The Kennedy Image-One Year Later:
HOLT, ROWLAND EVANS JR.\DAVID MARQUAND\GEORGE W. HERALD\SHAROKH SABAVALA\EDWARD SLIDENSTICKER\PAT M.
THE KENNEDY IMAGE - ONE YEAR LATER In Washington By Rowland Evans Jr Washington One evening last winter, soon after he took the oath of office, President Kennedy remarked: "The center, more...
...visit, that the State Department saw fit to back India in the dispute...
...The General and his entourage, however, are almost the only people in France who hold the views they do...
...Even among the intelligentsia, the U.S...
...The feeling here is that the official reaction to the Goa affair would not have been so strong if the Administration as a whole had not been unsympathetic to the President's anticolonialism...
...The Executive departments, starting with the White House, embarked on the most enlightened policy of hiring Negroes ever attempted...
...Paradoxically, much of France's prosperity is the result of economic measures adopted by the de Gaulle regime...
...Or he may believe that the best way to win concessions from the West is to terrorize it...
...With a friend in the White House, too, the Indian government relaxed its concern over the vexing problem of financial aid for the country's Five-Year Plans, while businessmen in Bombay and Calcutta admitted that a friendly administration in Washington might mean more private U.S...
...Having ruled out a legislative approach to civil rights, President Kennedy attacked the issue through other channels...
...Kennedy's image is, above all, that of a vigorous and intelligent man of action...
...reports from Washington as a correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune...
...Yet it seems fairly clear that the aims of his policy are close to those of the Liberal and Labor parties in Britain...
...But among that section, he has won golden opinions...
...The General is irked by the lack of Allied policy coordination in such places as Egypt...
...In the whole area between the Rio Grande and the Continent of South America, an area including 10 of the 20 Latin American republics, only Mexico shows a significant degree of political stability and economic growth...
...This fact suggests that the phenomenon may be cyclical...
...In any appraisal of the Kennedy record in foreign policy, the greater commitment to the underdeveloped areas, often at the cost of good will among the old colonial powers of Europe, stands high, even if President Eisenhower's reaction to the Suez invasion was perhaps more dramatic...
...Some of the differences may appear to be only distinctions...
...The number of people in this (or any other) country who seriously follow the minutiae of defense policy is fairly small...
...In Venezuela, President Romulo Betancourt is also pushing land reform, while he tries to maintain order in riotous Caracas and struggles with the economic problems caused by a severe flight of capital and by urban unemployment...
...The attitude of the British moderate Left toward Cuba has, I think, been widely misunderstood in the United States...
...This remark summed up sophisticated Indian reaction to President Kennedy's victory at the polls a Utile more than a year ago...
...After the meeting, Rusk called the President and asked him to try his luck with de Gaulle by telephone...
...The well-intentioned and perceptive Government of former Prime Minister Pedro Beltran found most of its proposals for reform blocked by the oligarchy-dominated Congress...
...This distrust goes a long way toward explaining the General's seemingly stubborn attitude toward NATO...
...The President does not agree that Premier Khrushchev would make a Stalin-type assault on the West that would automatically call for a nuclear response...
...This change has not fundamentally altered popular opinion: There has been no real mass hostility toward the U.S...
...Apart from Berlin, there are plenty of other problems on which the two statesmen do not see eye to eye...
...It is not at all clear why Khrushchev has chosen to do this...
...Partly this is because the Japanese Left is a victim of its own propaganda...
...But the mere fact that brinkmanship is no longer being waved like a red flag means that it is no longer as easy as it once was to work up a good rage at the Yankee warmongers...
...Secretary of State Dean Rusk went to see the General to plead with him in favor of prenegotiations with the Russians over Berlin...
...And in the Center, particularly among moderate members of the Labor and Liberal parties, there was deep and widespread regret that President Kennedy disappointed the hopes which had greeted his inauguration and given so good a handle to his real enemies...
...That the President has tried to shift the emphasis of NATO strategy away from nuclear and towards conventional weapons is one of the best arguments which the Labor leadership has against its restive rank and file...
...The far Right gloated over it, though in a suitably restrained manner, in revenge for America's stand on Suez...
...Next door in the Dominican Republic, thanks to more luck than anyone had a right to expect, the country has somehow managed to keep its balance on a precarious tight rope since the assassination of Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo last May...
...In Colombia, which has a good industrial base and a sizeable growth potential, the problem is fragmentation of the traditional political parties...
...In Tokyo By Edward Seidensticker Tokyo It is easier to note that a change has taken place than to describe its precise nature and its causes...
...Today, if a good reason can be found for undertaking a program, it will not be dropped on doctrinal grounds...
...Shakespeare was concerned with love, but his line exposes a central truth of the first year of the Kennedy Administration...
...He does not blame the U.S...
...customs and gadgets are imported to France, and the ocean that separates the two countries becomes smaller with each new jet plane model...
...He fears that, in the last resort, they would consider Europe "expendable" if the U.S...
...Though the high hopes many Indians had in Kennedy have been partly denied, therefore, it is the Administration and not the President that is blamed...
...During the invasion of Cuba, I was working on the staff of the liberal Manchester Guardian, which vehemently condemned the operation...
...and proceed with a thousand words or so of intuitions impossible to document...
...Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care," as Shakespeare put it...
...I am a MarxistLeninist," says Juliao, and his crowds scream "land or death...
...He is not afraid to stand up to his allies over Africa and is constantly prodding them to extend their aid programs to underdeveloped countries...
...Traditionally pyramidal, these structures are breaking down from natural causes—principally the force of growing industrialization...
