The Vietnam War has had an enormous impact on America's history, leaving a legacy that has not been fully digested even after the passage of a generation. While there has been an outpouring of monographs, memoirs, and philippics on all aspects of the war, there has been too little careful study of the complicated relationship between the United States and its European allies in NATO.1 The relative lack of interest among historians may be attributed to the modest changes it brought to the Atlantic alliance, in striking contrast to the Korean War that transformed the alliance into a military organization. An additional obstacle may have been the absence of documents from NATO whose archives only recently have been opened through 1965.
The intent of this chapter is to examine cognate NATO problems that developed directly from the war, particularly the conflict between US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and both the American and European military establishments over US troop redeployment from Europe to Vietnam in the 1960s. This issue had ramifications extending from transatlantic differences over nuclear strategy to European fears of abandonment to congressional resentment over the inequities of burden sharing in the alliance.
During the early phases of the Vietnam War, from 1961 to 1964, the European allies had been supportive of the US aid to South Vietnam. In the confines of the North Atlantic Council meetings and its subordinate committees they professed to recognize that the United States was serving the common cause of containing communism by helping South Vietnam to cope with Viet Cong subversion.2 This consensus collapsed in the wake of the American decision to dispatch troops to Vietnam in March 1965. The allies' uneasiness had surfaced with the murder of president Diem in November 1963 and with the succession of unstable governments that failed to cope with the increasingly confident Viet Cong insurgents. The Tonkin Gulf resolution that Congress presented to President Johnson in the summer of 1964 had opened the floodgates of American aid to the beleaguered South Vietnamese. But this action raised questions in Europe about the wisdom of the senior partner's support for corrupt as well as inept governments and about the sincerity of America's putative willingness to engage in unrestricted negotiations with Communist North Vietnam.3 Rather than serving a common cause, the United States was now seen as diverting its energies and resources from its appropriate focus in Europe to an area outside the scope of the alliance. Such were the perceptions of the behavior of the American partner among many of the European members, even if they could not accept the French judgment that America was tainting NATO's integrity by imposing its imperial objectives on a Third World country.4
Although it was obvious that the increasing tempo of America's involvement in the Vietnam war in 1964 quickened European opposition to American military policies generally, NATO Europe's uneasiness existed independently of worries over Vietnam. It rested on the larger question of the credibility of the transatlantic ally's commitment to Europe's defense. Was there a possibility that the United States, vulnerable to Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile attack since the success of Sputnik in 1957, would revert to its traditional interests in Asia and the Pacific at the expense of its relatively new obligations to Europe? The Vietnam War could signify the termination of that commitment.
From a European perspective, the American guarantee — the pledge under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty — was enshrined in the maintenance of a low nuclear threshold in the event of a Soviet attack in Europe. Anticipation of massive retaliation following any act of Soviet aggression, of whatever magnitude, had been a cardinal feature of NATO's defense posture in the Eisenhower administration. An attack against any ally should trigger a quick nuclear response. In brief, “massive retaliation” was the essence of deterrence throughout the 1950s.
European confidence in this nuclear strategy was shaken early in the Kennedy years when Secretary of Defense McNamara delivered a critical address at the Athens meeting of the North Atlantic Council in May 1962, denigrating the role of nuclear weapons and emphasizing a doctrine of a more flexible response to Soviet aggression.5 McNamara made a point of downplaying the nuclear component by suggesting that distinctions should be made among Soviet acts of aggression. Initially, the response should be made at the lowest possible level, utilizing conventional forces and escalating to the nuclear only when no other response was credible. This approach reflected the administration's sense of the inadequacy of a major nuclear retaliation against even a minor or inadvertent Soviet violation. The secretary was advocating instead major increases in NATO's conventional forces capable of coping as well as deterring aggression. His speech was essentially a vigorous expression of the administration's challenge to the old orthodoxy rather than a surprise sprung on unsuspecting allies. But McNamara's effort to win support for raising the nuclear threshold directly contradicted Europe's conviction, shared by the US military services, that deterrence required a low nuclear threshold to maintain NATO's defense capability and that ground forces of whatever size would be incapable of coping with a Soviet conventional offensive.
Among the grievances the allies had against the McNamara initiative were his actions in reducing the number of US troops in Europe at the same time he was urging Europeans to increase their force contributions. Granted that American pressure on Europeans to raise their financial commitments to western defense in the 1960s was driven by concerns over dollar losses created by the cost of maintaining a large military presence in Europe. Yet, it was not the cost factor that was primary in McNamara's plans. He was convinced that the current force structure confronting the Soviet challenge was wasteful as well as costly and judged that a more efficient military organization in Europe would reduce costs while enhancing the quality of western defenses.
