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.

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.

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.

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.