...THE KENNEDY IMAGE - ONE YEAR LATER In Washington By Rowland Evans Jr Washington One evening last winter, soon after he took the oath of office, President Kennedy remarked: "The center, more or less, is where I intend to be...
...military thinking had changed and that America could no longer be fully relied on to defend Western Europe with nuclear weapons...
...Several factors are responsible for this popularity: Kennedy's religion, his personable wife, the image of him as an heir to the Roosevelt tradition, and the appeal of the Alliance for Progress...
...There was always some question during the post-Stassen era of foreign aid just how committed the aid administrators were to the program they were conducting...
...Similarly, many Indians interpret the existence of a powerful Katanga lobby in Washington as a sign of a split in official opinion...
...These reforms can only be brought about by political action...
...But the center, the place of power in this country today, seems to be satisfied and confident...
...If it were now to admit that President Kennedy had made any serious difference to American foreign policy, it would knock away one of the most important of its dialectical props...
...On this there is almost universal agreement...
...And he would tell the Soviet Union that he was prepared to prove to what was left of the uncommitted world that the system of government he represented was immeasurably better than anything the Kremlin could think up...
...In London By David Marquand London "Two countries divided by a common language...
...Defense Secretary Robert McNamara tried in vain to reassure de Gaulle's Defense Minister and to convince him that no country in Europe can any longer hope to guarantee its survival with a "goit-alone" policy...
...those who feared it perceptibly brightened...
...Especially disappointing was the visit French Defense Minister Pierre Messmer paid to Washington a few weeks ago...
...In the comparatively short time he has been in New Delhi, Ambassador Galbraith has established a unique position for himself...
...since 1945, whatever the claims of the leaders of the "popular movement...
...Whatever else may be said of President Kennedy, he has certainly managed to erase that image altogether...
...Except for a January coup in El Salvador and for the hubbub surrounding the use of Guatemalan and Nicaraguan bases for the Cuban invasion, 1961 was a year of relative quiet in Central America...
...The high priests of the former Administration were weighty with years and encrusted with conventional experience gained in the military and business worlds...
...If that happens, it is quite possible that the rise in America's popularity will end, and that the anti-American elements in the British Left which have been on the defensive for the past year will regain their lost support...
...The moderate Left would probably be willing to make greater concessions to Russia than President Kennedy...
...During the 30-minute meeting, Rusk hardly got a word in...
...A typical incident occurred during the NATO meeting last December...
...The center," with a strong pitch toward the left-hand side, is where the President has been in his first year in office...
...A brief country-by-country rundown shows why: In Haiti, the outlook is not encouraging...
...Soviet policy during the past year might have been deliberately designed to drive Britain and the United States closer together, and to underline all the points of similarity between Kennedy liberals and Gaitskell Laborites...
...One year after taking the oath of office, President Kennedy has set a pace of rather deliberate forward movement, surely not swift enough to satisfy the Democratic (or the Republican) left, but forward movement nonetheless...
...The ideological antiAmericanism found in the Left wing of the Labor party, and the envious resentment of American power which can often be detected among Right-wing Conservatives, are minority attitudes...
...What, if anything, should the Kennedy Administration do to avert this...
...Thus the image of the Kennedy government, if that rather imprecise word may be used, is the image of youth—restless, immensely vigorous, confident after a shaky start and highly proficient politically...
...I doubt whether President Kennedy has yet had much impact at the grass-roots level in this country...
...Indian knowledge of European tensions and politics remains marginal, and Washington's influence over its allies has been greatly exaggerated...
...and an oligarchy of North Americans in the Canal Zone, which is jealous of its smallest privilege and quite remote from the people...
...The President has often remarked that "massive retaliation" (at times and places of our own choosing— remember...
...All in all, then, the disturbances of 1960 may be taken as the climax of a period of increasing warmness toward Messrs...
...Was a changed image of the United States responsible for a relaxation of tensions between the two countries, or would the relaxation have come in any case...
...it has become a political necessity...
...where Eisenhower shied away from a Federal system of medical care for the aged (by raising the Social Security tax), Kennedy demands it...
...But even in Mexico there are signs of strain within the dominent Party of Revolutionary Institutions, primarily because of the Cuban issue...
...So it is that in the most respectable of Japanese high-brow magazines one tribal leader in the Congo suddenly becomes a knight-errant jousting for peace and racial selfdetermination and another becomes a coach-dog to the imperialists, when to most observers they look like just another pair of Congolese chieftains...
...To be sure, this represented some progress: In 1959, former Secretary of State Christian Herter professed lack of detailed knowledge on the issue...
...For this task, the United States has two principal instruments: first, unyielding toughness on the point that aid must match performance, not promises...
...We have moved far ahead of the elites, and our problem now is how to bring these elites into the 20th century...
...Paradoxically, I believe that in foreign policy it should do nothing...
...Pat M. Holt is a freelance writer who now lives in Latin America...
...In many instances, it is the countries with the greatest potential for both economic and social progress which show the greatest inability to organize their political systems so as to assure progress...
...Peru has as severe a problem of land tenure as exists in Latin America...
...The gravest misunderstanding between France and Kennedy's America concerns NATO...
...Thus, a year ago, Indians were inclined to see a single bright American image...
...He is taking positive action to make the French Armed Forces as "self-sufficient" as possible...
...where Eisenhower avoided personal commitment to the Supreme Court's school-segregation decree, Kennedy stamps it with the bright seal of Presidential approval...
...It has managed to transform its colonial empire into a system of client states who, though self-governing, remain financially dependent on France...
...The evidence to date, as well as the prospects for the future, are mixed...
...The young man's Administration, it was confidently expected at the time, would work to put the United States indisputably at the head of all those nations and peoples who were free or wanted to be free...
