# The Atlantic Community: An American View

The special ties between Great Britain and the United States, as two societies, have an historical, institutional, and human depth it is unnecessary for me to recall, but of which I am peculiarly aware, having lived and worked among you for some eight years over the past quarter century.

The operational meaning of these ties in public policy is and ought to be that we communicate with a lucidity and candor which, perhaps, citizens of no other two nations can quite match. In turn, this rare possibility of communication should permit us to isolate with precision and then to act in our areas of common interest.

The multiple ties between us are there and will remain to enrich our lives whatever differences develop in the public policy of our two nations. But they have in the past and should in the future contribute something more. The special relation is at its best when, on the basis of clearly perceived common interests, we work side by side towards common objectives outside the Anglo-American relation itself.

There

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There is, of course, no automatic connection between
a substantially shared common heritage and commonly
perceived national interests.

History has bequeathed us somewhat different visions
of the map of the world: in Asia, the Middle East, Africa,
and Latin America. Our respective instinctive reactions to
Formosa and Hong Kong; Yemen and Egypt; the Congo and
Liberia; Cuba and British Guiana are colored by powerful
memories and commitments out of the past. As the late
Sir Lewis Namier once wrote: "A neurotic, according to
Freud, is a man dominated by unconscious memories, fixated
on the past, and incapable of overcoming it: the regular
condition of human communities." But these fixations are
not unconquerable. We retain some capacity to adjust our
vision to changing reality as, for example, the remarkable
postwar transformation of Britain's colonial relations
attests. And there are evidently basic common interests
which we can and should pursue -- and are pursuing --
together in many parts of the world; for example, our large
common interest in the successful economic development of
India and Pakistan.

But perhaps our greatest common interest lies in carrying

forward

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forward in the years ahead what is now almost a generation's
work in building an effective Atlantic community. The
experiences and memories which have led us both to support
this conception are similar but not identical.

In recalling the evolution of our policies it is, perhaps,
wholesome to begin by acknowledging how badly American and
British diplomacy towards Europe performed between the two
World Wars.

By failing to join the League of Nations and by failing
to meet the French desire for an unambiguous long term
American security commitment to the European continent,
the United States set the framework for the inter-war tragedy
of Europe. And if I may be permitted to say so, British
policy between the two wars is subject to almost as severe
strictures. London -- like Washington -- left Paris without
steady support and failed to build a policy which would main-
tain the viability and independence of the new states of
Eastern Europe and support those in Germany who wished to
pursue a moderate and constructive course.

In the end, of course, our perhaps retrievable errors

of the

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of the 1920's were rendered disastrous by the Great Depression which drained away a good part of the energy and capacity of both our countries to pursue effective policies on the world scene; and so we had to fight what Churchill has properly designated as an unnecessary war.

I recall these events -- at once distant and part of our lives -- because on the American side our policy towards Europe and the Atlantic Community has been colored by an assessment of where and how we failed in an earlier generation. It was a notable feature of American policy during the Second World War that President Roosevelt was almost obsessively concerned to ensure that, this time, the United States would have the political base to enter the new world organization which succeeded the League of Nations. And from 1946 forward our approach to European problems has been strongly colored by the need to avoid the kinds of mistakes we had made earlier, as we interpreted them, notably with respect to the European continent.

As it became clear in the winter and spring of 1946 that the Soviet Union would not permit the unification of Germany on the basis of political freedom, we began to shape a policy

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policy that still stands; namely, a policy of helping to build
a prosperous and united Western Europe which would be closely
linked in military and other great affairs to the United
States and Canada, and which would move back onto the world
scene as a great power, broadly in concert with North America.

Four elements converged to produce this policy.

First, there was Germany. It was judged essential that
we create a strong, unified European structure which could
receive as an equal partner a Germany that was bound to be
split for some time to come, a structure which would give
to Germans an opportunity to mobilize their great energy
and resources along constructive lines in the face of the
inevitable strains that history and geography have placed
upon them.

Second, there was Moscow. Europe faced a unified adversary consolidating his empire up to the Elbe, seeking to exploit every schism or lesion he could find in the West. A united Europe, linked to the United States appeared the only tolerably safe framework of organization to deal with this centralized, increasingly powerful locus of active hostility.

Third,

Third, there was the perception to which many men had come on both sides of the Atlantic as the major historic lesson of the Second World War; namely, that in the world of the second half of the twentieth century the individual nation states of Europe could only execute effectively a major role on the world scene if they were to unite. The arena of world affairs had widened out to embrace the whole of the planet; and the technology of effective power had outstripped the scale of the old states of Europe. The historic competition for power and status among them could only be pursued at the cost of their common effectiveness as a voice in world affairs, as well as at the risk of their common security.

And, finally, there was the economic argument: the full economic potentialities of Europe could only be developed on the basis of a spacious, highly competitive continental market.