By 1963, he felt he had found a way to utilize the latest advances in technology to increase the efficiency of the US military contribution to the alliance without perpetuating the drain on the treasury created by expenditures inherent in the stationing of thousands of American troop in Europe. This was “Exercise Big Lift,” the dispatching of troops by air from an American base in Texas to assigned positions in Germany. It involved the airlifting of some 16,000 combat ready tank troops of the 2nd Armored Division to West Germany in more than 200 Air Force transport planes. The secretary of defense found proof that an entire armored division could be flown to Europe, draw its supplies and equipment from depots there, and be ready to participate in NATO maneuvers without delay. This arrangement, celebrated in a Pentagon news brief in September 1963 as the “largest transoceanic Army-Air Force deployment ever made by air,” would enable the United States to provide rapid reinforcements in Europe when needed.6 The divisions in reserve in the United States would save expenses that American forces in Europe imposed on the transatlantic balance of payments.
The Kennedy administration had never recovered from the shock of discovering upon taking office the imbalance of some billion dollars between income from abroad and expenditures lost abroad. Reducing this figure was one of its objectives, and McNamara's program for a more efficient military was welcomed in Washington, even though the Army and Air Force leaders were less enthusiastic about the prospect.
But the Big Lift raised questions among Europeans — particularly Germans, the most vulnerable ally — about just how US flexibility in this matter would affect the US force deployment in Europe. After all, what could be sent quickly, could be removed just as quickly. It required assurances from Secretary McNamara that the exercise did not mean that the United States intended to reduce the actual number of US combat troops in Europe.7 Within NATO's Military Committee the US member, Admiral John L. Chew, tried to minimize the significance of the airlift by pointing out that the Defense Department had been conducting exercises of this sort for many years, “although not as extensive as this one.”8
Admiral Chew's fellow members were not comforted by this qualified assurance. The Big Lift had implications disturbing to the allies. Granted that it was a successful exercise, its initiation could not be made in secret and conceivably might raise tensions in a crisis. But this was not the primary caveat at this time. General Adolf Heusinger, chairman of the Military Committee, asserted that “the capability of moving complete major units by airlift across the Atlantic did not replace the need for forward deployed combat-ready ground and air forces which could effectively oppose an attack from the outset.”9
This was an ongoing concern for German military leaders. In November 1966, General Fritz Berendsen, a member of the Bundestag, gave a moving address before the Military Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Conference. He reminded his audience that while Americans could talk of rapid reinforcements with variations on the Big Lift, Soviet forces had the advantage of proximity to the crisis area. Did the “growing air transport capacity of US forces” genuinely amount to full equivalence of forces on the ground?10 Heusinger and Berendsen were not alone in their concern. In 1967, Britain's Sir Fitzroy Maclean in his capacity as chairman of the NATO Parliamentary Conference (renamed the North Atlantic Assembly in 1966) warned that “however mobile a force might be, the United States mobile strategic reserve did not have the same effect as uniforms on the street.”11
The removal of American “uniforms on the street” was at the heart of German insecurity as the buildup in Vietnam accelerated in the fall and winter of 1965 and 1966. Was the reduction of American military personnel in Germany a symptom of American reduction of concern with Europe? This was a question far more important than the number of troops to be redeployed to the United States for later dispatch to Germany. The extent of Germany's insecurity was reflected in the tenor of the reports of Chancellor Ludwig Erhard's meeting with Johnson and Ambassador Karl Heinrich Knappstein's dispatches from Washington.12 The ambassador made a point of noting the pressure McNamara was exerting on him over contributions to the Vietnam War effort. In a confidential memorandum on a conversation with Chancellor Erhard in January 1966, unofficial envoy Henry Kissinger reported the chancellor's fears that US involvement in Asia “could reduce its interest in Europe.” Erhard had heard that McNamara had urged Knappstein to have the Federal Republic send “at least an engineering battalion” as an earnest sign of the nation's identification with the American cause in Vietnam. The chancellor felt that Germany was demonstrating its support by encouraging the work of a German civilian construction team to help the Vietnamese, and wondered if the increased American pressure was intended to give the United States an alibi to withdraw American units from Vietnam.13
