Overview

The documentation printed in this volume highlights U.S. policy toward European economic and political integration, U.S. participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the U.S. attitude toward the Multilateral Force (MLF) and Atlantic Nuclear Force (ANF). It further discusses the position of the United States with regard to the question of nuclear sharing within the Atlantic community.

Because of the extensive amount of documentation on U.S. participation in NATO, the editors selected summaries of the North Atlantic Council Ministerial meetings and summary records of the visits of the NATO Secretaries General to Washington, during which long series of conversations were held. The editors also focused on documenting the U.S. response to French withdrawal from the NATO military command structure in March 1966. President Johnson set the tone of the response and Francis Bator of the National Security Council Staff coordinated the details of the policy. For the period after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the editors selected documentation that shows that the White House took an active role in the formulation of policy toward NATO. The editors also selected reports from posts in Brussels, London, and Paris to document U.S. policy toward the general question of European economic and political integration and toward the second British application for membership in the Common Market in 1967.