the French. We have not wanted to provoke him, we have not gone out of our way to do anything punitive or retaliatory. That is far different from saying that we will accept any policy he chooses to propose.

Mr. MORSE. I don't suggest that.

Mr. LEDDY. We can always have agreement on that basis.

Mr. MORSE. I think I read the French election results differently from the way the Department reads them. It seems to me if there were any factor that contributed to the necessity for a runoff it was domestic politics rather than the international field.

Is it fair to say that De Gaulle's postures, which I believe are not exclusively due to De Gaulle but evidentiary of a new dynamics in France, and possibly in Europe as well, are motivated principally by his apprehension about political integration rather than military integration?

Mr. LEDDY. He has been certainly apprehensive about anything which is really political integration in Europe. He has objected to anything in the way of real political integration, and, in my view, it is because of the connection between the powers of the Commission in Brussels, on the Common Market, and the possibilities that one day this would lead to a kind of political integration, that he has opposed those powers. I think he is totally opposed to anything resembling political integration in the full meaning of the word. He strongly insists on full national sovereignty in all political matters.

Mr. MORSE. Is it your view that the French will permit the United Kingdom to come into the Six in the near future?

Mr. LEDDY. It is my personal view this is the way things will eventually move. I doubt whether this will happen soon. I may be wrong about this. I doubt that this will happen for another year or two, or possibly three. To accept the whole Common Market more or less lock, stock, and barrel without many qualifications, would be difficult.

Mr. MORSE. Is it fair to say the agreement that was reached about the veto question in Brussels in January does in effect still retain a French veto over United Kingdom admission if they want to classify it as an important question.

Mr. LEDDY. They have always had that. This was not a development of the Luxembourg meeting, because you have to have unity of the Six to admit any new member.

Mr. MORSE. I think that we are so totally preoccupied with Vietnam that we are not paying sufficient attention to other matters throughout the world. I fear, too, that in Europe we are preoccupied with NATO almost to the exclusion of other very pressing problems-there are other serious political problems in central Europe, I presume. Would you care to comment on any of these that do exist? Mr. LEDDY. The economic problems?

Mr. MORSE. Political, particularly, The basic questions of unification, East-West relations.

Mr. LEDDY. All of these tend to get mixed together. Of course, when an important Western country has significant discussions with Moscow, the Germans necessarily worry about what is going to happen to their basic posture, about reunification, their position on the

eastern borders.

This problem of reunification, and the total unwillingness of the Soviets to make any significant move in that direction, is a part of the deep-lying German concern at the moment. It is one of those things that they regard as of great importance to them but they cannot make any progress in that direction, and even though they obtain moral support from the western countries, there is nothing really that the western countries, so far as I can see, can really do about their problem. We cannot use force. Everybody is committed against this. This would be bad. But there is no indication at all from the Soviet side that there is anything that they would be willing to propose about reunification.

I suppose there are conditions under which this could be done, but they probably would be such conditions that it would be very dangerous for us, and for Western Germany.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. LEDDY. I hope you will bear in mind that many of us conjecture as to what General de Gaulle thinks and what he intends to do. That is a sort of educated guess. I perhaps sound a little bit firmer than is warranted.

Mrs. KELLY. I have to be very frank, Mr. Secretary. I am terribly pessimistic about what we are doing. I feel we are dragging our feet more than anybody else. At the same time, I cannot believe what someone here said earlier as to what would happen if we said that we will withdraw our troops home.

Mr. LEDDY. I think that would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Mrs. KELLY. We want and need unity. We are dealing here with a peacetime problem, not with one which occurs in wartime. Everybody knows we unite in an emergency. But how can we achieve the necessary unity in peacetime to deter the threat of aggression from outside? What are our alternatives if NATO should fail?

Mr. LEDDY. We don't intend to let NATO fail.

Mrs. KELLY. How are we going to maintain it?
Mr. LEDDY. I think we can with the 14.

Mrs. KELLY. With the withdrawal of France and a blank there? And what about Spain down below?

space in

Mr. LEDDY. Of course, you know we have good bilateral cooperation with Spain. From our point of view we would like to see it in NATO. We cannot achieve it at the moment because it is opposed by others, including the British and Scandinavians.

