Between Involvement and Detachment: The Johnson administration’s perception of France, West Germany, and NATO, 1963-1969 Gry Thomasen To cite this version: Gry Thomasen. Between Involvement and Detachment: The Johnson administration’s perception of France, West Germany, and NATO, 1963-1969. History. University of Copenhagen. Faculty of Humanities, 2013. English. tel-00867675 HAL Id: tel-00867675 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00867675 Submitted on 30 Sep 2013 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. 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FACULTY OF HUMANITIE S UNIVERSITY OF COPENH AGEN PhD thesis Gry Thomasen Between Involvement and Detachment The Johnson administration’s perceptions of France, West Germany, and NATO, 1963-1969 Supervisor : Associate Professor, Carsten Due-Nielsen Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen Co-supervisor: Senior Researcher, Hans Mouritzen The Danish Institute for International Studies Submitted on 11 June 2013 2 3 Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................... 7 Chapter 1 Introduction ..................................................................... 8 Research Question ......................................................................... 10 Methodological reflections ............................................................. 10 Scope 10 The Western European Policy Apparatus 12 Discipline 15 Terms and definitions 15 Between Cold War and Détente 19 Chapter 2 Historiography ............................................................... 21 Beyond Vietnam ............................................................................. 21 The Cold War Paradigm, Europe, and Vietnam 22 The European détente .................................................................... 30 The Transatlantic Relation ............................................................ 32 Brief conclusion .............................................................................. 37 Chapter 3 Western Europe, Germany, and France in the 1960s .... 38 The Setting ..................................................................................... 38 France ............................................................................................. 40 Cold War Revisionism 41 West Germany ................................................................................ 44 The Setting 44 The SPD 46 The Erhard Administration (1963-1966) 47 The Grand Coalition 51 European Integration ..................................................................... 53 The 1963 crisis 53 The Empty Chair Crisis 55 British Membership of Europe ...................................................... 57 British détente 59 The Soviet Experience 60 Brief conclusion .............................................................................. 61 Chapter 4 Beginnings, 1963-1964 .................................................... 62 Introduction .................................................................................... 62 Setting the Stage the Petite Détente .............................................. 63 Tracing Bridge Building ................................................................ 65 The French Challenge 65 Gaullist ideas and the rest of the allies 74 4 German Gaullism 76 NATO’s Instrumentality 79 National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 304 84 Aftermath ........................................................................................ 89 Brief Conclusions ........................................................................... 90 Chapter 5 The French Challenge, 1964 -1965 ................................. 93 Introduction .................................................................................... 93 Working around de Gaulle ............................................................. 94 MLF – America’s raison d’être ....................................................... 97 The MLF Problem 99 Franco-Soviet Rapprochement 104 NATO and de Gaulle ................................................................... 107 The Principal Considerations the purpose of the Alliance 107 The Purposes of the Alliance ........................................................ 111 NSAM Drafts 117 Brief conclusion ............................................................................. 118 Chapter 6 Towards Equality? Reforming NATO and Peace Initiatives, 1965-1966 ..................................................................... 120 Introduction .................................................................................. 120 European and West German Realignments ................................. 121 Germany divided indefinitely? 128 Reforming NATO ........................................................................ 130 The French ‘Attack’ 130 The British Impact 132 Responses to the NATO Crisis .................................................... 135 The Nuclear Issue 135 The Political Bargain 137 An Agreed NATO Policy? 141 Questioning the Atlantic Concert - Europeanism 143 Bridge Building 144 The Peace Initiative ..................................................................... 146 The US-German Crisis 146 The speech 147 Towards the Future of the Alliance .............................................. 153 Tripartite Talks and the Future of the Alliance 153 Questioning the raison of NATO’s political raison d’être 156 Brief Conclusions ......................................................................... 157 Chapter 7 The Future of the Alliance, 1966-1968 ........................... 161 Introduction ................................................................................... 161 5 The December 1966 Ministerial Meeting ..................................... 162 The Future of the Alliance Relations ........................................... 166 Conferring Equality? 166 Close Coordination and Atlantic Links 169 Harmel – the Decisive Phase ........................................................ 171 Protective measures 171 Reviving the Grand Design 173 America’s Major Interests 175 A New German Assertiveness ...................................................... 178 Tying Germany in the NPT ......................................................... 180 The European clause 180 Reconciliation 1968? ..................................................................... 188 Brief Conclusions .......................................................................... 191 Chapter 8 Perspectives the Nixon-Ford Administration in Comparison, 1973-1975 ................................................................. 193 Introduction .................................................................................. 193 Western Europe: Ruptures and Continuities ............................... 193 The Constitution of America’s Western European policy 1970s .. 195 Institutional Structures 195 The Nixon administration’s Foreign Policy Observations 196 Nixon’s Western European policy ............................................... 199 American Motives for Commencing the CSCE, 1969-1972 .......... 200 Differences in the Western World, 1973-1975 ............................... 203 Perspectives .................................................................................. 205 Chapter 9 Conclusions ................................................................. 207 Abstract ......................................................................................... 215 Resumé ......................................................................................... 216 Literature ...................................................................................... 217 Archives ........................................................................................ 221 Lyndon B. Johnson’s Library (LBJL), Austin, Texas 221 Nation Archives and Record Administration (NARA), Maryland 221 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 222 Acronyms and Abbreviations ....................................................... 223 6 Acknowledgements I wish to extend my gratitude to Professor Poul Villaume for admitting me to his research project: The Epoch-making decade: ‘The long 1970s' and European-transatlantic transformation processes in political culture, discourse and power at the University of Copenhagen. The project is funded by the Danish Research Council. I also wish to extend my gratitude to Nanna Hvidt, the Director of the Danish Institute for International Studies, and the University of Copenhagen, the Faculty of Humanities for funding my research. A special thank you to my supervisor Carsten Due-Nielsen for invaluable supervision, patience, steadfast belief in my abilities as a researcher, even in times when I was in doubt, and an excellent sense of humor, which makes everything easier in times of despair. Without the many conferences and seminars organized by Poul Villaume my research would not have been the same. I also thank Poul Villaume for extending a large international network to me. Thank you also to Hans Mouritzen, Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International