Responding to the State Department proposal for a memorandum to NATO on the Jupiter/Polaris arrangements, Ambassador Thomas Finletter writes that Italian officials suggested that government approval would be expedited if the draft were “altered to become a United States memorandum” in which the Italian and Turkish representatives “simply concur.” When Finletter suggested that the proposal was not workable, the Italians responded that their government would “accept present text.” NATO Secretary General Dirk Stikker did not see any serious problem, even if the substitution of Polaris for Jupiters caused “some reduction in target coverage.” Stikker asked that the U.S. “squash [the] rumor” that Polaris would be based at Rota, Spain (which was in fact the U.S. objective).

It is not clear exactly when the North Atlantic Council received this memorandum, but it may have been on February 22, 1963, the preferred date, from the State Department’s perspective, for avoiding delays in the removal of the Jupiters.

To bring NATO officially on board, the State Department sent this draft paper to U.S. ambassadors in Italy, NATO, and Turkey for use with the North Atlantic Council and with SACEUR. Just as the three governments had informed the Council of the Jupiter deployment plans in the late 1950s, they would brief the NAC on the purposes of the Jupiter-Polaris arrangement and its military implications, including retargeting requirements for the “timely damage” of Allied Command Europe targets.

The Embassy reported on the Council of Ministers decisions and the related communique. The latter made only general references to “modernization of arms of alliance” without mentioning Jupiters or Polaris, which was probably Fanfani’s preference. According to Reinhardt, Fanfani told him that the Council had “unanimously approved” the agreement that he and Kennedy had reached.

In his diary, Fanfani recorded that the Council of Ministers has approved his report on the talks with President Kennedy and the recommendation to withdraw the Jupiters on April 1, 1963. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense would have a “mandate” to implement the withdrawal. As agreed, the Jupiters would be replaced by Polaris, and the latter would not be based in Italy. Italy would support a NATO multilateral force, without the tripartite directorate that De Gaulle had espoused.

The State Department sent a proposed statement (not yet identified) on the Jupiters to the North Atlantic Council (NAC) for Fanfani to consider, but the Italian prime minister was holding it “exclusively” at his office. Fanfani was involved in “delicate maneuverings” on the Jupiters with the Socialists and other “center-left groups,” and leaks by “indiscreet” Foreign Office officials could harm the talks. 

Concerning President Kennedy’s proposed remarks on the Jupiters for a press conference, Fanfani understood that Kennedy had to tell the press something but hoped that he “will say as little as possible.” According to Fanfani, “too much talk and too many details will give ammunition to communists and left wing” socialists.  When Kennedy held his press conference a few days later, he said the minimum, with only a passing reference to Jupiters.

Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani’s visit to the U.S. was an opportunity for he and President Kennedy to reach “a meeting of the minds” on the Jupiter-Polaris problem. The two had several conversations during the next two days on East-West relations, NATO nuclear issues, and the developing world, among other topics.  During this conversation, with only the U.S. translator present, Kennedy explained to Fanfani that Polaris/Sergeant missiles as a replacement for Jupiter/Corporals, along with Italian participation in an eventual MLF, should be announced as “whole package” rather than to have “the different points of decision simply leak out, without coherence and possibly at the wrong moment.” He believed that the main elements of the agreement would find “general approval” among most political groupings in Italy. When Fanfani brought up the possibility of announcing the U.S. request on Jupiters and Polaris and then taking it to his government, Kennedy emphasized the need for quick action, adding that it would “not be desirable to allow for prolonged discussion” of the package.

At Fanfani’s request, Kennedy explained the arrangements for Polaris missions in the Mediterranean, which operated out of a base in the Iberian Peninsula (Rota, Spain), and the various options for an MLF, either surface or submarine ships. Such an approach, Kennedy believed, was a way to improve the “position of the West.” Accepting Kennedy’s assertions about the dangers of the Jupiter missiles, Fanfani nevertheless saw a “psychological” problem involving the “prestige and strength” of Italy’s armed forces. Kennedy “indicated lively interest” in Fanfani’s question as to whether the Jupiter bases could be used for “cooperative peaceful space efforts.”