Mrs. KELLY. We have to sit back and watch Spain not being let in? What about Italy? And how will we deal with Germany coming to the forefront in all the issues of today? How are you going to overcome the Europeans' fears of German economic and even military predominance on the continent?

Mr. LEDDY. I think Italy so far has been quite strong on this. I think they will continue in the NATO structure. I do not think there is a danger of their leaving it.

Mrs. KELLY. You are talking militarily?

Mr. LEDDY. And politically.

Mrs. KELLY. Mr. Frelinghuysen.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Just one final question. Following up Mr. Morse's line of argument in which he attributes the position of France to more than the position of General de Gaulle. In other words, does

that indicate a change of feeling not only in France but perhaps in other NATO countries?

You suggested that you saw very little likelihood of any change of position so long as De Gaulle is in power. Would you think their position might change dramatically if there should be a shift in power in France? Or are they on a course which would be likely to continue regardless of who is the leader?

Mr. LEDDY. I do not think so, sir. I think there will be a change in France if and when General de Gaulle leaves. Depending on how far he takes them now it may take a while to get back. It isn't easy to reverse the kind of thing he is doing now.

I think they will ultimately change. This, of course, is speculation and hope. This is why I say we ought, whatever we do, to keep the door open for France to come back in at some point in the future.

If you look down the long future, really France should be a part of this Western system economically, militarily, and in every other way. If that is the objective you want to work toward, you must try to leave the way open if you can. I hope there will be a change. Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. That sounds very much like a speech I made out in Cincinnati last month.

For the record, Madam Chairman, I wonder if we might put in a quote from the report of our Special Study Mission to Europe in 1964, printed February 3, 1965. That report reflects very much the same opinions that Mr. Morse was expressing about certain events which have taken place since 1960 which may have influenced the French.

With your permission, I would suggest we might include three paragraphs. I wouldn't suggest reading it, but I have marked the paragraphs.

Mrs. KELLY. Without objection, it is so ordered. (The material referred to is as follows:)

SPECIAL STUDY MISSION TO EUROPE, 1964

With the advent of the 1960's, however, a sharp change took place in strategic and military thinking in the United States. By then, both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed nuclear capabilities of fantastic proportions. An exchange on the scale envisioned in the theory of "massive retaliation" could leave both adversaries prostrate. Further, there was no certainty that even a limited use of nuclear weapons would not escalate into a global holocaust. And so a new strategy was advanced for NATO-the strategy of "options" or "flexible response." Pursuant to this strategy, a Soviet military adventure in Western Europe would not automatically trip the wire and produce an instant, massive nuclear retaliation by the United States. Any aggression would be resisted first with conventional NATO forces. Nuclear weapons would be brought into play on a graduated scale, and only as the last resort.

The problem is that this new strategy was not submitted to NATO for formal approval. Without judging the reasons which prompted our Government to follow this course, we must point out that it produced a certain amount of confusion. NATO was now possessed of two strategies-a de facto strategy of "flexible response" and the official strategy of "massive retaliation" adopted by the Organization in 1957. As a consequence, some serious questions arose regarding the role expected to be fulfilled by the conventional forces of NATO. Are the force goals established by NATO for each member country, based on the strategy of "massive retaliation," still valid? If they are not, how and when will new goals be determined? And in the meantime, how are we to measure NATO's military capability and the military efforts of its respective members?

To some, the discussion of the strategy of "flexible response" signaled an attempt on the part of the United States to withdraw from a total involvement in the defense of Western Europe. It would appear unlikely that France, for one, would approve of any change in NATO's strategy which carried such an implication.

To add to the confusion, the United States embarked upon several military initiatives independently of NATO-such as the bilateral agreement at Nassau for the sale to Great Britain of certain missile equipment for Polaris submarines, our unilateral decision to scrap the Skybolt missile project on which the British Air Force had counted with great seriousness, and our proposal for a mixed-manned nuclear fleet (MLF), to be eventually placed at NATO's disposal. It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that some Europeans have wondered about our attitude toward, and our plans for, NATO. As a further example of U.S. policies hardly calculated to enhance NATO unity, we might mention our rebuff to Portugal over the Angola problem, our failure to support the British Government at the time of the Suez crisis, our differences with Belgium over developments in the Congo, and a number of other occasions which found us at odds with our partners in this collective security undertaking. While it is true that these actions took place outside the NATO area, they nevertheless had direct and at times farreaching effects on the attitudes and the performance of various NATO members. Viewed in the context of the whole range of our relations with the individual members of the alliance, General de Gaulle's attitude is not totally unexplainable.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This report attributes some of the problems to the fact that the United States went it alone, or failed to consult with our NATO allies, and this may have contributed to confusion as to just what our policy was or how reliable a partner we were.

