MLF - Eisenhower Administration
Britain had spent about sixty million pounds on the Blue Streak missile. Then there arose the decision as to whether the development of this missile should be continued. Britain was a small and heavily populated island, and the missile would have to be situated near towns where it would be subject to observation and would be exposed to agitators. The Prime Minister had talked to President Eisenhower about the problem and had indicated the British were going to chuck it if they could get anything else. Then Skybolt came along as well as Polaris. The British made an agreement to buy Skybolt.
On 02 May 1957, at the North Atlantic Council Ministerial Meeting at Bonn, Christian Pineau, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, proposed that France be permitted to stockpile atomic weapons under NATO auspices. The French had then already decided to begin the fabrication of nuclear weapons.
After the 1957 heads of government meeting in Paris, the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe, studied the problem of meeting the Russian threat. In the absence of an American long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, the answer seemed to be in increasing the number of medium-range missiles in Western Europe. Making them mobile by placing them on barges, railway cars, and trucks offered a high degree of protection from Soviet attack, but it made them liable to seizure by the national forces of one country. Therefore, the mobile missiles had to be manned by mixed forces from several nations. The solution found no acceptance in the American, British, or French governments.
On 9 January 1958 Eisenhower delivered his State of the Union message in person. Among the many goals he listed was the prompt enactment of legislation to permit the exchange of scientific and technical information with allies — particularly the NATO states.
By the late 1950s, it appeared that if the French went ahead to manufacture nuclear weapons, it was highly likely that the Germans would do the same, and that Italy might not be far behind. The US had refused help to the French nuclear weapons program because of concern of what might happen in Germany. In private, the Soviets said that their prime concern was that incidents might occur in Europe which, although not of US making, might nevertheless get out of hand, involve the United States, and ultimately result in the nuclear devastation of the Soviet Union.
By 1959 France was determined to have an independent nuclear military capability, including its own strategic delivery systems for nuclear weapons. De Gaulle continued the Fourth Republic’s policy of refusing to permit the stockpiling in France of nuclear weapons under US control which has led SACEUR to redeploy nine atomic-strike squadrons from France to the United Kingdom and Germany. It is doubtful that De Gaulle would be satisfied with anything less than full and independent national control of France’s own nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. France exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1960.
Christian A. Herter, succeeding Dulles as secretary of state in 1959, asked Robert R. Bowie to study the problem. Bowie proposed a seabased NATO force using nuclear submarines and Polaris missiles — the same system that the United States was almost ready to bring into operation. The United States would assist NATO in creating a multinational submarine missile force under common financing and ownership and manned by crews of mixed nations. The latter stipulation was required to prevent any ally from seizing the submarine and using it as a national force.
A fundamental premise of the multilateral force was that it made nuclear-weapon programs of allied nations unnecessary; the Americans would provide the submarines and missiles. National programs might serve national ambitions, but they were likely to create tension and increase the chances of war—a reasoning not always accepted in European capitals.
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