As a minor official in the Department of State when these matters were first debated, early in 1946, I can recall vividly that the dangers of this policy for the United States were laid on the table: How could we be sure that a united

Europe

Europe would, in fact, pursue policies consonant with American interests? Would it not be safer to conduct a bilateral set of relations with Europe which, given the potentialities of our bargaining power, might permit us to assure United States influence in European affairs over a longer period?

We decided that the larger interests should prevail. And in the Marshall Plan and beyond we went forward in support of European unity. Behind this decision was an act of faith -- faith that the ultimate logic of the Atlantic connection -- already tested in two world wars and then under a third test by Stalin -- would prevail; and that a united Europe would build its policy on the fundamental overlap in our respective interests, not on the potential cross-purposes and divergencies which were -- and are -- evident enough.

We have never looked back on that decision; and we are confident at the present time and in the face of contemporary problems and difficulties that it remains the right basis for American policy.

It is also true, however, that we are now in the midst of a decade which will test whether that policy is, in fact, viable.

We are

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We are in the midst of the most complex and delicate piece of international architecture ever undertaken at a time of peace; namely, the transition in the relations between Europe and the United States from dependence to partnership, and a simultaneous realignment in the relations of the European states to one another, centered on the question of European unity.

The fact is, of course, that in the postwar years the United States had to pick up around the world one area of responsibility after another, either to fill vacuums left by the Second World War -- as in Korea and Japan -- or to cope with situations where the European powers withdrew. If one examines the map in the vast arc from, say, Korea to Greece, and observes where American fighting men, money, and political commitments are emplaced, at every point it is clear we moved in to fill a gap which would otherwise have been filled by chaos or the Communists.

It is our hope and expectation that this abnormal preponderance in the American role in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa -- and I would add, in Latin America -- will give place to a new balance. Europe has the resources, the latent energy and, if it unites, I believe the political energy and will to return to the world scene on a new basis.

We do

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We do not regard the relationships which grew up
ad hoc after the Second World War between the United States
and these regions as a final or appropriate pattern. We
look towards the emergence of a general relationship of the
more advanced nations of the northern part of the free world
with the developing nations to the south in which the role of
Europe and Japan relative to the United States would gradually
expand. We believe this return of Europe and Japan to the
world scene would be good for the United States; good for
Europe and Japan; and good for the nations and regions now
caught up in the adventure of modernizing their societies.

This vision poses for the Alliance a question of how
such a transition in the distribution of responsibility is to be
organized. In the Development Assistance Committee of the
OECD we can already consult on common problems of economic
aid. But there is more involved here than aid. We must find
the machinery to concert within the Alliance at the highest
level of responsibility our political policies towards
these regions -- a task that was impossible to conceive of
when colonial disengagement dominated the scene but which
becomes more realistic as our interest in these southern

regions

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regions comes to rest on the problem of helping them maintain
their independence, modernize their societies, and settle
peacefully their differences with one another and with us
to the north.

It is certain that in the years ahead one of the major
tasks we confront is the improvement in our machinery of
political consultation, not merely with respect to confronta-
tions with the Communists but in carrying forward a more
effective, constructive policy in the developing areas to the
south.

A second great area of partnership lies, of course,
in the field of nuclear weapons. The story begins, as we
all know, with the Manhattan Project in which the scientific
talent of the West was organized in the United States to
produce the first nuclear weapons. From this experience
flowed the special nuclear relationship between the United
States and Great Britain; and then, with the failure of the
Baruch proposal in the United Nations, there emerged the
McMahon Act in which American policy sought to protect from
the Communists the store of nuclear knowledge of which we were
the major custodian.

As the

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As the 1950's proceeded, however, and the Soviet Union acquired thermonuclear weapons, the character of the problem, as seen from Washington, changed. The special nuclear relation to Great Britain was reinforced in 1958; and the need for security in certain nuclear matters remained -- and remains -- a real issue for the United States and the West, despite increasing Soviet virtuosity. But a new and great issue gradually came to the surface: How should nuclear affairs be organized within the Atlantic Alliance at a time when the resurgent wealth, confidence, and power of Western Europe no longer made a simple reliance on American nuclear power and the Anglo-American connection acceptable? The French *force de frappe*, initiated around 1956, represented an understandable impulse on the continent to play some meaningful role in shaping their own destiny in a nuclear age, as well as an effort to achieve a nuclear status *vis-a-vis* the United States equivalent to that of Great Britain.

What are the solutions open to us? How can a community of sovereign nations, bound together by treaty, organize to maintain an effective nuclear deterrent in a period of cold

war

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war and for the use of nuclear weapons should their use
be required in their common interest?

