. What is more important--they began to demand specific guarantees specifying the circumstances in which NATO's nuclear arsenal would be used. In other words, our allies began to ask for a share in the political control of nuclear strategy.

When the issue of counteracting the Soviet MRBM's first came up in the last year of the Eisenhower Administration, the initial tendency in Washington was to go along with a proposal of SACEUR (the General Norstad) to replace his tactical aircraft with medium range missiles. The proposal envisaged the installation of a mobile, land-based version of the Polaris missile in Europe under the double-veto system which required the approval of both the host country and the United States before it could be fired. Upon further consideration, the Eisenhower Administration concluded that such a deployment was unwise. It was argued that a large number of missiles constantly moving on European roads might disquiet the populations and thus encourage neutralism. The double-veto system was believed to provide inadequate safeguards against the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Germany. Accordingly, a State Department study group headed by Professor Bowie proposed that NATO's MRBM requirement be met by Polaris missiles.

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installed on ships (in the early version, submarines). These ships were
to be jointly owned, operated and financed by the participants and remain
under SACEUR's control at all times. To prevent the withdrawal of
national contingents, each ship was to be manned by crews of mixed
nationality. Each participant was to have a veto. The multilateral
scheme was submitted to the NATO Council by Secretary of State Herter
in December 1960 for study. A final decision was delayed until the new
Administration could assess the problem.

The Kennedy Administration turned with characteristic energy to
a reconsideration of NATO strategy. It concluded that NATO had placed too
much emphasis on nuclear weapons. It was much more sceptical than the
Eisenhower Administration had been about the significance of tactical
nuclear weapons. It stressed the role of conventional forces. As for
strategic nuclear weapons, the new Administration was committed, as
the Eisenhower Administration never had been, to a degree of unitary control
over all of the nuclear weapons of the Alliance which in practice meant
American control. Accordingly, the multilateral force was cold-shouldered
in the beginning of the Kennedy Administration, because it was believed

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that a separate NATO force would only complicate the unitary strategy which was the preferred solution. The preferred and hoped for solution was the designation of the President as the executive agent of the Alliance for nuclear weapons.

In pursuit of these objectives, the Kennedy Administration offered a number of schemes which sought to combine assurances about the availability of American weapons with undiluted American control. From the point-of-view of the conduct of military operations these proposals had great technical merit. However, the basic issue raised by the American insistence on unitary control of strategy was not technical but political: a centralized military strategy was possible only if the United States was prepared to yield at least some of the sovereignty that it was asking its allies to give up. Specifically, we could not reserve to ourselves a monopoly over the physical possession of nuclear weapons as well as the sole discretion about the decision to go to nuclear war and the method of conducting it.

The issue of nuclear control emphasized that NATO required a mechanism for managing political crises in addition to a military staff for planning a war.

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Failure to [meet this issue head-on] led to a highly theoretical, almost scholastic, dispute over such legal formulae as "earmarking" and "assignment"-- disputes which exacerbated the concerns which had given rise to the issue of nuclear control in the first place. Thus in May, 1961, President Kennedy formally offered to "commit to NATO ... five--and subsequently still more-- Polaris submarines ... subject to any agreed NATO guidelines on their

1. control and use." This pledge was declared fulfilled by Secretary McNamara at the Athens ministerial meeting when he announced that five Polaris

2. submarines had already been "committed" to NATO with more to come. In his report to the House Armed Services Committee of January, 1963, Secretary McNamara announced that the United States had "earmarked a fully operational

3. Polaris force to the NATO command."

These measures did little to alleviate the situation; in some ways, they made it more acute. For what precisely was the significance of the

1. John F. Kennedy, Address to the Canadian Parliament, DOSB, Vol. XLIV, 1145 (June 5, 1961), p. 841.

2. *New York Times*, March 6, 1962.

3. Hearings on Military Posture, Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 88th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C., 1963), p. 298.

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assignment of submarines? Did it mean that there was a stronger obligation to use submarines "assigned" to NATO than SAC in the defense of Europe?

What was one to make of the phrase in the communique after the NATO ministerial meeting in Athens in May 1962 to the effect that the United States and Great Britain had given "firm assurances that their strategic forces will continue to provide defense against threats to the Alliance

beyond the capability of NATO-committed forces to deal with." Did this imply that there were two "thresholds" in NATO strategy: one between conventional and nuclear war and another between the strategic forces assigned to NATO and the rest of SAC? If so, this would mean either that the counterforce strategy on which the Administration had staked so much would have to be abandoned or that the strategic forces under the control of SACEUR would have to be vastly increased--at least to match the Soviet MRBM's stationed in Eastern Europe. In practice these questions were moot because assignment is largely symbolic. NATO headquarters--as has been noted--

1 Text of communique, *New York Times*, May 7, 1962.

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are planning outfits which have operational control of the forces
"assigned" to them only if their government releases them. Except in war,
the line of command of United States forces runs from Washington
through the appropriate United States headquarters; that of Britain from
London to the appropriate British headquarters. With respect to United
States Polaris forces, the line of command runs from Washington to the
U.S. Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic. The same admiral is also NATO
Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic. The practical effect of the "assignment"
of Polaris to NATO is that the admiral involved can give orders in his
capacity as NATO commander to himself in his capacity as United States
commander. The United States veto remains absolute.

