On July 2, 1957, US senator John F. Kennedy made his perhaps best-known senatorial speech—on Algeria.

Home to about 8 million Muslims, 1.2 million European settlers, and 130,000 Jews, it was from October 1954 embroiled in what France dubbed “events”—domestic events, to be precise. Virtually all settlers and most metropolitan French saw Algeria as an indivisible part of France. Algeria had been integrated into metropolitan administrative structures in 1847, towards the end of a structurally if not intentionally genocidal pacification campaign; Algeria’s population dropped by half between 1830, when France invaded, and the early 1870s. Eighty years and many political turns later (see e.g. Messali Hadj’s 1927 speech in this collection), in 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched a war for independence. Kennedy did not quite see eye to eye with the FLN.

As Kennedy's speech shows, he did not want France entirely out of North Africa. However, he had criticized French action already in early 1950s Indochina. And in 1957 he met with Abdelkader Chanderli (1915-1993), an unaccredited representative of the FLN at the United Nations in New York and in Washington, DC, and a linchpin of the FLN’s successful international offensive described in Matthew Connelly’s A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002). Thus, Kennedy supported the FLN’s demand for independence, which explains its very positive reaction to his speech.

And thus, unlike the 1952-1960 Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) that officially backed the views of NATO ally France and kept delivering arms, the Democratic senator diagnosed a “war” by “Western imperialism” that, together with if different from “Soviet imperialism,” is “the great enemy of … the most powerful single force in the world today: ... man's eternal desire to be free and independent.” (In fact, Kennedy’s speech on the Algerian example of Western imperialism was the first of two, the second concerning the Polish example of Sovietimperialism. On another, domestic note, to support African Algeria’s independence was an attempt to woe civil-rights-movement-era African Americans without enraging white voters.) To be sure, Kennedy saw France as an ally, too. But France’s war was tainting Washington too much, which helped Moscow. In Kennedy’s eyes, to support the US Cold War against the Soviet Union meant granting Algeria independence. The official French line was the exact opposite: only continued French presence in Algeria could keep Moscow and its Egyptian puppet, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, from controlling the Mediterranean and encroaching on Africa.

In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) nationalized the Suez Canal Company, surprising the world. The government of France, in whose capital of Paris the company was headquartered, and the British government, the company’s plurality shareholder, sought to reverse nationalization in court, but failed—even though they clad their case in the language not of imperial self-interest but, rather, of international public interest. The time in which such language was somewhat acceptable, even at home, was passing, and the Suez Crisis played a big part in this final act.

At the same time, the two governments early on after the canal nationalization decided to remove Nasser by force, for re-compensation was not their central concern. France believed Nasser was enabling the FLN, which in 1954 had started Algeria’s War for Independence, and Britain wanted some say in the canal, which had for decades been its worldwide empire’s “swing-door,” as a member of parliament, Anthony Eden (1897-1977), called it in 1929. In August 1956 France began discussing a joint operation with Israel, which wanted Nasser gone, too, and the Red Sea opened for Israel-bound ships. In early October the two were joined by Britain. On the 29th, Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. On the 30th, France and Britain gave Israel and Egypt a 12-hour ultimatum to cease hostilities, or they would intervene—and Anglo-French forces bombed Egyptian forces from the 31st and on November 5-6 occupied the canal’s northern tip. Although a power play, “Operation Musketeer,” like the court case, could not be an open imperial move anymore, then, and did not present itself to the world as such. No matter: especially in colonies and postcolonial countries, people were outraged.

More problematically for France and Britain, Washington was incredulous. This Middle Eastern affair triggered the worst crisis of the 1950s between America’s rising international empire and Europe’s descending empires, and indeed clarified and accelerated that descent. President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) fumed that Prime Ministers Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet (1905-1977) had disregarded his administration’s opposition to military action. Worse, they had deceived him about their intentions. And worst, their attack on Egypt undermined the supreme US tenet: Soviet containment. The Americans were by association tainted by their NATO allies’ imperialist move while the Soviets looked good—on November 5 they offered Egypt troops and threatened to nuke London, Paris, and Tel Aviv—and that although they had just repressed an uprising in Hungary.

On the very day of the ultimatum, October 30, Eisenhower washed his hands of that move on live US television, and the US mission at the UN organized a cease-fire resolution vote in the Security Council. France and Britain vetoed it. Although sharing its European allies’ emotions about Nasser, the US administration withheld critical oil and monetary supplies from them to bring them to heel and withdraw from Egypt—after which, it promised, they would be warmly welcomed back. It ceased most bilateral communications and froze almost all everyday social interactions with its two allies, even cancelling a scheduled visit by Eden. And it badgered its allies at the UN, supporting an Afro-Asian resolution that on November 24 called Israel, Britain, and France to withdraw forthwith. On December 3, the British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd took the floor in the House of Commons.

The CIA’s National Intelligence Daily for 24 August 1991 describes the latest developments in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Lebanon, France, El Salvador, South Africa, China and Iran.

The Committee for State Security reported on statements from the French and Italian Communist party leaders being used in anti-Soviet propaganda and broadcasted on western radio stations. The use of these statements caused a debate over socialist ideology, human rights, and freedoms. The report looks at prior anti-socialist activity and results of actions in places such as Hungary and Poland. The role of the KGB and decrease in crime rate is also discussed.

This record of a meeting with the secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Boris Ponomarev, and with the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Konstantin Katushev, addresses the anti-Soviet course adopted by Beijing. The discussion specifically refers to relations between China and the Communist parties of Albania, Romania, Australia, France, Italy, and New Zealand. The document also assesses the situation in Anwar el-Sadat's Egypt, in Hafez al-Assad's Syria, in Iraq, and in Yemen, the main idea being that the Socialist countries should support the development of progressive Arabic states.

UN Representative Milko Tarabanov reported to the Bulgarian Communist Party Politburo recent developments of the Conference of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament. The report summarizes the conference's work from November 1962-December 1962, the period following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Tarabanov reports that Western powers put forward two draft agreements calling for the cessation of nuclear tests in the atmosphere, under water and in outer space, and underground--the proposals were debated during the 17th United Nations session.

The Cubam Missile Crisis occurred during the conference's session. Main issues discussed after Cuban Missile Crisis included: suspension of nuclear tests, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's proposal at the 17th session of the UN, ways to measure nuclear weapons testing, and military alliances (NATO).

Tarabanov also addresses the inter workings of conference members--Western, socialist, and neutral--including disagreements among Western powers. In summary Tarabanov adds that the prospect for cessation of nuclear tests is poor, but notes that the US may consider closing military bases, though not under pressure of the Soviet Union or neutral countries.

Kim Il Sung describes a recent meeting with Mao Zedong, Peng Dehuai's "interference in the internal affairs" of the KWP, and his invitation for Mao to visit the DPRK, among other topics.

The Soviet leadership discusses the state of Soviet foreign policy after the Hungarian crisis and Khrushchev’s visit to the US. Molotov criticizes Khrushchev for recklessness in foreign policy direction. Soviet inroads in the Middle East and the Third World are analyzed. The effects of the crises in Eastern Europe are placed in the context of the struggle against US imperialism.

Anastas Mikoyan and Mao Zedong discuss the role of foreign capital in China, Chinese intelligentsia, the role of criticism and self-criticism in the CCP, CCP tasks in the army, the level of China's industrial development, the Chinese attitude toward foreign property, and the road and character of the Chinese revolution. (Day)