...He has moved the Kennedy Democratic party expertly and quite easily into the political mold that most commends itself to the American people...
...President Kennedy would firmly tell his European allies that they had to give up their remaining colonies...
...And the two key points here, as spokesmen for both the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations have emphasized, are reforms in land systems and tax structures...
...The ordinary Englishman's stereotype of the United States— an odd hodge-podge made up of Hollywood films, memories of American servicemen stationed here, folk memories of America as the land of opportunity and progress—has probably changed very little in the last 20 years or so...
...In sum, the Kennedy Administration, if it has been responsible for changing the intellectuals' image of the United States at all, has not changed it enough to make a person feel optimistic about the prospects for a permanent accord...
...In Indian eyes, the Kennedy Administration's first year has failed to enhance the U.S.' stature as the leader of the free world...
...Hence, instead of welcoming the change of emphasis on NATO strategy, the CND has searched as hard as it could for evidence that "New Frontiersman" is simply "Old Republican" writ large...
...This is very important in a country which tends to confuse peaceful acts with a peaceful manner of speaking...
...Apart from Costa Rica, Central America is also the area with the weakest set of political institutions and most exposed to Cuban propaganda and infiltration...
...While the present Administration has not been ideally soft-spoken either, it has been much better than the old one was...
...For intellectuals, the flirtation has been not with Tony Curtis but with Karl Marx and Mao Tse-tung...
...as the leader of the Western world than any other power...
...India believed the Kennedy Administration would first seek the liberation of all colonial peoples still under the rule of nations who also profess the democratic way of life, and then go on to the job of combatting Communist imperialism...
...Shortly before the Cuban affair, both had given a warm welcome to Kennedy's inauguration...
...Most people who were in Tokyo during May and June of 1960— when the riots against revising the U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty took place—and who also spent the last few months of 1961 here, would agree that the air of the city has somehow changed...
...Yet there is no question at all that they would far sooner have the U.S...
...The principal unresolved question is whether the Alliance for Progress can be made to work...
...President Kennedy has perceptibly enlarged the United States commitment to assist the ex-colonial nations...
...In domestic affairs, the objective of the past year is clear—to bring the full resources and power of the Federal government to bear on the outstanding problems of unemployment, automation, the migration of industry, the rights of minorities and all the rest—but always (and this is the political side of the coin) within the framework set by what the President believes to be the limits of political reality...
...Although the Kennedy Administration has so far had little effect on mass psychology, it has had considerable effect on the vocal minority which makes up the political community...
...Building Rome took generations...
...Having lost, he accepted the best alternative, which was a five-year grand authorization of almost $7 billion...
...By the end of his second term at any rate, he was universally regarded as a bumbling and inept international leader...
...Thanks to a long spell of prosperity, millions of them are now enjoying more or less the same material comforts—cars, refrigerators, TV sets, etc.—as their American contemporaries...
...Most Englishmen probably regret that the U.S...
...In more positive ways the Kennedy Administration is in a better position than its predecessor, and so may be said not merely to have taken an advantage dropped gratuitously before it, but to have helped make the advantage...
...On the minus side, there is the abortive April invasion of Cuba...
...Davtd Marquand covers British politics for the Manchester Guardian...
...A good start has been made...
...The Russians are sooner or later bound to realize their methods are driving their enemies closer together, and are bound to adopt a milder and apparently more reasonable policy instead...
...At the same time, the Kennedys—both the President and his wife—have become extremely popular with the French masses since their state visit to Paris last June...
...In the President's words from his recent State of the Union Message, "to fulfill the world's hope by fulfilling our own faith" is scarcely more easy...
...Equally high stands the new President's commitment to greater conventional military power and his costly decisions to build more Polaris submarines, more long-range missiles, more Army divisions, more air-borne alertness, and to make the supreme effort in outer space—which he has never compared to a basketball game...
...Instead the General gave the veteran scholar a lecture on Franco-German relations and treated him like a college student who had better learn his history lessons...
...Ministers and officials such as Jacques ChabanDelmas, Maurice Herzog, François Missoffe or Maurice Bokanowski are consciously or unconsciously copying the Kennedy style...
...None of these problems can be affected more than marginally, and some cannot be affected at all, by what the United States does or does not do...
...He gained the impression that U.S...
...De Gaulle disapproves of Kennedy's policies in the Middle East, the Congo, the United Nations, NATO and half a dozen other global trouble spots...
...has replaced France as the source of the most powerful cultural influences coming from abroad...
...If it is dropped (as the civil rights pledges were dropped), it is for the pragmatic reason that it cannot be achieved or that the gain would be outweighed by losses elsewhere— in the case of civil rights, by an accrual of losses that might include the loss of votes on other issues, a stalemate blocking the rest of the legislative program, a bitter sectional feud, etc...
...He is now considered not only the official spokesman of his Government but also an official advisor to the Indian government on a wide variety of subjects...
...if one does not, it is emphatically Yes...
...Thus President Kennedy's patient efforts to reconcile French national susceptibilities to the need for Allied defense integration have so far met with no success...
...policy, even though Washington may have occasion to say something a little differently...
...De Gaulle considers Kennedy a very gifted young man, but he feels the President has pulled many boners in world affairs, mainly due to lack of experience...
...Outside the extreme Left (and perhaps the extreme Right) he was seen as a man of good will...
...But its political judgment, which acts as a kind of automatic governor on the decision-making motor, tells it that the optimum time is not now, and that other choices (the use of existing law and the Executive power) are available in sufficient number to warrant a delay...
...The kind of defense policy which the official leadership of the Labor and Liberal parties have been hammering out in the struggle against unilateralism is, in broad outline, very close to Kennedy's...