Mrs. KELLY. În my opening remarks, I tried to allude to that in an effort to ascertain whether there has been a change in our policy toward those political issues. It seems to me that those questions have been answered to a degree. I don't think they been been answered as fully as they should be, Mr. Secretary.

Mr. LEDDY. Madam Chairman, I will take a look at this record. You are going to have further hearings

Mrs. KELLY. Yes.

Mr. LEDDY. I will see that we try to respond more fully to some of the concerns that you have.

Mrs. KELLY. I am going to ask our staff member to review the list of our questions to see if they have been answered, I think they should.

be.

Have you any suggestion, Marian, on this point?

Mr. CZARNECKI. No, Madam Chairman. I think most of the questions are already covered but we can sift through them, and check the record.

Mrs. KELLY. I would like to have some of the answers amplified. Perhaps some of our questions weren't posed properly and should be clarified also. We can attend to these matters in future hearings. Mr. McDowell.

Mr. McDOWELL. Mr. Secretary, you talk about the other 14 but as you have already pointed out, one of the other 14-Britainis already spread so thin around the globe that the opportunity for any major contribution is probably nil.

Looking at it realistically, or at least trying to look at it in Western European eyes, you can see that unless we continue to accept the major responsibility, which of course we have done from the very beginning, there is no question about that, but in the major nuclear deterrent that we exercise, they can very well say, "Well, in the final analysis we have to look to the United States in any major problem from the East. Why should we consider NATO to be that important any more?

I don't question that we are not studying this problem and that we are not probably reasonably prepared to come up with some

6 These submarines were to be committed to NATO,

solution rather than just trying to go along with the status quo indefinitely, but I think unless we come up with some new idea for NATO that it is just going to wither on the vine.

Mr. LEDDY. I agree we should seek out ways to strengthen this system. You have a controversy as to how that should be done. I personally think that a nuclear force of some kind, a NATO force that is commonly owned and managed, would have to have a veto on it but they could have one. I, personally, think something like that would bring a degree of cohesion to the rest of NATO that doesn't exist now, particularly among the British, Italians, Dutch, and the Germans.

This is a difficult thing to do. It is controversial. It is controversial here and internationally. Whether something like this will go forward I don't know. I think we can get a better system, and should have a better system, for handling this question of the impact of our military expenditures, the British in Europe, and the balance of payments. There ought to be a common system for handling this which doesn't burden the balance of payments. It is not beyond the wit of people to figure out a system if you have the political will to put it in place.

There is a way of improving NATO operations. The idea of having a more mobile force in Europe which you can move out and protect the flanks more easily by drawing down reserves when you have to, and finding a better way of financing that. There are a number of things that can be done and ought to be done.

It may be that this shock will produce some changes that the normal inertia doesn't produce. Fundamentally, what we are preserving is not a dead and static thing. When the General talks about modernization it seems to me he is modernizing back before World War I. When we talk about improvements in NATO, we have in mind intensifying the idea of cooperation, the idea of better integration, better use of resources and a more cooperative system rather than a less cooperative system.

Mr. McDowELL. From what I have understood of the general feeling of the people in Western Europe, who are certainly, as they have exhibited, moving toward economic cooperation and merging their interests, even a reasonable amount of trying to look into the future, even for political purposes, I think General de Gaulle is just going against the forces that have been and are building up and will continue to build up Western Europe. I don't believe the Western Europeans today believe they can go back to their old nationalism and ever hope to be individually or collectively any major force. Mr. LEDDY. I agree.

Mr. MCDOWELL. I think actually, if General de Gaulle pushed this to what seems to be his ultimate objective, the United States would emerge stronger than ever.

I think that is so under any such system of nationalism in all of these areas, but that of course doesn't solve the problem of De Gaulle at present. I am hopeful that we are not, because of our immense preoccupation in Asia, going to let this just drift. I think the two are so closely interlocked.

Mr. LEDDY. All I can tell you is that this whole series of problems is being looked at very urgently at top levels of the Government.