It was argued by some that even if assignment was largely symbolic,
the strategic forces earmarked for NATO could be subject to joint Allied
guidelines. Thus our Allies would be brought into the planning process.
But what--in terms of the Pentagon's concept of general nuclear war--was the
significance of guidelines for a fraction of the strategic force? If the
target system is indivisible--as Administration spokesmen have never tired

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asserting--the only guidelines which would make sense would involve the total
nuclear strength of the Alliance, including SAC. But then we are back to
where we started. Is the United States prepared to make this drastic a
debelopment of its sovereignty? And would it be wise to do so?

[BUT]

Moreover, it is important to be clear about what agreement to joint
guidelines actually means. Are they to be conceived as a kind of
contingency plan for the employment of nuclear weapons, _provided_ the
governments concerned agree to implement these plans? Or are they to be
considered as a delegation of authority to use nuclear weapons in certain
specified contingencies without further reference to political authority?

If guidelines are to be interpreted in the former sense--as a
form of contingency war plan--they are a useful exercise of allied
consultation. But in that case it is not clear why a formal assignment to
NATO is necessary or how the NATO-committed Polaris forces are to be
distinguished from other strategic forces in the Alliance.

1
See below, Chapter V, p. .

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If, on the other hand, the guidelines are to be a form of delegation of authority, serious problems would arise. During the American presidential campaign it was suggested that the NATO nuclear problem could be solved by delegating authority to use battlefield weapons to SACEUR. Aside from the difficulty of making such a distinction this would represent an unprecedented abdication of Constitutional responsibilities.

It is difficult to imagine any President agreeing to this step. And if it were taken, it would probably compound the problem. The predelegation of authority would be confined to the most obvious and unambiguous cases.

A guideline so conceived will omit more cases than it specifies and thus raise uncertainties precisely about the ambiguous cases that have caused the greatest worries.

In short, contingency planning for nuclear war, is only one horn of the dilemma, and in some ways the easier problem. The more fundamental problem is political: how allies can affect the decision to enter nuclear war and perhaps even more fundamentally how they can influence the diplomacy preceding a conflict. In so far as the dispute over nuclear control concerned not the military but the political use of nuclear weapons, the schemes of

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[Y]

the years 1961-62 proved largely irrelevant. And the refusal--largely on theoretical grounds--to make a distinction between tactical and strategic weapons caused most United States proposals to deal with the SACEUR forces suitable for deep penetration while little effort was made to develop a mission for the large and growing arsenal of shorter-range "battlefield" weapons; this laid the ground-work for further controversy.

Thus even before de Gaulle's press conference of January 14, 1963, a stalemate in the debate about strategy had occurred. Europeans, had been reluctant to respond to American pressures for an increase in conventional forces. The United States proposals for sharing nuclear control had not met the real concerns of those Europeans asking either for a greater share in nuclear decisions or for greater autonomy with respect to them.

In order to escape this impasse, the United States--starting early in 1963--began ever more urgently to press a scheme for a NATO nuclear force, the so-called Multilateral Force (MLF).

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## II. The Multilateral Force (MLF)

Few major decisions of American foreign policy have been the result of so much ambivalence as the multilateral force; fewer still could have been pushed so far by so small a group of energetic and dedicated men. The plan, which emerged in February 1963 as America's principal policy to restore NATO to its original purpose, had previously been dealt with at arms length by the Kennedy Administration. After de Gaulle's challenge, it was resurrected and defended with increasing passion--at least in part because it existed.

After the multilateral force had been presented to the NATO Council for study in 1960, there occurred a hiatus of several months while the new Administration reassessed its policy. Finally on May 17, 1961, President Kennedy gave a highly qualified endorsement of the scheme in a speech at Ottawa: "...We look to the possibility of eventually establishing a NATO sea-borne force, which would be truly multilateral in ownership and control if this should be desired and found feasible by our allies once NATO's non-nuclear goals have been achieved." In the course of the next year,

¹ John F. Kennedy, "The Common Aims of Canada and the United States," speech at Ottawa on May 17, 1961, DOSB, June 5, 1961, XLIV, 1145, p. 841

[Y]

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Administration spokesmen invited United States allies to analyze the problem and to come up with a satisfactory control plan.

The two conditions put by the United States--a prior non-nuclear build-up and European agreement about a control plan--suggested that the proposal could not have a very high priority. Most of America's allies doubted the need for a conventional build-up. None could afford both to strengthen their ground forces and to contribute to a NATO nuclear force. Moreover, none of our allies possessed a sea-borne nuclear system. Since a command and control system for even a national nuclear force is far from a simple matter, the probability that our allies would come up with a meaningful control system was not great. Indeed there were many in the Administration who held the view that the problem would be found insoluble. It was then expected that the allies would ask the President to act as Executive Agent for the Alliance on nuclear matters.