...How long it will last is anyone's guess...
...To its credit, the Salvadoran junta tried to institute some labor reforms and held elections in December...
...Living on a continent where nearly all major Allied statesmen are 60 or older, the French actually envy the U.S...
...Propaganda from Moscow, despite everything that has happened in the last year and a half, is still astonishingly successful at equating the interests of the Soviet Union with peace and anti-colonialism...
...So far he has faced none, whereas the incumbency of his predecessor, Douglas MacArthur II, was one gaudy series of crises...
...Panama continues to be more preoccupied with the Canal than with its own problems...
...As much as most Frenchmen, approve de Gaulle's enlightened Algerian policy, they regret that he seems too old to understand that orthodox concepts of "national defense" have become obsolete in the nuclear age...
...President south of the Rio Grande since Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...And through it all, it quite obviously loves the business of government...
...The longer it is postponed by governments unwilling to face this, the more turbulent the Latin American countryside is going to become...
...He is staunch in his support of liberal trade policies...
...For practical purposes, Allied observers are obliged to equate France with de Gaulle at this juncture...
...Indeed, as the movement to cement a European community grows, there are some here who wonder whether the time will not soon come when even Washington's titular leadership will be challenged...
...There still exists, more or less undimmed, the picture of an eager young man, liberal and progressive, working hard to restore his country's prestige...
...Indians who hated Communism rallied their hopes...
...But surprise there has been, nonetheless, and one of its manifestations is the recurring judgment heard here that the image of the Kennedy Administration has a striking similarity to the image of the Eisenhower Administration...
...The Premier may be fighting a domestic political battle against rivals or critics in the Kremlin...
...To the moderate Left Kennedy, far more than Prime Minister Macmillan and at least as much as any British politician, was a symbol of hope...
...George W. Herald is a veteran foreign correspondent based in Paris...
...A whole new generation of Frenchmen feels that his image reflects their true aspirations...
...investment in this country...
...Further south, Uruguay—a peaceful, uberai state with old democratic traditions—has also suffered a general economic slowdown...
...If the oligarchies do not move promptly and vigorously, they are sure to lose everything, perhaps even their necks...
...One can already see evidence of the first concrete achievements of the Alliance for Progress: better urban water supplies, housing projects, etc...
...The hard core of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) rests its case on the argument that Britain would be safer and more influential outside NATO than within it...
...In recent months, moreover, Russia has been the object of praise here for its strict neutrality on the Sino-Indian Himalayan dispute—a neutrality which does not prevent it from selling military equipment to India for exclusive use against China...
...The Administration is quite as aware as the critics that an absolute cure, or anything approaching it, will require new laws...
...second, holding out the prospect to the elites that if reforms are effected in an orderly manner, they can retain a portion of what they now have...
...Meanwhile, the image of another popular American personality, John Kenneth Galbraith, is coming into focus...
...has sunk into the country since 1953—more on a grant basis than in any other Latin American country—has helped preserve the precarious status quo (in Bolivia, no small accomplishment...
...That the change has come, whatever its causes and whatever its chances for being permanent, seems indisputable...
...In the past 18 months, however, Washington has become more closely identified with the people...
...He has not forgotten the British retreat from Dunkirk in June 1940, and dreads the thought of another "liberation," which this time might never come...
...soil...
...Nearby Bolivia underwent a thoroughgoing social revolution in the early 1950s, and has since lived in an almost constant state of crisis...
...Whether this accord will survive negotiations with the Soviet Union is perhaps more doubtful...
...Yet as one who opposed Reischauer's appointment, not because of a want of admiration for him but because of a feeling that any departure from the established routine was dangerous for JapaneseAmerican relations, I must say that he has probably made better use of his good luck than MacArthur could have...
...The picture that emerges is that in Latin America's most acute crisis areas, the trouble stems not from the inherent nature of the economic or social problems, but from the inability of the existing political institutions to deal with these problems...
...And the same sort of situation has developed in regard to Averill Harriman and Chester Bowles, two other American figures popular in India...
...But the Alliance's greatest accomplishment to date has been to make it clearer than ever before that Latin America's basic problems can be solved only by Latin Americans...
...If there is no improvement by the next elections, Argentina's delicate political institutions may not be strong enough to stand the strain...
...But the name of the corps is attractive all the same...
...France still has a bigger stake in that part of the world than any other country, including Britain...
...It is not an exaggeration to say that they have managed to restore here an image of America that had somewhat faded during the Eisenhower era: the image of a young, vital and progressive country...
...He knows the Japanese too well to preach to them...
...Critics in both political parties argue that the "litigate don't legislate" approach is not going to do the job, and they are perfectly right...
...Some weeks ago the Ambassador had a run-in with the Secretary of the Gensuikyô, the Communistfront Japan Council Against Atom and Hydrogen Bombs...
...It speaks boldly about innovation and reform but it tailors its policies to the limits of the possible...
...It now supports the revised Treaty, and told Anastas Mikoyan so when the Soviet Deputy Premier mouthed anti-treaty phrases that had been standard in Japan a scant year before his visit...
...The far Left pounced on it, with unholy glee, as proof that the new Administration was even worse than its predecessor...
...Cuba came as something of a jolt, but there was still a general willingness to watch and wait...
...But through them all, and many others, the Kennedy approach is to exploit and utilize—glory in, one is tempted to say—the powers available to the Federal government, whereas the Eisenhower government was more concerned by fear of the over-use of power, of Federal "encroachment" on the states, of encouraging the "let Washington do it" attitude...
...The new ones are youthful, less bound to tradition and far more experienced in the political, intellectual and academic arts...
