number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

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Wolfram Kaiser
tish now also began to receive hints from the Americans that Skybolt might eventually
have to be cancelled for technical and financial reasons which would have
left them without a credible nuclear deterrent, if no alternative, such as Polaris, was
offered. Macmillan's tentative advances to de Gaulle during 1962 should primarily
be seen against this changing background in Anglo-American relations.
In fact, a decision by the British government to replace the Anglo-American
nuclear partnership with close cooperation with France in order to gain entry to the
EEC would have flatly contradicted the dominant objective of the British decision
of 1961 to apply for membership. This was not the economic modernization of Britain,
or the unity of Western Europe or the Atlantic Alliance, but the rescue of the
bilateral "special relationship" with the United States which still seemed to guarantee
a disproportionately high influence for Britain in world affairs in relation to her
rapidly declining economic and military strength. By 1960/61 only British leadership
of the Community rather than of the Commonwealth and the dissolving
Empire, which after the "winds of change" had blown through it, had largely lost its
political usefulness, 59 seemed to justify this special role vis-à-vis the US, including
the highly valued nuclear partnership. 60 Continued exclusion from the EEC, on the
other hand, could very easily destroy it. This train of thought is perhaps best
expressed in an early internal memorandum by the Foreign Office Planning
Section. It explains that
"politically, such isolation would weaken us significantly. Our exclusion from an
integrated Western Europe would reduce the influence we can bring to bear on the
member countries and consequently our importance in NATO and the OEEC. Emotionally
the United States is attracted by the concept of a united Europe, rationally
she wishes to see a strong one: if faced with the choice between a failing United
Kingdom which they suspect of opposing or, at the best, remaining aloof from this
ideal of unity and a resurgent Western Europe which is eagerly embracing it they
will no longer regard us as their principal ally in Europe. At the best we should
remain a minor power in an alliance dominated by the United States and the countries
of the EEC; at worst we should sit helplessly in the middle while the two power
blocs drifted gradually apart." 61
This analysis was subsequently reinforced by a further change in US policy on
European integration which was largely the result of increased American anxiety
over a mounting balance of payments deficit. For the first time the then Under-
Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Dillon, made it abundantly clear to the
British at the end of 1959 that his government would never accept a purely economic
settlement between the EEC and EFTA at the expense of the US and without
the wider benefits of closer political integration. 62 When Kennedy then urged Macmillan
to join the EEC in 1961, the dominant transatlantic calculation made the
58. Cf. SCHLESINGER, p. 723; SCHMIDT, p. 227.
59. See also L.J. BUTLER, "Winds of change: Britain, Europe and the Commonwealth, 1959-61", in:
B. BRIVATI and H. JONES (eds.), From Reconstruction to Integration, pp. 157-165.
60. Cf. in more detail W. KAISER, "Appeasement", pp. 145-147.
61. PRO PREM 11/2985 (autumn 1959).
62. PRO PREM 11/2879 (8–9 December 1959).