The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

on the World Today

THE day that President-elect John F, Kennedy announced the appointment of Dean Rusk as his Secretary of State, the new chief executive expressed the hope that from now on American foreign policy “will be identified in the minds of the people of the world as a policy that is not merely anti-Communist but is rather for freedom, that seeks not merely to build strength in a power struggle but is concerned with the struggle against hunger, disease, and illiteracy that looms so large in the minds and the lives of the people in the southern half of the globe.”

The very next day the United States abstained in the United Nations General Assembly vote on an Afro-Asian sponsored resolution calling for “immediate steps” to transfer power to the peoples of the remaining “colonial" territories. The resolution passed, 89 to zero, with nine abstentions — the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Australia, and the Dominican Republic.

When the vote on passage was announced, the only Negro on the American UN delegation stood and joined in the applause. Later she said, “I thought about crawling under the table, but instead, when the time came I just stood up and applauded.” Mrs. George was in fact expressing the dismay of the entire U.S. delegation, for, as she also said, “There is no one on the entire delegation who would have supported the abstention.” The United States had indeed intended to vote for the resolution but abstained on orders from President Eisenhower after he had received an urgent plea from Prime Minister Macmillan.

No two incidents could better illustrate the difference in intentions between the outgoing Eisenhower Administration and the incoming Kennedy Administration. The UN vote in that instance, as in many others, reflected a dominant concern about holding together the North Atlantic alliance, a worthy objective in itself. But the visible effect was that it was the Soviet Union and its Communist allies which were voting with the new nations of the world and it was the United States which was in the public position of supporting those who still cling to their colonial empires or the fragments which remain.

Works, not rhetoric

It will not be easy for President Kennedy and Secretary Rusk to reverse the image of the United States as a status quo power, an image compounded of such incidents as that at the United Nations and constant Communist propaganda about the “reactionary” nature of American policy. It obviously will take more than the President’s well-expressed words.

No one is more aware of this latter point than Kennedy himself. In a book review which he wrote last fall (it was not ghosted, but his own product), for the Saturday Review, of B. H. Liddell Hart’s Deterrent or Defense, Kennedy noted that “in the 1960s it is our works, not our rhetoric, which constitute the real test of our survival.” And he offered this advice:

“ The Russian leaders must understand that we are men who are committed in every fiber of our being not merely to protect our nation but also to struggle for the cause of freedom on the world scene; that we are not men who can be pressed, by blackmail or by force, to accept the transfer of territories and peoples to Communist rule.”

There has been some uneasiness among some of the nations allied to us in NATO that the Kennedy Administration is so anxious to improve American relations with Asia, Africa, and Latin America that it is going to neglect Western Europe. There are however, no grounds for such a belief. Indeed, in the book review cited here, Kennedy said: “We must think through afresh the military mission of NATO.”

New hope for disarmament

There is some evidence, and it has reached Kennedy through private but very authoritative channels, that the Soviet leaders may have decided to give the new American Administration an opportunity, as seen from the Kremlin’s point of view, to demonstrate whether it is indeed serious about disarmament. The Soviets long have loudly complained, and they appear, in fact, to believe, that the Eisenhower Administration has been interested only in arms control, with “control” equated with intelligence operations.

Unfortunately, there is an element of truth, though not the whole truth, in that charge. President Eisenhower certainly hoped for some agreement on disarmament, but he never forced his official family to carry out that policy from the American side.

The strong indications are that President Kennedy is going to make a much harder effort. If, as is widely believed, the December meeting of the world’s Communist leaders in Moscow produced a Red Chinese agreement to permit Nikita Khrushchev for six months or so to try to come to terms with the Kennedy Administration, the first half of 1960 may be a fateful period for the world.

There doubtless will be loud outcries from the Communist propaganda mills about Kennedy’s effort to increase America’s armed might. But if the Kremlin can remove its Marxist blinders sufficiently to analyze that Kennedy effort, it should understand that the effort is a deterrent, not an aggressive, move. For, as Kennedy has put it, the Soviets “are not going to take arms control negotiations seriously unless they know they face a Free World which has the unity, the will, and the resources to deal with limited aggression and with nuclear blackmail.”

At some point, perhaps earlier in the new Administration than may now appear likely, there very probably will be a Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting. In the judgment of knowledgeable Washington, observers, the two men should have an opportunity to meet and talk without any intention of negotiating. One possibility is that they could meet privately under the cover of appearances at a United Nations gathering in New York.

The pressure of time

Kennedy’s problem is one of time. As he comes to office he faces serious domestic economic problems, and he has made commitments to act boldly to meet them, a sizable matter in itself. To build the military strength, and its economic counterpart, about which he has so often spoken, will take far longer, for here much more than appropriations by Congress or Pentagon reorganization measures arc involved.