German paranoia over the impact of the Vietnam War on the status of US forces in Europe was given impetus by the rumbling both in the Senate and in the administration over the continuing drain American troops in Europe imposed on the balance of payments. While McNamara did not make the cost factor his primary focus, he did note that his plans would reduce the imbalance by $200 million. At every opportunity the secretary of defense protested the inadequate German military budget. Less than 5 percent of its gross national product was earmarked for defense, as opposed to 8 percent of the US budget, even though West Germany's gross national product grew each year by 5 percent. Moreover, he asserted that the Germans stinted on its reserve stocks; then US kept ninety-day reserves, while the Germans limited theirs to 30 days. If only the Germans would do their part, McNamara claimed, the US could cut its expenses by $200 million without hurting military effectiveness.14
McNamara's irritation with German resistance to his program was manifested in an indiscreet interview with the German sensational magazine, Quick, in which he castigated German leaders for complaining excessively about American intentions. They were naïve, he insisted, if they believed that in helping other parts of the world we were deserting Europe. He added that they were also naïve if they believed that the United States would invest a larger sum of money in their defense than they did for themselves. This was a heavy-handed reference to German reluctance to increase the nation's defense budget. The president, more discreet in his comments to German visitors, was as unhappy as McNamara about the German propensity for self-pity, for claiming as Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger (Erhard's successor) did, that the United States fails to consult its allies when decisions were made. President Johnson told John McCloy, then negotiating for greater German effort to reduce the payments imbalance, that “If I had a dollar for every time that I consulted the Germans, I'd be a millionaire.”15
The cost of the US troop commitment to Europe, and particularly to Germany, was never far from McNamara's mind, even as he had other reasons for troop reductions. As he put it to Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel, the United States would have to reduce its forces to match the lower offset goals the Germans were proposing. He was convinced that American forces in Germany were the principal factor in the balance of payment deficit, a problem that had plagued the Pentagon since 1961 when the first offset agreements were set in motion. The rising costs of the Vietnam War only exacerbated the imbalance.16 A 30 percent increase in defense expenditures between 1961 and 1965 could be traced to the burden of the Vietnam War. The secretary was not just expressing a personal judgment; two senior administration figures warned President Johnson in November 1965 that “it would be necessary for the government to dramatize the balance of payments problems as part of the total effort connected with the Vietnam War”17 (italics in text).
Still, the secretary had to take into account the serious questions raised by Germans and other Europeans about the significance of the rapid increase of US forces in Vietnam. The figures themselves were striking. In stark terms McNamara outlined the change from Americans serving as advisers to the Vietnamese forces to active combatants. It began with the landing of two battalions of Marines at Danang in March 1965 and escalated to 75,000 by mid-June. By the end of July, as he noted at a meeting of the National Security Council that given the continuing successes of the Viet Cong, more combat battalions were needed immediately. The fifteen battalions were not sufficient. Over the next 15 months he estimated that 350,000 additional troops would be added to the US forces in South Vietnam.18
It was hardly surprising that Europeans would ask what effect the dispatch of such large numbers of American soldiers to Vietnam would have upon the US troop strength in Europe. The British journal, The Economist, for example, assumed as early as July 1965 that the increased American military presence in South Vietnam would force President Johnson to call up specialists to be drawn from the European theater: “The forces in Europe will probably be milked to supply Vietnam and replaced by raw units.”19
It was speculation of this sort that inspired Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts to proclaim in October 1965 that American forces in Europe have not been affected in any way up to the present time by our activities in South Vietnam.20 Uncharacteristically, McNamara recognized the need to offer the same assurance to uneasy European allies. When asked at a Senate hearing 3 months later if he planned to take troops out of Europe for deployment in Vietnam, he responded that this would not be desirable — or necessary:
I think the main reason for leaving our combat troops in West Germany at this time is to insure that the Soviets don't embark on some military activity there that would cause us serious pressure and concern at a time we are engaged as deeply as we are in southeast Asia.21
This was a valid and credible point, but it did not address the question of how many combat troops would be needed to deter Soviet aggression. The secretary left an escape route in the foregoing statement that he may have foreseen in January 1966. The steady expansion of American involvement in the war in 1966 and 1967, with the rapid increase of troop commitment to Southeast Asia, made it inevitable that questions about the diversion of US forces and consequent thinning of the forces in Europe would persist. There were 267,500 US military personnel in South Vietnam by June 1966, compared with 150,000 in division forces in Central Europe in 1968.22 Small wonder that the question remained in focus.
