Defense: The Dilemma & the Design

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Part of the U.S.-British deal was a U.S. offer to develop and sell to Britain at discount prices a nuclear-armed, 1,000-mile, air-launched missile named Skybolt. But late last year Skybolt was churned through McNamara's cost-performance computers and found wanting: as a weapon, McNamara decided, Skybolt was simply not worth the money and effort. His decision made, McNamara flew off to London to tell British Defense Minister Peter Thorneycroft the bad news. McNamara had not reckoned on the reaction. Harold Macmillan's Tory government was already on shaky political ground; its Labor opposition was always easily stirred on nuclear matters, and Macmillan and Britain had based all their long-range nuclear hopes on Skybolt. McNamara's cancellation of the Skybolt project met with furious British protests.

Still unshaken and unshakable, McNamara returned to the U.S., went vacationing in California's High Sierras ("You don't know the feeling you get when you're on top of a mountain"), hopeful that the storm would soon blow over. Instead, it grew worse. President Kennedy agreed to meet Macmillan at Nassau. Kennedy ordered McNamara back from vacation to attend the sessions, which Secretary of State Dean Rusk did not.

At the Nassau meetings, Harold Macmillan convinced Kennedy that he simply could not afford to go home emptyhanded. But what to give him? Neither Kennedy nor McNamara had any real plan, but they swiftly hammered one out. Under it, the U.S. offered to sell Polaris missiles to Britain (program's eventual cost: about $1 billion), which Britain would place under a new NATO nuclear command but could withdraw for its own use under certain unlikely circumstances.

Robert McNamara, appearing later before a congressional committee, declared his belief that "time will show the Nassau Pact to be a major milestone in the long march to a truly interdependent Atlantic alliance." Perhaps. But not yet. The Nassau Pact suffers from improvisation and imprecision. McNamara did not even tell the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff that the pact was about to be made. Said one chief: "The first I knew about it was when I read it in my newspaper." Under the plan, missile-bearing Polaris submarines probably will have multinational crews. West Germany, Italy, Belgium and Turkey have already indicated their willingness to participate, although they have not yet been told how much of the expense they will have to bear. The British promise to assign some 180 of their Vulcan bombers to NATO's new nuclear command, and the U.S. probably will contribute some SAC planes. But there are many sticky details still to be worked out. Who, for example, will turn the firing keys? And under what conditions? McNamara's Pentagon aides insist that there is plenty of time to iron out such details; after all, the NATO Polaris force will not come into existence for at least five years.