Europe and American Nuclear Strategy

Western Europe figured heavily in American nuclear strategy and nuclear deployments during the Cold War, primarily because American leaders were convinced that West European security was a vital national interest; for them, what happened in Europe was laden with implications for the world balance of power and the future of American political and economic institutions. Beginning with World War II, if not earlier, American leaders worried that a Western Europe dominated by a hostile power could present a dangerous challenge. The concept of national security that crystallized during the 1940s started with the premise that the United States had to avoid at all costs a situation in which a potential foe had substantial control over the resources of Europe and Asia. "Even the specter of such a situation would force the United States to prepare for conflict, to reconfigure its economy, to limit its political freedoms, and to become a garrison state."¹

From President Franklin Delano Roosevelt forward, American leaders entertained those fears because they believed that U.S. institutions could not flourish in a hostile world. If hostile powers, whether fascist or communist, dominated industrial Europe and world trade, the United States would have to start regimenting its foreign trade to compete effectively and to acquire necessary imported raw materials. Moreover, an unfriendly European hegemon would present a formidable military challenge that could require the United States to rearm on an immense scale, which would mean further economic regimentation.²

Concerns about European security persisted long after World War II, although during the cold war Washington was less anxious about a Soviet surprise attack on Western Europe than it was about the risk of miscalculation in a crisis and the political impact of the Soviet Union's military power. What especially troubled U.S. policymakers was that if West European allies perceived a shift in the balance of power that favored the Soviet Union, they might reconsider their alliance relations with Washington and drift toward neutralism, perhaps even making separate security arrangements with Moscow. American officials saw that as an intolerable prospect, which would quickly turn the United States into "a beleaguered island and a garrison state."³

Changes in the balance of power could easily be precipitated by an American failure during a foreign policy crisis, for example, "if we let down West Berlin and Turkey." To prevent such an outcome and to strengthen Western Europe's alignment with the United States, policymakers continually pondered the problem of European morale and political confidence and the actions needed to assure (or reassure) European leaders that American security guarantees were credible.⁴

As the Soviet Union became a nuclear power during the 1950s, American policymakers took it for granted that Western Europe's confidence depended upon U.S. military strength and pledges that Washington would use nuclear weapons in a crisis. Thus, in April 1950 NSC 68 declared that the Soviet Union's newly acquired atomic capabilities had caused "increasing nervousness in Western Europe" and an "increasing temptation" to "seek a position of neutrality." Washington could revive "confidence" only by greatly expanding its nonnuclear and nuclear capabilities. Although the Eisenhower administration would de-emphasize the buildup of conventional forces, it too assumed that Washington needed to maintain the confidence of its European allies through nuclear protection.⁵

In the late 1950s, Soviet breakthroughs in launching satellites and testing ICBMs led U.S. policymakers to ponder whether U.S. strategy still enjoyed European confidence. Now the perennial question in European minds was, would Washington sacrifice New York for Hamburg or Paris in the event of a Soviet nuclear strike? American policymakers began to fret that if a "nuclear death neurosis" did not drive the Europeans toward neutralism, it could lead to the equally unpalatable option of greater nuclear proliferation.⁶

What did U.S. policymakers have to do to improve and maintain European confidence? During the decades of the cold war, confidence building measures included dispersing thousands of tactical nuclear weapons across Europe, establishing NATO stockpiles, temporarily deploying Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey and Thor missiles in Great Britain, enduring deployments of Pershing missiles in Germany, forming nuclear planning committees, and embracing a nuclear first-use policy. Even if the Europeans were uncertain, Secretaries of State such as John Foster Dulles and his successors would declare that the United States would "pay the price" of nuclear war. For Dulles, Washington would "come to the aid of its friends" not out of "love" for them but "out of the belief that if we did not...we would be faced with a worse alternative later."⁷

Washington never cured Western European fears of "nuclear death" and NATO's growing nuclearization plainly aggravated the problem. Whether State Department officials overestimated the possibility of neutralism or the levels of forces needed to assure Western Europe's trans-atlantic orientation is open to question.⁸ Nevertheless, preoccupations with Western Europe were central to the U.S. nuclear policy and posture during the Cold War.

?William Burr

Notes:

¹ Melvyn P. Leffler, The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917-1953, (New York: Hill & Wang, 1994), p. 48. [Back]

² Leffler, The Specter of Communism, pp. 30-31. [Back]

³ Memorandum, Walter W. Rostow to the Secretary of State, "Alliances and Their Inhibiting Effect on US Action at a Time of Crisis," November 15, 1962, State Department Records, Policy Planning Staff Records for 1962, Box 229, Chron File, November-December 1962, National Archives. [Back]

⁴ Memorandum, Rostow to the Secretary of State, "Alliances and Their Inhibiting Effect." [Back]

⁵ John P. Glennon and others, eds., National Security Affairs: Foreign Economic Policy, vol. 1 of S. Everett Gleason and Frederick Anndahl, gen. eds., Foreign Relations of the United States, GPO (1950), pp. 277, 284. [Back]

⁶ See memoranda of conversations, April 7 and June 17, 1958, Department of State Records, Policy Planning Staff Records, 1957-1961, National Archives. [Back]

⁷ Memorandum of conversation, June 17, 1958. The "worse" alternative was that "we would be crowded and crowded by the Soviet Union." See Dean Rusk's speech, classified "top secret" before NATO Council, December 14, 1961, indicating U.S. resolve to use nuclear weapons in the event of a Soviet attack. USRO/Paris Polto-A 718, December 15, 1961, Policy Planning Staff Records, Box 160, Europe. See also David Goldfischer, The Best Defense: Policy Alternatives for U.S. Nuclear Security From the 1950s to the 1990s (Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 216. [Back]

⁸ Anxiety that the wrong nuclear policies could generate neutralist tendencies and expand Soviet influence endured. See for example, NSSM 84 Inter-Departmental Steering Committee, "U.S. Strategies and Forces for NATO" (National Security Study Memorandum 84 Report), (n.d., circa May 1970), copy at the National Security Archive. [Back]