...He did, but it was like talking to a statue...
...Since it was, in a sense, symptomatic of the moderate Left's general reaction to Kennedy, it is worth examining in some detail...
...But it continues to temporize with its economic problems (the cruzeiro depreciated by more than 50 per cent in 1961) and, especially, with the problem presented by its Northeast region, the Western Hemisphere's number one depressed area...
...So far as one could gather from the reaction of the American press, and from talking to Americans here, its condemnation was seen either as evidence of anti-Americanism, or at best as an example of a double standard of international morality...
...Eight years ago, if a good reason could be found for not undertaking a program, the program was likely not to be undertaken...
...The neutralist and unilateralist fringe of the Labor party has put so many emotional eggs into the anti-American basket that it is now too late for them to be retrieved...
...Hence we have those news stories that begin, "The feeling in Tokyo at the end of the year is...
...The notion of New Frontiers has also had something of a vogue in Japan...
...Across the Andes in Chile, which has some of the most deeply rooted democratic traditions in Latin America, the economy remains on dead center, with a declining per capita income...
...Temporarily, at least, Cuba was a crushing blow...
...the "agonizing reappraisal" and "more bang for a buck" doctrines...
...Edward Seidensticker, translator of several Japanese novels, has reported from Tokyo for over a decade...
...That stereotype is, on the whole, a friendly one...
...The General is now giving the highest priority to nuclear armament, however, and Messmer has just announced that France will construct its first Polaris-type atomic submarine in 1963...
...There were fewer than the usual number of threatened revolutions...
...Until Goa, Galbraith's position was the envy of the diplomatic corps in the capital...
...Most Mexicans, hypnotized by the doctrine of non-intervention, have not yet faced the Cuban issue squarely...
...He no longer merely refuses to integrate his Air Force ana a large part of his Navy into the organization...
...prestige has survived this disaster in remarkably good shape, thanks not only to Kennedy's popularity and the Alliance but also to Fidel Castro's own behavior, which has become increasingly offensive to Latin Americans...
...That will come only when the vast preponderance of Japanese intellectual opinion begins to view the world conflict as one between freedom and servitude...
...In New Delhi By Sharokh Sabavala New Delhi "The angry old men are out...
...To avoid painting too sunny a picture, it must be added that embarrassment about the Treaty disturbance and glorious Albania does not seem to have produced any fundamental change in the categories into which the intellectuals force the world...
...He calls this "democratic rule by totalitarians," and believes that a thorough constitutional reform of the United Nations is overdue...
...Throughout their modern era, the Japanese had a way of blowing hot and cold, changing into crinolines one decade, so to speak, and back to kimono the next...
...It must not be forgotten, too, that the French have become more and more Americanized in the past few years...
...has been unable to provide clear-cut leadership on any major world issue...
...All he can attempt is the creation of an atomic "anti-city" force that threatens civilian targets...
...When Pinay resigned from the Government, he gave as his official reason that he could no longer condone its attitude toward the Atlantic Alliance...
...During the 1960 election campaign, Indians came to think of Kennedy as a President who would be forceful and independent of his Administration in foreign affairs...
...But elections in the Spring threaten a breakdown of the political structure...
...On the plus side, Kennedy is by all odds the most popular U.S...
...True, American policy today is not remarkably different from that of Dulles and his successor, Christian Herter...
...All ambassadors must sometimes descend to platitudes, but his have a better chance of competing with platitudes from Moscow than do those of most envoys...
...It is saturated with the academic aura but never confused about the mechanics of practical politics...
...And presently along came the Moscow-Peking debate, "glorious Albania" and all that, to give further reasons for squirming...
...While he has no brief for Katanga chief Moise Tshombe's mercenaries, he fears that the campaign against them will degenerate into a racist crusade against all whites in Africa...
...arms and money...
...Rather it has affected professional intellectuals, who have tended to be very hostile, and affected them where it most hurts, in their bank accounts...
...To them it is still torn by a battle between Socialism and capitalism, and the former continues to be the respectable side to cheer for, even if, as a result of that squirming and for the sake of that dwindling bank account, the cheering must now and then become somewhat muffled...
...The belief was based on the apparently mistaken notion that it is easier for the U.S...
...Since then the President has revived the symbol...
...In London, during the final years of Eisenhower's Presidency, the U.S...
...for being governed by a young man with a fresh, progressive outlook...
...He reckons that this will be enough of a deterrent to make anyone think twice before dropping nuclear bombs on France...
...At the same time, he has perceptibly expanded the capacity of the United States to make a flexible response to possible aggression in Europe...
...In contrast, it was not until last November, two months after Prime Minister Nehru's U.S...
...The U.S., international lending institutions and, given any kind of a decent break, private capital, can supply the extra margin of investment which Latin America needs to maintain satisfactory economic growth...
...The similarity is more apparent than real...
...For only when Latins come to say to each other, "The fault is not in the United States but in ourselves," will the Alliance make real progress...
...Two lady writers of my acquaintance, whose fame rests on their long residence in the United States and their venomous hostility toward it, admit that they are rather hard up these days...
...Many of the people who edit and read the highbrow magazines and newspapers are simply tired of it...
...remained safe as a "bastion of freedom...
...There is no doubt that the invasion of Cuba did great harm to the Kennedy Administration, in almost every section of British opinion...
...Two-thirds of the period during which the change was taking place coincided with the first year of the Kennedy Administration...
...Yet it may be that the longer the crisis-free interlude goes on the better the prospects will be, thanks more, perhaps, to glorious Albania than to the Kennedy Administration...