For the most part, America's military establishment was as uncomfortable with McNamara's initiatives — and his rationalizations — as were the Europeans. The Army envisioned the drawing down of highly skilled personnel from aviation maintenance, construction, and signal services; the Air Force would have to yield 4 tactical reconnaissance and 6 tactical fighter squadrons comprising 7,000 personnel; and the Navy would have to give up a Marine Corps battalion landing team from the Sixth Fleet. And this was only the beginning, they feared. By mid-1966 a substantial portion, up to two-thirds of USAF reconnaissance aircraft would be removed from NATO assignments, along with 30,000 servicemen with critical skills. The British delegation to NATO worried that the withdrawal of US troops, even if only temporarily, would give the French military spokesman an opportunity “to make as much political capital as possible” from American redeployment plans.23
McNamara had an answer to his critics, one that cast aside the frequent references to costs and imbalance of payments. These were always present in the secretary's mind, considering his penchant for efficiency and his track record in cutting down the size of the Pentagon bureaucracy. But the driving factor in his evaluation of the military structure in Europe was based on efficiency more than on economy. In his review of US forces for the preparation of the fiscal year 1966 budget, he made a case for withdrawing troops from Europe before Europeans had made an issue of troop redeployment to Vietnam. In March 1965, just as the first Marines were landing in Danang, he told General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, then commander of US forces in Europe as well as NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe (SACEUR),
if the real effectiveness of our divisions and tactical air units is proportional to their costs and personnel strengths, our forces appear to be much more effective relative to those of the [Warsaw] Pact than if one were merely to count numbers of divisions and aircraft.24
As redeployments were set in motion over the following year, the secretary claimed that whatever decrease had been made in the numbers of troops in Germany was “offset to a significant degree by reorganization of supply and support units to provide greater efficiency and by far the greater capability to deploy men quickly from CONUS [continental US].”25
McNamara was expressing the essence of his position on military organization, which was strongly supported by the youthful civilian corps of defense intellectuals labeled the “Whiz Kids.” They joined the secretary in deprecating the size of Soviet conventional forces, emphasizing the technological edge the United States had in coping with Soviet ground forces.26 It was not that he was opposed to a conventional buildup; this was a centerpiece of his advice to the NATO allies as a means of avoiding nuclear warfare. But numbers of themselves were of less importance. Ever since the success of the Big Lift he believed he had found a more flexible way of utilizing US troops than stationing the American contingent permanently in Europe.
McNamara had his critics in the White House as well as in the military. Presidential envoy, John J. McCloy, reported the negative military effects of force reductions in Europe. Even the removal of one division, he was convinced, would lead to serious cuts in Europe's own contributions. Moreover, he questioned the validity of the Big Lift concept of dual-basing 10-40 percent of US troops. He cited the Joint Chiefs' judgment that the “actual flight time is only a small fraction of the total time needed.” It would require 40–45 days, not 30 days after mobilization for two divisions to be combat-ready. And it would take 2 years before new sites were prepared for division equipment, along with specially designed air-conditioned storage depots for stockpiles overseas. In brief, dependence on the airlift would result in a serious reduction in US capability for flexible response. General Earle B. Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1967 weighed in forcefully, with a military authority McCloy could not match, when he asserted that “there is no military justification for force reductions in Europe.” They would lead to comparable reductions in allied forces, increase Soviet leverage, and ultimately damage US influence in Europe. Wheeler concluded with the observation that if more than 50,000 US troops were removed, the army could not retain tactical integrity sufficient to prevail in combat.27
The chairman of the JCS was posing a worst-case scenario. At no time did McNamara propose such drastic measures. The secretary could cite precedents for redeployments. Until the Vietnam War intruded itself into NATO military planning, US requests to the Military Committee for withdrawal of units or equipment were routine. Usually the Standing Group of the Military Committee (composed of Britain, France, and the US) would agree with respect to the temporary withdrawal from Europe of 5 RB-66 aircraft of the 25th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing for “eventual use in meeting operational requirements in Vietnam. Temporary withdrawal of these aircraft would have only a negligible effect.”28
The Military Committee's complacency in this instance may have been an aberration since the decision was made in November 1965, in the midst of the buildup in Vietnam. Even in May of that year the Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic (SACLANT) expressed his regrets when the US Permanent Representative on the North Atlantic Council asked for temporary withdrawal of an aircraft carrier assigned to the Atlantic command, deploring “this reduction in the effectiveness of the striking fleet.” He made it clear that he could not “view with equanimity the recent pattern of withdrawals and recategorization which is progressively reducing the effectiveness of his forces.”29 And this exchange took place before the administration asked Congress for the first major troop increase for Vietnam operations.
Despite the Defense Department's observations that US forces in Europe were larger in 1965 than they were in 1961, the US contributions did not meet Supreme Head quarters Allied Power in Europe's (SHAPE) force goals. Pointedly, General Lemnitzer (SACEUR from 1963 to 1969) noted in the annual reviews of US commitment to NATO serious shortfalls. In 1965, he was polite but direct in complaining that “the vulnerability of US Air Force units in Europe continues to be a matter of concern.”30 Variations on this theme appeared each year.
