A Quid Pro Quo Deal?

Abstract

Once it was decided that Britain must join the Community, the British met – as we have seen – with a well-prepared French resistance tactic. In Macmillan’s eyes the only way to overcome this seemed to be a deal with de Gaulle,1 and what else of real value could the British possibly offer to the General, but help with his force de frappe programme.2 The whole idea had, however, a catch to it: it could only be realised by the exclusion of Germany, and as such went against the foundations of de Gaulle’s Europe. A question of prime importance, therefore, should have been, how de Gaulle could convince Adenauer that the British ideas about nuclear matters were good for Europe. Thus Britain found herself in a fundamentally different position from the United States, whose strong and open opposition to European nuclear co-operation Adenauer had to expect at this moment. The most important catch was, however, that the British government was bound up in nuclear matters with the Americans, whose agreement was thus urgently required. This chapter will follow up the British decision to try such a deal with de Gaulle, considering what was in the deal, how the British approached the new American Administration, and attempt to establish how far Macmillan was prepared to go over this matter.KeywordsPrime MinisterNuclear MatterNuclear ForceBritish GovernmentBretton Wood SystemThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.