...When he speaks in a less bellicose vein, he is able to flatter the Japanese with his interest in and knowledge of their country...
...M. and M. Now a cooling-off period has set in...
...problems there are complicated by the fact that there are two oligarchies to deal with: a native Panamanian oligarchy, one of the tightest, most conservative in Latin America...
...It would be dangerous, though, to end on too complacent a note...
...But of all the areas of the Hemisphere, with the possible exception of Paraguay, Central America is the one with the greatest need for social reform and the least disposition on the part of the elite to do anything about it...
...On the other hand, when he speaks he speaks with an authority they cannot deny...
...The U.S...
...The Eisenhower Administration was generously staffed with men of the right, whose thinking was conditioned by what we may call the conservative response...
...But no one who followed the agonizingly close contest which has divided the British Labor party in the last two years can have complete confidence that the resistance will be successful...
...The Soviet Union, posturing as the true champion of the oppressed African and Asian colonial peoples, continues to make many here forget that it has enslaved millions...
...If Laos and Berlin have not produced quite the evidence of youthful vigor that was expected, the U.S.' stand against Portuguese colonialism and the willingness to accept neutralism as not necessarily a mark of perdition have come as evidence of youthful flexibility...
...Ecuador, politically and economically stable during the '50s, underwent a palace coup in early November...
...Sharokh Sabavala is The New Leader's correspondent in India...
...Moreover, President Kennedy has made a much deeper impact on these leaders and countless other politically active Frenchmen than one would suspect from looking at the Elysée...
...After January 20, 1961, U.S...
...But it is equally imperative if Latin American governments are to have the revenue necessary to provide their own social services, and incentives to channel investment away from land and luxury apartments into industry and other productive enterprises...
...But the political institutions of most of Latin America are largely dominated by elites, and in many countries they have just recently emerged from periods of dictatorship...
...What Galbraith says in India is understood to represent U.S...
...In Argentina and Venezuela, both among the richest countries in the Hemisphere, freely elected governments which succeeded dictators are trying to deal with different sets of problems: One is beset by strikes, the other by howling street mobs...
...The appointment of Professor Edward O. Reischauer as Ambassador to Japan seems to have been a clever move...
...In Latin America By Pat M. Holt Bogota Despite A great many unanswered questions, President Kennedy's record in Latin America at the end of his first year in office shows two pluses and a single minus...
...Tax reform is a less emotional political issue...
...seemed like a sleeping giant drugged into coma...
...De Gaulle complains that the President's policies tend to weaken that system and thereby the West's position in Africa...
...Some Latin American elites see this, but, unfortunately, they are still in a minority...
...But when it came to a new financing arrangement that would increase his power and ability to carry out the program by borrowing from the Treasury, he blocked it on doctrinal grounds of fiscal orthodoxy...
...This willingness was displayed even in the farther reaches of the Socialist party...
...But it had never dawned on him that America might seriously try to stop a Soviet aggression in Europe with only conventional arms, and, if unsuccessful, stage a "temporary withdrawal" from the Continent rather than risk an atomic attack on U.S...
...They may not be up to the task...
...That seems to me unlikely...
...Even a legion of local fence-sitters began to lean a little toward the U.S...
...The Alliance itself is the second plus factor, although its basic emphasis on social reform really originated under the Eisenhower Administration in the summer of 1960...
...The old adage about Anglo-American relations undoubtedly expresses part of the truth...
...is now the stronger partner in the alliance (it would be strange if they did not...
...The same month, a new Guatemalan Congress was chosen, with little change in the country's political complexion...
...where Eisenhower doubted the wisdom of establishing Federal standards to improve and enlarge the unemployment compensation system, Kennedy favors them...
...It proceeds, with other foreign policies, quite without the quickie political sloganeering that characterized the preceding Administration—the "unleash Chiang" drama of January, 1953...
...In particular, it means that the United States' image in Great Britain, above all at the grass roots, is affected much less by surface political currents than most people realize...
...Messmer had heard of General Maxwell Taylor before, of course...
...The Guardian is, in fact, one of the most pro-American papers in the country...
...One of the poorest of the Latin nations, Haiti's only alternatives seem to be police state or anarchy...
...U.S...
...they believe, on not very good evidence, that their English is quite good enough already...
...The reason the moderate Left deplored the invasion of Cuba was not—emphatically not—that it liked Castro and disliked Kennedy, but the exact opposite...
...President Kennedy tried hard to get Congress to approve the same financing system last year—borrowing from the Treasury—but lost the fight in the House...
...Was the relationship causal or merely coincidental...
...the "massive retaliation" slogan that, after eight years of continuous Communist encroachment and inconspicuous application, has now been scrapped...
...But even so, the possession of a common language has a unifying effect far stronger than its divisive one...
...Brazil's industrial growth rate, among the highest in the world, could provide a solid base for further development...
...Flexibility ranks very high among the contemporary Japanese virtues, right up there with "sincerity" and a propensity for "self-reflection...
...No one who watched John F. Kennedy in the House of Representatives and in the Senate should be surprised at President Kennedy's appropriation of the political center, a spacious place that affords plenty of arm and leg room to the left (and to the right, for that matter...
...Since Messmer's return to France, de Gaulle appears haunted by the idea that the Americans in Europe might blunder into a war they are not ready to finish...
...On the other hand, I doubt equally strongly whether he needed to have much impact...
...Officially, the United States has lost much of its influence in France in 1961...
...And the section of moderate Left opinion which it roughly represents is generally far more sympathetic to the United States than any other section of British opinion...
...They may honor de Gaulle, but the man they secretly admire is Jack Kennedy...