Theoretically one could conceive of a solution in
which the European nations, having measured the full cost
of national nuclear deterrents and the great advantages of
a single, unified, unambiguous command over those weapons,
should consciously forego the production of weapons and means
of delivery and leave the job to the United States, while
joining with us in intensive consultative arrangements for
their operation and management. This is obviously a matter
for the European nations to decide; for it raises fewer
problems for the United States than any other solution.
Moreover, no solution is conceivable that does not draw the
European nations more deeply into the targeting, planning,
and design of strategy for nuclear weapons. But as we
faced the facts, in the late 1950's and early 1960's, we
were inclined to believe that this solution - of a mixed-
manned committee working with the American nuclear force.
in an intimate consultative arrangement, was an insufficient
answer. Great Britain and France were already launched on
another path; and their science, technology, industry, and
military

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military establishments were increasingly caught up in
nuclear affairs. Beyond that, it has been easy for us to
understand why proud and free men, now fully recovered from
the economic consequences of the Second World War -- men who
have been threatened by Moscow over the past several years
as hostages to the Soviet medium ballistic missiles lined
up in western Russia -- would wish to play a larger, rather
than a smaller, role in the deterrence of a nuclear attack.
We understand why our friends in Europe may not be content,
when threatened, merely to say to Moscow: Washington will
protect us.

A second solution has been suggested by some on the
European side of the Atlantic. They argue that the conse-
quences of nuclear war are such, in the face of current and
prospective Soviet capabilities, that one nation cannot rely
on any other nation to come to its defense in the face of the
danger of nuclear attack. Therefore, the only secure and
dignified position for each nation is to command its own nuclear
capability. Among our NATO allies a certain number have the
industrial and technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons
and some kind of delivery system. But if we were all to accept

this theory,

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this theory, which denies the possibility of collective
security arrangements in a nuclear age, two consequences
would directly follow. First, the alliance would fragment
into a series of national nuclear capabilities, the European
components of which would be inefficiently produced, un-
systematically targeted, and quite unpersuasive in Moscow.
Second, we would be proclaiming in the alliance that no
effective protection could be afforded to those among our
allies who did not command a national nuclear capability.
We would be inviting Moscow, in effect, to put diplomatic
and military pressure on these smaller powers, one by one,
in the face of a doctrine which asserted that no other nation
would rationally protect them.

The acceptance of this doctrine could only mean the end
of the North Atlantic Alliance - in fact the whole system of
American alliances - opening the way for the fragmentation
and piecemeal diplomatic or military defeat of Western Europe
and other now free regions of the world.

In the light of these two marginal alternatives, it has
been the policy of the American Government, beginning with
the latter days of the Eisenhower administration, to look

toward

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toward arrangements which would increase the effective degree
of partnership and participation in nuclear matters within
the Atlantic community, without diminishing the effectiveness
and unity of our collective security deterrent. This is no
simple matter in a world where 15 nations are committed to
a system of mutual defense but in which no unified sovereign
institutions exist.

It has been natural for newspaper and other commentators
to focus sharply on this ultimate problem: Whose finger will
be on the trigger, whose finger on the safety catch? Could
the European forces fire their atomic weapons without the
agreement of the United States? Could the United States
fire without the agreement of Europe? Could individual
nations within the alliance veto firing by others? It has
been our view that these ultimate questions could not and
should not now be settled immediately and finally. The terms
of the Atlantic partnership which evolve over coming months
and years will depend on many factors, including, in particular
how the process of European unification, now temporarily
frustrated, proceed.

The nuclear matter within the alliance is not only a

question

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question of Europe's relation to the United States but, at least equally, a question of the relative role and status of European nations vis-a-vis one another. It may prove difficult to settle firmly the transatlantic nuclear relationship until the intra-European relationship takes clearer shape; and this problem is, evidently, linked to that of European unity.

It has been our view that four more immediate courses of action should be considered urgently, which would move toward Atlantic partnership in nuclear matters. First, that we all commit ourselves to work toward a solution which would maintain the unity of the alliance, with a unified nuclear deterrent at its core. Second, that we devise and agree on general guidelines for the use of nuclear weapons in the face of Soviet attack. Such agreed guidelines now exist for the defense of the NATO region. Third, that we take active steps to bring our European partners more deeply and directly into the nuclear business with respect to problems of targeting, control, and the strategic relationship between nuclear and conventional forces. Measures to this end are actively under way within NATO. Fourth, that we provide within this framework for active

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for active European (and Canadian) participation in the
operation and control of strategic as well as tactical
nuclear weapons. Out of the process of shared operational
experience, consultation, and debate thus set in motion, it
has been our belief and our faith that a rational and
sensible resolution of the control issue would emerge,
acceptable to the peoples and parliaments of our allies
and to our own people and the Congress. Moreover, we
believe that this widened common experience may be essential
for the development of a solidly agreed Atlantic military
doctrine.