At the meeting’s conclusion, Kennedy “stressed that by the following morning they should be able to combine four or five points into a proposal that would strengthen the Italian and American position within the framework of the Alliance, thus making this meeting a gain in its cohesiveness and hence political strength.”

Seymour Weiss would push back against any efforts to remove the Jupiters, but he and others realized that President Kennedy had a “keen interest” in the matter and that Secretary of Defense McNamara had ordered that action be taken (assigning his General Counsel John McNaughton to take the lead). Nevertheless Weiss and Assistant Secretary of State William Tyler presented Secretary of State Rusk with a memorandum making the case against action on the Jupiters or at least postponing their removal until a “later time.” Paralleling arguments made during the crisis by Ambassadors Hare and Reinhardt, Tyler pointed to the “symbolic and psychological importance” of the Jupiter deployments. While Tyler noted parenthetically that the Italians had “given indications of a disposition to work toward the eventual removal of the Jupiters,” the U.S. could not phase them out “without general Alliance agreement,” including Italy and Turkey’s consent, “unless we are prepared to lay ourselves open to the charge of abrogation of specific or implied agreements.” Rusk was in the know on the secret deal, but his reference to a “later time” was consistent with it and signing the memo would have placated Tyler and Weiss.

Donald Sinclair is a former Canadian diplomat. He served as a member of the Canadian delegation to ACRS. 

The report analyses NATO's latest military readiness exercises. Moreover, the report emphasizes the need for a modernization of the Warsaw Pact's tank force in reaction to the development of NATO's Abrams and Leopard tanks.

On July 2, 1957, US senator John F. Kennedy made his perhaps best-known senatorial speech—on Algeria.

Home to about 8 million Muslims, 1.2 million European settlers, and 130,000 Jews, it was from October 1954 embroiled in what France dubbed “events”—domestic events, to be precise. Virtually all settlers and most metropolitan French saw Algeria as an indivisible part of France. Algeria had been integrated into metropolitan administrative structures in 1847, towards the end of a structurally if not intentionally genocidal pacification campaign; Algeria’s population dropped by half between 1830, when France invaded, and the early 1870s. Eighty years and many political turns later (see e.g. Messali Hadj’s 1927 speech in this collection), in 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched a war for independence. Kennedy did not quite see eye to eye with the FLN.

As Kennedy's speech shows, he did not want France entirely out of North Africa. However, he had criticized French action already in early 1950s Indochina. And in 1957 he met with Abdelkader Chanderli (1915-1993), an unaccredited representative of the FLN at the United Nations in New York and in Washington, DC, and a linchpin of the FLN’s successful international offensive described in Matthew Connelly’s A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002). Thus, Kennedy supported the FLN’s demand for independence, which explains its very positive reaction to his speech.

And thus, unlike the 1952-1960 Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) that officially backed the views of NATO ally France and kept delivering arms, the Democratic senator diagnosed a “war” by “Western imperialism” that, together with if different from “Soviet imperialism,” is “the great enemy of … the most powerful single force in the world today: ... man's eternal desire to be free and independent.” (In fact, Kennedy’s speech on the Algerian example of Western imperialism was the first of two, the second concerning the Polish example of Sovietimperialism. On another, domestic note, to support African Algeria’s independence was an attempt to woe civil-rights-movement-era African Americans without enraging white voters.) To be sure, Kennedy saw France as an ally, too. But France’s war was tainting Washington too much, which helped Moscow. In Kennedy’s eyes, to support the US Cold War against the Soviet Union meant granting Algeria independence. The official French line was the exact opposite: only continued French presence in Algeria could keep Moscow and its Egyptian puppet, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, from controlling the Mediterranean and encroaching on Africa.