...The tendency to separate the two was recently reinforced by two major American policy statements: Adlai Stevenson's speech on Goa at the United Nations and President Kennedy's equally well-reported end-of-the-year summing up a few days later, which reaffirmed the U.S.' anti-colonial policies...
...they afford cause neither for complacency nor despair, but rather for a sense of urgency...
...they will furnish the manpower for France's nuclear combat force...
...President Eisenhower himself made a relentless campaign on behalf of foreign aid...
...Khrushchev is not Stalin, in the President's view, and would be too shrewd to force the West into "massive retaliation...
...This expectation has not materialized...
...The Interstate Commerce Commission ordered an end to all forms of segregation on interstate transport lines and in the terminals...
...Even if one grants that Japan has entered its new cycle naturally, there are still grounds for arguing that the Kennedy administration is better equipped to take advantage of the change than was its predecessor...
...In most of Latin America, land reform is not only socially desirable...
...Its backing of reactionary Asian regimes continues, although such support does not seem to be holding back Communist expansion...
...The culture of the vast majority of Englishmen is now AngloAmerican, not English...
...And without the satisfaction and confidence of the people, governing becomes far more difficult...
...Whatever his motives, it is perfectly clear that the effect of Soviet toughness in the '60s will be to solidify NATO, just as the effect of Soviet toughness in the '40s was to create it...
...may have made good sense so long as we had a monopoly on nuclear weapons...
...It also appears that the President has so far been unable to persuade his permanent staff that not everything must be subordinated to the struggle against Communism and not every anti-Communist should be supported with U.S...
...His public remarks were as sharp as any a postwar American Ambassador has directed at a Japanese, but they could not be countered, as those of his predecessor might have been, with the old red herring about inadequate understanding of Japan and its language...
...But the tightrope walk is by no means completed...
...Through the Alliance for Progress, the United States and the Inter-American Development Bank can help ease Latin America's shortages of housing, schools, hospitals and water supplies...
...The demand for their sort of venom has fallen...
...The two would probably still rank about as high as ever in a popularity contest...
...In the last analysis, as I have suggested, most people in this country realize that the United States is the head of the whole Western Alliance...
...The trouble is that images like New Frontiers soon grow blurry, and in the meantime nothing like a real break-through seems to have been achieved...
...In the field of international politics he is the only Frenchman who counts, and he is watching the President's performance with a sceptical air that seems to say, "Anything you can do, I could do better...
...But there also exists the picture of a new Chief Executive who has been captured by an Administration which now appears to be not very different from the one General Eisenhower headed...
...The new President, Carlos Julio Arosemena, recently said, "We are with the United States and Cuba, with Russia and the Catholic Church.' He did not explain how he managed this, although he added that he hoped his words would not be misinterpreted...
...In perspective, however, U.S...
...There agreement ends, however...
...Many of the U.S.' present problems in Latin America are due to the fact that it has long been identified with the ruling elites...
...World tensions had so long been treated as almost the personal work of two contentious old men, John Foster Dulles and Konrad Adenauer, that the disappearance of the American villain took the urgency out of the drama...
...While Ambassador Stevenson was chastising India for its aggression in Goa, Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev, then in Bombay, was going around congratulating people for liberating another Asian region from European rule...
...They will be resisted, of course...
...Similarly, Kennedy's stand on Berlin—within the limits imposed on him by alliance diplomacy—is pretty close to that of the Labor, party leadership and to moderate Left opinion here...
...They even began to feel a trifle foolish...
...Nor will the two divisions that are soon to return from Algeria be assigned to NATO...
...Meanwhile, the Brazilian government tries palliatives such as hitor-miss food relief programs instead of basic reform and development...
...He scoffs at the majority decisions taken by the UN Assembly, pointing out that more and more delegates represent governments that don't abide by such decisions in their own country...
...The Japanese are not anxious to have the Peace Corps among them...
...Today that image is split in two...
...In Colombia, solid groundwork has been laid through a comprehensive agrarian reform law and an ambitious school construction and roadbuilding program...
...But once they achieved roughly the same destructive capability, it made nonsense...
...No one here is quite sure any longer whether what these men say is an expression of personal opinion or a projection of official policy...
...Thus, where Eisenhower twice vetoed a depressed areas bill, Kennedy approved it...
...It is possible, of course, that Khrushchev is too stupid and his foreign ministry too inept to realize what effect his policy is having on America's Allies...
...In the long run, the best way to win solid support from progressive people in this country is to follow a progressive policy inside the United States...
...The most influential newspaper in Japan, Asahi, published in all the major urban centers, has quietly made an about face on the question of whether or not revision of the Security Treaty was a good thing...
...On the far Left, Kennedy's effect has been to increase anti-American feeling, rather than the reverse...
...The picture of a vigorous young President succeeding a tired old President caught the public imagination early...
...The eager young men are in...
...The Government of Conservative President Jorge Alessandri has good ideas, but they rarely get beyond the paper stage and Communist influence is growing...
...Although they may object violently to specific acts of American policy as they occur, tney also understand that a firm and consistent American Administration is better for us all than a hesitant and wobbly one...
...It remains to be seen how he will behave in a crisis...
...While Kennedy continues to regard the UN as an indispensable instrument of American policy, de Gaulle is growing ever more hostile to the grand machin...
...In Paris By George W Herald Paris There is no pat answer to the question whether President Kennedy has improved America's image in France during the first year of his Administration...
...This means that no administration can hope to change America's image in this country, for better or worse, very radically or very quickly...
...From Left to Right, from Guy Mollet and Pierre Mendès-France to Paul Reynaud and Antoine Pinay, practically all political leaders reject his views on NATO...
...the "liberation" thesis...
...of a President who has been pushed into actions like the Cuban blunder...