We would hope that the Inter-Allied Nuclear Force,
now in an advanced stage of negotiation, will contribute to
this end.

The major new instrument my government has suggested
to carry forward this process of intensified partnership
is, as you know, a mixed-manned multilateral nuclear force
to be based at sea. This proposal, first made by
Secretary Herter at the NATO meeting of 1960, was reaffirmed
by President Kennedy at Ottawa in May of 1961. In the
autumn of 1962 an American technical mission, representing
both the civil and military parts of our Government,
discussed how such a force might work with our NATO allies.
As part of the Nassau agreement of December 1962, we stated

that we

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that we would present this concept at a high political
level to our allies. Acting as the President's personal
representative, Ambassador Livingston Merchant has been
engaged in discussions at the North Atlantic Council itself
and in a number of European capitals.

The fate of this proposal is in the hands of our
European friends who may find it a useful way to move
forward. We would hope that this path would come to commend
itself not merely to the non-nuclear powers in NATO, but to
those who now command or are building a national nuclear
capability. We are convinced it is a technically viable
way to widen the circle of participation in nuclear matters
in a form which enhances the unity of the alliance. It is
also responsive to an important technical requirement of
NATO: the need in the 1960's for an MRBM force to counter
that now zeroed in on Western European targets from Russia.
We are prepared to put into it our own men and money, and
let its future evolve on the basis of shared experience
and the evolution of thought and politics on both sides of
the Atlantic.

As the most powerful member of the North Atlantic
Alliance, bearing special responsibilities in the field of
nuclear arms, we felt that we had a duty to lay before our
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friends a proposal which would permit an enlarged
participation in nuclear matters within the Alliance in a
form which would increase the unity of the Alliance rather
than fragment it; and, in a tradition we share, we felt the
way to begin was to begin and not debate and attempt to
settle the now insoluble questions which are inherent in
the sharing of nuclear responsibility in an alliance of
multiple sovereignty.

Our discussions with our European friends have already
had two important and useful effects. First, the European
nations concerned have begun to come to grips with the real
problems of the joint management of a nuclear deterrent.
The discussions have been candid and mature. A matter
which is bound to be the subject of heated and sometimes
superficial debate is now being gripped in high seriousness
by the NATO governments. Second, these discussions have
suggested that there is an overwhelming commitment within
the Alliance to move forward on a collective security basis.
The dangers of fragmentation are now widely understood; and
there is, in Ben Franklin's old phrase, a growing sense
that in this decisive area we must hang together or we
will hang separately.

The issues

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The issues of political consultation and nuclear partnership do not, of course, exhaust the agenda of the Atlantic Alliance. We face major unsolved problems in the fields of trade, assistance to the underdeveloped areas, and the management of the Free World's currencies and reserves. Building on the unsung but quite remarkable experience of intergovernmental cooperation, which has thus far helped keep us together in the face of Khrushchev's pressures on Berlin, we must learn better to concert our policies with respect to East-West relations. And down the line we shall have to think and work together in facing the implications for us all of the Chinese Communist effort to acquire nuclear weapons.

In all of these matters the instinct of American policy is to move forward pragmatically where we can, gathering experience and building up the most important asset an alliance can have: the confidence that comes and can only come from having solved real problems -- even limited problems--- together and successfully.

Undoubtedly, as progress is made old machinery will have to be modified and, perhaps, new machinery created.

But the

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But the forums available to us now are ample, if the will
to use them is effective.

All of us are, of course, wholly conscious of the
difficulties we now face in the development of collective
solutions within the Atlantic Alliance. The power of old-
fashioned nationalism is, evidently, still considerable;
and it is easy to understand how men, living in nations
now miraculously revived and energetic, should hanker for
a simpler world where nations form their policies on their
own and concert them, where necessary, by the traditional
means which diplomacy, as we have known it at an earlier
time, could afford.

But the facts of the world in which we live and shall
live do not permit us safely to indulge this nostalgia.
We in the United States who are caught up in a formal
alliance with forty-two nations -- and intimately bound to
many more -- know this perhaps better than most. Every
move we make must take into account the implacable facts
of interdependence. The nature of weapons, the immediacy
of modern communications, the scope and the weight of the

thrusts

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thrusts against us by the Communists, and, perhaps above all,
the fact that virtually the whole of this planet is for the
first time in history an intimate interacting political
community, all make it clear that there is only one way
for us to go if we are to preserve the values and interests
of Western civilization; and that is towards the building
of an Atlantic community of which an increasingly united
Europe is an integral part.

We have come a long way since 1946, against great
obstacles: much further than the most optimistic among
us believed possible. We have, evidently, a long hard road
ahead. But every lesson of this generation's experience;
every major common interest we can define; every projection
forward of the problems we may confront - indeed, the
implications of every argument of those who would design
another course - lead us to believe that our task is to
persist - and to persist in good heart.