While he is attempting to do these things, the Communists can be expected to be pressing him for action, especially in the arms control field. And it will take time for the new Administration to work out its own policies, for Kennedy has said that “the design of an arms control system is as complex a task as the design of a military system.” Nor will the Administration expect the Communist pressures throughout the free world, especially in the uncommitted nations, to be lessened. More likely, they will be increased.

The new Cabinet

To meet this string of foreign and domestic problems, President Kennedy has assembled a remarkable group of men in his official family. The youngest-elected President in American history has chosen the youngest Cabinet in this century and probably the youngest since the youthful men who composed the Founding Fathers first guided the American democracy. But the point is not their individual or collective age, nor the number of Phi Beta Kappa keys, nor even how many went to Harvard. The point is the common thread which marks the selections of both Cabinet and sub-Cabinet members. The selection process was lengthy, because Kennedy was not easy to satisfy.

The new President sought not merely men with the same economic or political or foreign policy ideas. He sought men who could compose a team, men who were on the same mental wave length, men who would find it easy to communicate with one another. Kennedy confessed to one whose advice he asked that he was hampered in his search by two facts: despite his fourteen years in the Congress, he knew remarkably few who served in the executive branch of the government, and despite his father’s business background, he knew few of the top men in industry, the category from which he picked Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara.

Fortunately for newcomer McNamara, he will be backstopped by Roswell L. Gilpatric, a Pentagon veteran, as Deputy Defense Secretary. The brilliant Gilpatric was Air Force Undersecretary under Thomas Finletter, served on the Rockefeller Report group and on Senator Stuart Symington’s recent Pentagon reorganization committee, as well as on the companion Paul Nitze National Security Committee. An outspoken critic of Pentagon organization and strategic concepts, he will be a highly knowledgeable addition to Kennedy’s team.

In meeting for the first time with Rusk and McNamara, for example, Kennedy was far less interested in hearing their ideas (he had already read extensive dossiers about them, including their own writing or statements) than in finding out whether they could easily communicate. One prospective Cabinet appointee was ruled out partly because he failed to give concise answers and tended to make encyclopedic replies; another because he was not easy to talk to, despite evidence of great ability at staff work. Both ended up in the Administration, where their undoubted abilities will be used, but they did not make the first team.

Perhaps the incident which tells most about the quality Kennedy sought involves his brother, Robert, the new Attorney General. During the closing days of the presidential campaign, the Reverend Martin Luther King was jailed in Atlanta. Both Senator Kennedy and his brother, without consulting each other, reached for the telephone: Robert to call the judge and the Senator to phone Mrs. King. Call it instinct or any other name; it is a priceless quality in a team.

Kennedy’s appointment of Adlai Stevenson as Ambassador to the United Nations fits into this picture with utmost precision. Kennedy knew that he would deeply wound an important segment of Democratic opinion if he did not honor Stevenson with high office; he knew, too, that Stevenson has a vast reservoir of good will in all the free world, an asset not to be lightly dismissed at this time of peril for the nation.

Kennedy did not disagree with Stevenson on policy, nor was there any element of personal pique in passing over for Secretary of State the two-time presidential nominee. Rather, it was Kennedy’s feeling that he and Stevenson do not adequately communicate with one another, that they lack sympathy, which brought the decision. Be that as it may, Kennedy has given Stevenson the maximum support in his UN role, a seat in the Cabinet, and a public promise of a part in policy decision-making.

Fortunately, Rusk, Stevenson, and Undersecretary Chester Bowles are all personally close, and they should form a smooth-working team. Stevenson’s style at the United Nations will be considerably different from that of Henry Cabot Lodge, and Kennedy believes it will be far more effective. When Lodge took the post, he was dealing, as the diplomats say, from a position of strength, but Stevenson will be in a far less secure position, and his task will be more difficult.

Mood of the Capital

Looked at as a whole, the nature of the Kennedy appointments makes it possible to say that the American government once again is in the hands of intellectuals, for the first time since the early days of the Roosevelt New Deal. The opprobrium of the term “egghead” ought now to be ended, and only in the nick of time. Intelligence, energy, enthusiasm are the key qualities with which the new Administration begins.

Free government cannot exist and prosper on these qualities alone, but they are indispensable. In the months and years ahead, there doubtless will be times when not enough intelligence, not enough energy, not enough enthusiasm are applied to this problem or that, foreign or domestic. But as the new year begins, the new President and his choice of advisers have lifted the gloom which has enveloped an increasing area of the national capital over the years since the rude shock of Sputnik I.