...to persuade France to get out of Algeria than to persuade the Russians to leave Hungary...
...Washington still seems firmly committed to the support of its European allies—right or wrong...
...There are even men in de Gaulle's own Government who no longer fit the standard picture of French politicians...
...The days of General Stroessner are clearly numbered, however, and no one can say what will come out of the turmoil he will almost surely leave behind...
...Although his policies have resulted in spectacular improvement in most of Argentina's economic statistics, this has not yet been significantly reflected in the condition of the ordinary Argentine...
...The strongest piece of evidence which the CND has managed to find so far is, of course, Cuba...
...So it is too that the Socialist party of Japan can oppose relations with South Korea on the grounds that it is governed by an undemocratic regime, and yet advocate relations with China...
...Hiroo Wada, an enigmatic figure who is generally taken to be considerably to the Left of the Socialist Center, described the Cuban adventure as a legacy from the Eisenhower era...
...Neither the left nor the right is in a state of euphoria...
...And Paraguay is the Hemisphere's last remaining oldstyle dictatorship...
...it is trying to support a too-ambitious welfare state on a too-narrow economic base...
...Indeed, the coolness of the press toward last year's attempts to build up a new "popular movement" against the Treaty was probably more responsible than anything else for the limpness of the demonstrations that resulted...
...He also deplores Kennedy's Congo initiatives...
...If one does, the answer is No...
...All depends on whether one identifies France with General de Gaulle...
...For Japan, the great trouble with Dulles was not what he did but what he said about it...
...Yet numbers of influential people began having second thoughts about the anti-Treaty movement a few weeks after it died down...
...The Justice Department moved into a score of Southern counties to litigate the Negroes' right to register and vote...
...In fact, from the Japanese point of view, one of the canniest things President Kennedy has done has been to reassert the American claim to word "peace...
...Alas, consistency has never been the hobgoblin of the Japanese mind...
...but they like what they know...
...The questions are not easy to answer...
...In foreign affairs, the same trend of modulated forward motion is evident...
...The real thrust of the Alliance for Progress will have to be aimed at what takes their place...
...He resembles an oldfashioned family father who has been outgrown by his more sophisticated children...
...And it isn't likely that the picture will change as long as de Gaulle is in power...
...Everything is now at a stalemate pending elections in June...
...The confusions of brinkmanship are still apparent...
...The $150 million in aid which the U.S...
...But now that France has been rebuffed by the United Arab Republic's ruler, de Gaulle would like to see more effective Allied solidarity in the case of the French diplomats arrested in the UAR...
...But industrial growth has been accompanied by one of the world's highest rates of inflation, which has brought about distortions the Government seems incapable of dealing with...
...On the South American continent, Brazil, the biggest and potentially richest and most powerful Latin state, survived its August constitutional crisis precipitated by the resignation of President Janio Quadros...
...For this is a restless government, fascinated by the art of politics and the meaning of power, zestful for experimentation, an Administration whose highest officials (excepting only the President himself) put aside whole evenings to sit around in private seminars debating the philosophy and purpose of government...
...In Argentina, President Arturo Frondizi courageously continues to administer to a kicking, screaming populace the orthodox austerity policies designed to recapitalize the country after the ravages of the Peron regime...
...The new Administration is generously staffed with men of the left, whose thinking is conditioned by a liberal response...
...If the French have to go, he predicts, they will eventually be replaced not by Americans or Russians but by the Chinese...
...Frondizi is racing against time...
...Every month, new U.S...
...The nature of its effect has, of course, varied at different points on the political spectrum, but one feature is common to almost all: Although President Eisenhower was extremely popular in this country, his popularity was personal and not political...
...foreign policy was expected to be a projection of the man...
...Even the cantankerous Socialist party has recently chosen to attack the Treaty only obliquely—by attacking another American ally, the Republic of Korea...
...Prime Minister Hayoto Ikeda returned from Washington emboldened to make very strong hints that the American alliance took precedence over Japan's position as "a member of the Asian community...
...And so the long, hard and thus far not wholly successful effort to strengthen the conventional forces in Europe proceeds...
...The answer depends much less on Washington than on the Latin American nations themselves...
...But on Goa there seems to have been a serious difference of opinion between the Ambassador and the Administration...
...for trying to outbid the Soviets in Cairo, particularly since France itself tried to make its peace with Gamal Abdel Nasser...
...Between one-third and onefourth of all Brazilians live in this area in a state of indescribable squalor, outside the money economy, stricken by periodic droughts, dominated by big landowners and devoted to Communist leader Francisco Miao...
...The conflict existed in the Eisenhower period, but it has grown worse under Kennedy...
...Most Englishmen, it is true, know comparatively little of the United States...
...They feel that the lobby would not be so influential if there was not so much sympathy for it within the Administration...
...But there has been no real progress...
...The main influence on America's standing during the past year has not been Kennedy, but Khrushchev...
...But the General doesn't get the credit...
...This reaction was profoundly mistaken...
...The populace at large has been fairly steadfast the past 15 years, and though there has lately been talk of a "revival boom," which means a return to things traditional, one searches in vain for signs that the popularity of Louis Armstrong, blue jeans and Tony Curtis is waning...
...De Gaulle knows that France has neither the means nor the technical know-how to build a nuclear force strong enough to destroy the enemy's military potential...
...They are dashing young men who by age, intellect and physical appearance, could just as well belong to the Kennedy team...
...But as the Act of Bogota and the Charter of Punta del Este clearly recognize, these measures will be no more than mere palliatives until they are accompanied by readjustments in Latin American social structures...
Vol. 45 • January 1962 • No. 2