No one was more conscious of this problem than the Supreme Allied Commander himself. More forcefully than in the previous year, Lemnitzer criticized McNamara in February 1966 for making once again “an overly optimistic statement regarding tactical air strength.”31 NATO's annual review of the alliance's forces in November 1965 mixed his appreciation for the United States exceeding SACLANT's recommended force goals with a recognition that there were a number of shortages in major weapons categories. The report regretted that only one missile squadron of the six-squadron requirement stated in SACEUR's recommended goals were met. SHAPE was “seriously concerned at the impact of this significant withdrawal.”32
The US military's disapproval of McNamara's redeployment program expanded over time. It disturbed the Joint Chiefs that the secretary's proposed changes were driven by what they considered to be financial considerations that prevailed over military advice. For a time, France's decision in 1966 to leave the integrated NATO command and force the evacuation of US forces from its territory muted its objections. This drastic action, however, provided McNamara with an opportunity to advance his reformation of American personnel in Europe. He argued that France did NATO a favor by accelerating his plans for a more efficient use of NATO's and America's resources. Given the need for new lines of communication and transportation, he was able to solidify his program for dual-basing of US forces.
The Joint Chiefs did not share McNamara's enthusiasm for dual-basing, and worried over the Vietnam War's impact on NATO's military capabilities. By the beginning of 1968, there were more than 500,000 US personnel in Vietnam whose costs increasingly impinged upon the force levels in Europe. One US general, Bruce Palmer, claimed that the drain of manpower “destroyed the U.S. 7th Army in Germany without the enemy firing a shot. It destroyed that army because we were so strategically out of balance we used the 7th Army as a replacement for Vietnam.”33 Obviously, it was not just the European allies who engaged in hyperbole when troop redeployment was involved.
Just how much damage McNamara's initiatives caused deserves a more objective analysis than they have received in the past. Certainly the loss of specialists weakened NATO defenses, but to what degree? The nightmare scenarios of whole divisions being sent to Vietnam never materialized. Nor did McNamara envision mass redeployment of US troops. But the removal of troops, no matter how few, triggered European fears of abandonment that were unjustified. It also set off alarms about the secretary's disregard for professional military advice and his excessive reliance on civilian aides.
Looking back on the redeployment issue 15 years later, the retired SACEUR recognized the demands that the war in progress in Southeast Asia imposed on the military establishment as opposed to war as a deterrent in Europe. He recalled that the Army “tapped us to move experienced people out and get them to Vietnam.… So our capability went down for the loss of both people and equipment, ammunition and so on.” There was no choice, he felt. Vietnam where the fighting was going on had to receive priority. He admitted that combat readiness of American units in NATO was affected: “You just have to accept lower capabilities,” something to be accepted “without discussion or argument, because we knew damn well what the requirements were.” He emphasized that despite the crisis in Southeast Asia,
we didn't send units to Vietnam. No[t] that I would have considered [it] a mistake, because I would rather have an American unit of 90 or 75 or 60 per cent strength and not have to change the United States' commitment for that kind of unit being where it was.
Lemnitzer even found some benefits from reverse redeployment, bringing combat veterans in the war against the Viet Cong who would have experience under fire that no NATO unit could claim.34
If Lemnitzer's rationalizations for the redeployment of US troops from Europe to Asia were not always coherent, an explanation may be found in the financial pressures exerted by the administration and the Senate as well as by the secretary of defense. There is no question that McNamara used the costs of maintaining a military presence in Europe and the consequent effect they had on the balance of payments as a ploy in countering European discontent with US redeployments as well as in pressing the allies for a greater share of the financial burden. He had considerable support from the administration, which helped to dilute the military opposition to his policies. Further pressure came from rising unhappiness in the Senate, both with the progress of the Vietnam War and the lack of support from the European allies.
There never was a time when senators felt that the allies were paying their fair share of the defense of Europe. Secretary McNamara's selective redeployments were not enough for many senators. In August 1966, Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana gathered forty-three senators to introduce the first of many subsequent resolutions calling for substantial reductions in the size of the American military in Europe unless the allies increased their defense expenditures.35 His colleagues' concerns were not identical. For some, the main issue was the money; for others, it was the persistent complaints about unequal sacrifices; for still others, it was the lack of European understanding of the stakes of the war in Vietnam.
Mansfield's resolutions were just that an expression of discontent without expectation of any alteration of America's role in Europe. In the next year, though, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri introduced an amendment to the annual defense procurement bill that would have prohibited the use of funds to support more than 50,000 troops in Europe.36 If enacted, this bill would have affected the viability of NATO's defense structure. Symington's bill was intended to demonstrate congressional impatience with the partners' behavior. But like Mansfield's resolutions, his action was basically a warning, not a prelude to America's departure from Europe. He withdrew his amendment on the same day that he introduced it. Neither Mansfield nor Symington had any wish to weaken NATO in the face of the Soviet adversary. In this respect the Mansfield and Symington maneuvers reflected the ongoing importance of NATO to America's leaders.