When this did not happen, the United States in 1962 continued its gingering approach to the multilateral force. In September 1962, the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, McGeorge Bundy, spoke hedgingly

[4]

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of a multilateral <u>European</u> force.

It would also be wrong to suppose that the reluctance which
we feel with respect to individual, ineffective, and uninte-
grated forces would be extended automatically to a European
force, genuinely unified and multilateral, and effectively
integrated with our own necessarily predominant strength in
the whole nuclear defense of the alliance. Any possible ar-
rangements for assistance and cooperation would, of course,
require full consultation and approval by all appropriate
agencies of our Government.¹

The speech said nothing about what the United States understood by "multilateral,"
"unified" or "integrated."

A month later Under Secretary of State Ball returned to the theme of
a NATO nuclear force. He insisted that it was militarily unnecessary and he
continued to stress the priority placed by the Kennedy Administration on the
build-up of conventional forces. But he added:

From a strictly military standpoint, we do not feel that
the alliance has an urgent need for a European nuclear
contribution. But, should other NATO nations so desire,
we are ready to give serious consideration to the creation
of a genuinely multilateral medium-range ballistic missile
force fully coordinated with the other deterrent forces of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.²

¹ McGeorge Bundy, "Building the Atlantic Partnership: Some Lessons from the Past," speech on September  ,
_DOSB_ , October 22, 1962, LXVII, 1217, p. 604-5.

2
George W. Ball, "NATO and the Cuban Crisis," speech on November 16, 1962,
_DOSB_ , December 3, 1962, XLVII, 1223, p. 835.

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In the following weeks an American briefing team toured Europe explaining the American concept of a multilateral force, including the provision for crews of mixed nationality. They did not elicit a significant European response.

In December, Secretary Rusk spoke vaguely of a force "not . . . so heavily dependent upon the United States alone." But he stressed that it was up to the Europeans to formulate a concrete proposal:

> We also have expressed our willingness, if our ally wish to do so, to consider a multilateral nuclear force which would not be so heavily dependent upon the United States alone. Now, we have not ourselves put forward a precise plan in this regard. This is something that our friends across the Atlantic would presumably wish to do if they conclude what it is they would like to propose in this field.¹

At the regular NATO ministerial conference in December 1962, the United States took no initiative with respect to the NATO multilateral force. A week later at Nassau the United States and Great Britain made two decisions: to subscribe part of their national nuclear forces to NATO and to create a NATO multilateral force:

> Returning to Polaris the President and the Prime Minister agreed that the purpose of their two governments with respect to the provision of Polaris missiles must be the development of a multilateral NATO nuclear force in the closest consultation with other NATO allies. They will use their best endeavors to this end.²

¹ Dean Rusk, News Conference on December 10, 1962, DOSB, December 31, 1962, XLVII, 1227, p. 995.

² Text of the Communique, DOSB, January 14, 1963, XLVIII, 1229, p. 44.

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One of the many confusions in the Nassau Agreement concerned the meaning of this clause: Did multilateral mean the assignment of national contingents to a NATO force as the British argued? Or did it involve a commitment to the creation of a mixed-manned force as the United States urged? For a few weeks after the Nassau Agreement the term multilateral was in fact used interchangeably for either arrangement. An effort was made to create what was finally called an Inter-Allied Force drawn from national contingents. It foundered in the face of French hostility and the increasing American commitments to the MLF.

This sequence of events suggest that until de Gaulle's press conference on January 14, 1963, the multilateral force was far from a high priority goal of American foreign policy. In the face of indifference at the highest level, it had in fact been kept alive in the government only by a very small group of enthusiasts who, in the words of one acute observer, engaged in "a public relations campaign to gain official, political and academic support of an energy and ruthlessness unknown since Harriet Beecher Stowe . . ."

1. Alastair Buchan, "Is this NATO Crisis Necessary?" *The New Republic*, August 8, 1964.

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Whatever the hesitations of the Kennedy Administration, they were re-
solved after de Gaulle's press conference of January 14, 1963. On January 21, 1963,
Secretary Rusk said in a television interview that the United States would proceed
with the NATO multilateral force even without France (though he did not make
clear whether he was using multilateral in the American or the British sense).¹

On February 9, the Legal Counsellor of the State Department, Abraham Chayes,
explicitly advanced the multilateral force as an alternative route to the "grand
design" which de Gaulle had sought to block with his veto of Britain's entry
into the Common Market.²

By March 1963, the United States had dropped the conditions of a non-
nuclear build-up and of a prior European agreement to a control plan. Indeed,
it was now argued that a final decision on the control problem should await
the actual creation of the multilateral force. Ambassador Livingston Merchant
was assigned to carry out the negotiations to bring the multilateral force

1 Dean Rusk, "Today Show," January 21, 1963, DOSB, February 1963, XLVIII, 1223, p.

2 Abraham Chayes, "European Integration and American Foreign Policy," February 9, 1963, DOSB, March 4, 1963, XLVIII, 1236, p. 321.