Kennedy & the World

Sometimes it seemed as if the most important event in every country's politics this year was the inauguration of John F. Kennedy as U.S. President. In chancelleries around the world, officials pored over his utterances as once they studied the statements of Stalin. Quite suddenly, everybody seemed to be blaming all the things that had gone wrong on the old Eisenhower Administration, and looking vaguely to the new Kennedy Administration as if they expected it to solve all their most aggravating problems. In the midst of the dreamier hopes and expectations, there were a few specifics.

The Chinese Nationalists are resigned to a new U.S. attitude toward their heavy troop buildup on the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, which Kennedy in a TV debate last October pronounced "not strategically defensible, not essential to the defense of Formosa." Middle East Arabs, annoyed that Kennedy put two Jews in his Cabinet and nary an Arab, angrily noted that Kennedy told a campaign audience that U.S. policy aims at ending the state of war between Israel and the Arab states. To Arabs, "ending the state of war" means acquiescing to the permanent existence of Israel, which is something that grates their Arab pride. Last week the United Arab Republic's Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Sabry told Cairo's National Assembly that Arabs would resist any "pressures" Kennedy might apply to open the Suez Canal to all ships, including Israel's.

Double Assurance. French President de Gaulle's recent emphasis on an Algerian "republic" may be traced in part to the fact that Kennedy four years ago said that Algeria's independence is "essential." De Gaulle cannot count on much sympathy from the new U.S. President in his insistence on creating France's own nuclear force outside NATO. "It would be uneconomic and unwise," wrote Kennedy in the Saturday Review last September, "for each of our partners to build a wholly independent nuclear system."

India was reassured last week when Kennedy's Secretary of State Dean Rusk gave his equable view of neutralism (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). And the Indians already feel they have a friend in Kennedy's Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles, who was an unflagging ambassador to New Delhi from 1951 to 1953, and. in one top Indian diplomat's words, "won't have to rely on the advice and information of subordinates to understand our problems."

Double Time. On the biggest question of all, East-West relations, Moscow Radio kept recalling that in his campaign Kennedy promised to "recapture the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt," and Nikita Khrushchev hinted that with Kennedy in office U.S.-Soviet ties should revert to the cor diality of F.D.R.'s times. Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov has been telling everybody in Washington who may have Kennedy's ear that Moscow is ready to forget all about the U-2 unpleasantness if "progress" can now be chalked up--say, in extending the nuclear test suspension and in starting afresh on disarmament talks. Specifically, Khrushchev is said to be seeking a quick K.-to-K. meeting and planning to pop back for the U.N. Assembly reopening in March and force a confrontation if he can.

In the midst of Moscow's hard-breathing hopes, Peking ground out the same old sour tune. "Now another loyal slave of U.S. monopoly capital, Kennedy of the Democratic Party, is to become President," rasped the Red Chinese radio. Obviously, Moscow's great expectations are not shared by Peking.

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