NATO governments on both sides of the Atlantic took the Senators' message seriously. The immediate response was found in the trilateral negotiations involving three major players — the United States, Britain, and Germany. The offset issue was hardly new. It antedated the Vietnam escalation, and would have embroiled transatlantic relations even if redeployment had not become an issue. From 1961 to 1964, the United States and the Federal Republic had worked out bilateral offset agreements, which mandated the purchase of American military equipment to offset the costs of the American military presence in Germany. By 1966, the financial difficulties of the three major allies reached a point at which the Americans and the British warned that they would not maintain their forces in Germany without new concessions from the Federal Republic.37
To resolve these problems President Johnson appointed veteran emissary John J. McCloy to find a way to keep the British army of the Rhine intact by squeezing new concessions from the Germans. On the assumption that Germany would help Britain's serious foreign exchange problems, the Johnson administration promised to raise its purchases of British equipment from $35 million to $40 million worth of orders. Negotiations, however, were complicated by the fall of the Erhard government in October 1966 and the initial belligerence of his successor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger.38 The new chancellor chafed at German dependence on the United States, but ultimately accepted some dual-basing provided that the decisions were based on common security requirements and not on temporary financial reductions. The Federal Republic also agreed to pledge $500 million in special medium-term US securities. This effort to relieve the balance of payments deficit failed to satisfy Senate critics who claimed that Germany would be winning new profits from their investments rather than bearing a fairer share in the defense of Europe.39
McCloy fought a losing battle to stop redeployment. He had to retreat from his basic position that withdrawal of any troops would weaken NATO's defenses. He had little choice. There was no question that dual-basing of US forces was necessary to quiet Senate objections. The question then was how many troops would be involved in the redeployment process. McNamara against the judgment of the Joint Chiefs wanted 4–6 brigades from 2 divisions, while the State Department, always more politically attuned to European sensibilities, recommended half that number. Harlan Cleveland, US ambassador to NATO, wanted only one division involved. In this context McCloy positioned himself as a compromiser. He would bridge the gap by dual-basing 3 of 6 brigades. If necessary, taken them from the 24th division, which he felt was badly deployed in Bavaria.40
The result of the negotiations was a US rotation system, involving up to 35,000 troops from the 24th division and including an understanding that at least one brigade would be in Germany at all times. The other two would return annually for maneuvers. The agreement in May 1967 would relocate slightly over 33,000 military personnel and their dependents by September 1968, generating a savings of $70 million.41 These arrangements did not solve the balance of payments problems any more than they removed the question of burden sharing from the administration's or Senate's agendas. As Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach observed in 1968, “the trilateral talks last year brought us some time, but it is important that we begin discussions with the FRG as soon as we can on arrangement for the next two years.”42
McNamara never did convince the Joint Chiefs or the SACEUR of the wisdom of his approach to the structure of NATO forces in Europe. But he did not have to win his case with them. While Congress was increasingly critical of the secretary's conduct of the Vietnam War, its pressure for reducing the number of US troops in Europe helped to ensure the success of dual-basing even after McNamara left office in 1968. Six months after he resigned, his successor, Clark Clifford, was advised by the director of his Office of International Security Affairs to
tell the Chiefs that in our opinion it will be necessary to make a fairly strong commitment to the Congressional leaders that of the total of 330,000 military personnel in Europe and adjacent areas, a total of 100,000 will be redeployed to CONUS [continental United States] or otherwise withdrawn within the next year or two, counting in that total 34,000 from … the “rotational” division force now being brought back from Germany.43
McNamara left the Pentagon in 1968 discredited for his conduct of the Vietnam War and disheartened by his sense of its futility. As his memoirs have disclosed, he remains haunted by a war that he belatedly recognized as a tragic mistake. The tendency of critics and of McNamara himself to concentrate on this facet of his career has helped to obscure the bold initiatives he had taken in NATO military affairs. His brashness offended the allies, and his arrogance repelled the professional military men, but the substantial inroads — exemplified by dual-basing of troops — that he had made into what hitherto had been the realm of the men in uniform remained in place even if he did not.
If the European allies accepted a dual-basing formula that legitimized redeployment of US troops, it was not because they too had accepted McNamara's judgments. A number of factors were in play by the end of the Johnson administration that affected NATO's views on the flexibility of US troop disposition in Europe. A critical element in their acquiescence was the removal of Vietnam from the European scene. The fear of abandonment that had agitated Germans in the middle of the decade had dissipated with the recognition that US forces in Europe were not being dismantled. Their numbers did decline from over 400,000 in 1962 to a little under 300,000 in 1968, but this reduction did not signal their ultimate removal from Europe to serve in Southeast Asia.
