Word: nuclear
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, President Johnson discussed the NATO problem at length. McNamara also held long consultations in Washington with West Germany's visiting Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel; U.S. Under Secretary of State George Ball was in Europe trying to sell the idea of a multilateral nuclear force (MLF), and former German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer injected himself back into the discussions with a visit to Charles de Gaulle to "try to clarify existing difficulties between France and Germany...
...caught trying to slip out of California, bound for Red China. He was finally permitted to leave the U.S. in 1955, surfaced immediately in Peking. The status of his missile program is obscure, but it is known that a missile range has been laid out near the Sinkiang nuclear testing ground. Some observers believe that, despite shortages of vital nickel and chromium, Red China, which already has some Soviet-designed, surface-to-surface rockets, might have a nuclear-tipped, 200-mile missile in two to three years...
...that reason he opposes MLF, the U.S.-backed scheme for internationally manned, nuclear-equipped surface ships that would give European nations a sense of participation in nuclear defense but still leave with the U.S. President the actual decision to use the missiles. At an eleven-hour foreign-policy debate in the French assembly, Couve de Murville in effect argued that MLF is a phony, that it would divide and not unite Europe. He was particularly angry at Bonn, which had accepted MLF as well as virtually every other U.S. plan, while being increasingly cool to De Gaulle's policies...
Where French reasoning breaks down is that MLF would give the Germans at least a squeeze on the nuclear trigger, while the French force de frappe would give them, in effect, nothing. The point was perfectly expressed in a recent conversation between a German and a French official. The dialogue went something like this: Frenchman: We need you in our force de frappe. An atomic arsenal is expensive, and German cooperation would be to both our advantages...
Stirring Gestures. The only alternative to 1) MLF and 2) a French-controlled nuclear force would be a truly integrated European army with its own nuclear capacity. But De Gaulle dislikes the idea of such integration, and Washington dislikes the idea of giving up its nuclear veto. If the U.S. persists with the MLF scheme-which Britain's Labor government may accept, although with modifications-the French hint that they might pull out of NATO...