That the United States was moving toward de-escalation in Vietnam was a further indication that Asia was not to replace Europe in America's scheme of things. A third factor in Europe's acceptance of the McNamara strategy was the Czechoslovak Crisis in the summer of 1968. The Warsaw Pact's brutal suppression of the Czechoslovak heresy was a sober reminder of the importance of US troops in Europe. The invasion “tended to get the Europeans to pull their socks up a little more,” as the State Department's John Leddy noted, although he was not sure “how long this is going to last.”44 The crisis induced Germans to put off their intended budget reductions for defense as well as to slow down the Senate's drive for troop reductions. But European hopes for détente with the Soviet bloc revived quickly, as did Senate complaints against Europeans. It is more noteworthy that McNamara's program of dual-basing that had begun with the Big Lift of 1963 continued long after he had been removed from the scene.
I should like to express my appreciation to the Commission for Educational Exchange for the Fulbright Research Award in Belgium and to the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation in Austin for a Moody Grant which advanced my studies, respectively, in the NATO archives and in the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in 2002.
1 Prominent exceptions include Frank Costigliola, “The Vietnam War and the Challenges to American Power in Europe,” International Perspectives on Vietnam, eds, Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2000), pp. 143–53; Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation in Vietnam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999); Thomas A. Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). See articles on “The International Dimension of the Vietnam War,” Diplomatic History, vol. 27 (January 2003): 35–151; see also Leopoldo Nuti, “Transatlantic Relations in the Era of Vietnam: Western Europe and the Escalation of the War, 1965–1968,” paper presented at an international conference on “NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Rise of Détente,” Dobbiaco, September 26–28, 2002.
2 Lawrence S. Kaplan, “The Vietnam War and Europe: The View from NATO,” in La guerre du Vietnam et l'Europe, 1963–1973, eds, Christopher Goscha & Maurice Vaïsse (Brussels: Bruylant, 2003), pp. 90–6.
3 Ibid., pp. 96–7.
4 Ibid., p. 98.
5 McNamara address, Ministerial Meeting of North Atlantic Council, May 5, 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, National Security Policy VIII, 275–81.
6 Department of Defense News Release, Office of Public Affairs, No. 1273-63, 23.
7 Baltimore Sun, October 22, 1963.
8 Summary Record, 116th Meeting of the Military Committee in Permanent Session, Paris, November 7, 1963, MC/PS 116, p. 3, NATO Archives, Brussels.
9 Summary Record of a Meeting of the North Atlantic Council, Paris, December 17, 1963, C-R (63) 75, p. 10, NATO Archives, Brussels.
10 Minutes of the Meeting of the Military Committee, Paris, November 15, 1966 MC (67) 1, vol. 42, pp. 2–3A, NATO Parliamentarians' Conference, Brussels, NATO Parliamentary Assembly Library, Brussels.
11 Minutes of the Meeting of the Military Committee, Brussels, November 17, 1967, MC (68) 1, vol. 49, pp. 2–3A, North Atlantic Assembly, NATO Parliamentary Assembly Library, Brussels.
12 Minister von Lilienfeld to Foreign Office, September 19, 1966; Ambassador Knappstein to Bundesminister Schroeder, June 10, 1966, subject: Visit of Chancellor Erhard to Washington, Akten zur auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1966 (Munich: Verlag R Oldenbourg, 1997), pp. 1266ff; 802ff.
13 Memcon Kissinger with Chancellor Erhard, January 28, 1966, papers of Francis Bator, box 28, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas (hereafter cited as LBJL).
14 McNamara memorandum for president, September 19, 1965, Trilateral Negotiations and NATO, National Security Files, National Security Council Histories, box 50, LBJL.
15 David Klein memorandum for McGeorge Bundy, January 27, 1965, National Security File, Country File — Europe and USSR, box 184, LBJL; Bonn cable 10131 to State Department, subject: Chancellor Kiesinger's comments on US-German relations to CDU editors, March 2, 1967, Trilateral Negotiations and NATO, tabs 53–57, box 2, LBJL; Memrcd Bator, LBJ Conversation with McCloy, March 1, 1967, March 2, 1967, box 2, LBJL.
16 Edward Drea, “The McNamara Era,” in A History of NATO — the First Fifty Years, ed. Gustav Schmidt (3 vols, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001), vol. 3, p. 190; Hubert Zimmermann, Money and Security: Troops. Monetary Policy, and West Germany's Relations with the United States and Britain, 1950–1971 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 164–6.
17 Diane Kunz, “Cold War Diplomacy,” in Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s, ed., Diane Kunz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 98.
18 Summary Notes of 553rd NSC Meeting, July 27, 1965, subject: Deployment of Additional U.S. Troops to Vietnam, NSC Meetings File, National Security File, box 1, LBJL.
19 The Economist, July 31, 1955.
20 11th Annual Conference, October 7, 1965, NATO Parliamentarians' Conference, Brussels, NATO Parliamentary Assembly Library, Brussels.
21 US Congress, Senate McNamara testimony, US Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations and Committee on Armed Services, January 21, 1966, Supplemental Procurement and Construction Authorizations, Fiscal Year 1966: Hearings, 89 Congress, 2nd session, January 21, 1966, pp. 30–1.
22 Annual Report of the Secretary of Defense, Fiscal Year 1966, Table on US personnel in Vietnam, p. 36; McNamara draft memorandum for president, [June–July] subject: The Balance-of-Payments and Forces in Europe, Papers of Clark Clifford, box 17, LBJL.
23 Drea, “The McNamara Era,” vol. 3, pp. 192–3; A.G. Draper, UK delegate to NATO to W.H. Harbord, Ministry of Defence, April 19, 1966, Western Organisations and Coordination Department, WU11918/6. FO 371, Public Record Office, Kew.
24 McNamara's letter to Lemnitzer, EUCOM, March 3, 1965, McNamara Papers, box 122, RG 200, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
25 Text of McNamara speech, New York Times, March 3, 1966.
26 See Alain Enthoven and K.Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961–1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 132–42.
27 McCloy's letter to president, September 21, 1966, subject: The Military Effects of US Force Changes in Europe, Trilateral Negotiations and NATO, National Security File — National Security Council Histories, box 50, LBJL; Wheeler memo for Secretary of Defense, February 2, 1967, JCSM 60–67, subject: Military Deployment from Europe, box 51, LBJL.
28 Memo Secretary-General to Permanent Representatives, November 19, 1965, PO/65/567, subject: Withdrawal of United States Aircraft from Europe, NATO Archives, Brussels.
29 Memo Secretary-General to Permanent Representatives, May 26, 1965, PO/65/567, subject: Change of Category of a United States Aircraft Carrier Earmarked to SACLANT, NATO Archives, Brussels.
30 Memo General T.W. Parker, US Army Chief of Staff for SACEUR to Chairman, Standing Group, NATO, October 22, 1965, SHAPE/152/65-2102/21, subject: Annual Review 1965: Evaluation of the Reply of the United States to ARQ 1965, NATO Archives, Brussels.
31 Lemnitzer to Brigadier General Norman Orwat, USAF, Executive Assistant to SACEUR, February 25, 1966, L-3471-71, box 141, National Defense University Library, Washington, DC.
32 1965 Annual Review: Draft Chapter on the United States — Addendum 2 to AR (65) United States-D/3, November 8, 1965, pp. 3–4, NATO Archives, Brussels.
33 Quoted in The Second Indochina War, ed., John Schlicht, Proceedings of a Symposium held at Arlie, Virginia, November 7–9, 1984 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History), p. 266.
34 General Lyman L. Lemnitzer. Interview by Ted Gittinger, Washington, DC, March 3, 1982, pp. 35–6, LBJL.
35 Phil Williams, The Senate and U.S. Troops to Europe (New York: St Martin's Press, 1985), pp. 143–5.
36 John S. Duffield, Power Rules: The Evolution of NATO's Conventional Force Posture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 188.
37 Background to the Negotiations, nd, NSC paper, p. 1, Trilateral Negotiations and NATO, Book 1, NSC History, box 50, LBJL.
38 Bonn cable 10131 to State Department, subject: Chancellor Kiesinger comments on US-German relations to CDU editors, March 2, 1967, Trilateral Negotiations and NATO, tabs 53–57, box 2, LBJL.
39 US Congress, Senate, Combined Subcommittees of Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees Report to the Committees of Foreign Relations and Armed Services, United States Troops in Europe, 90 Congress, 2nd session, October 15, 1968, pp. 88–9.
40 Memo State, Defense, and Treasury for president, nd, subject: Force Levels in Europe, Trilateral Negotiations and NATO, book 2, 45–652, box 50, LBJL; Memo Cleveland to Rusk, February 7, 1967, National Security File — Agency File, NATO General, vol. 4, box 36, LBJL; McCloy to president, February 23, 1967, subject: Force Levels in Europe, National Security File — National Security Council Histories-Trilateral Negotiations, box 50, LBJL.
41 Background paper: Trilateral talks and NATO force planning, NATO Ministerial Meeting, Luxembourg, June 13–15, 1967, National Security File — Europe and USSR, box 35, LBJL.
42 Memo Katzenbach, Deming, and Roth for president, January 7, 1968, subject: Report of our European Balance of Payments, National Security File — Subject file, box 3, LBJL.
43 Memo Warnke for Secretary of Defense, July 8, 1968, subject: Discussion with JCS on July 8 of US Troop Levels in Europe, Papers of Clark Clifford, box 17, LBJL.
44 John Leddy, interview by Paige Mulhollen, March 12, 1969, p. 19, LBJL.