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July 2, 1957

Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1957

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.

June 29, 2020

Interview and Discussion with Sir Malcolm Rifkind

Discussion with Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Defense Secretary and Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, about the 1990s and the new relationship that formed after the Cold War.

August 28, 1980

Note, M. Suslov et al to the CPSU Central Committee

Suslov describes the "tense" situation in Poland and proposed steps to use military and police force to quell the protest movement.

September 7, 1989

Poland: New Government to be Announced

An analysis of the new Polish government which confirms Solidarity's majority.

August 19, 1989

Poland: Situation Report

An analysis of President Jaruzelski's decision to ask Mazowiecki to form a Solidarity-led government.

August 18, 1989

Poland: Non-Communist Government to be Announced

An analysis of President Jaruzelski's decision to create a new Polish government led by non-Communists.

August 17, 1989

Poland: Communists, Solidarity On Collision Course

An analysis of Solidarity's efforts to form a new Polish government.

July 25, 1989

Czechoslovakia: Polish Solidarity Increases Its Support to Opponents of Czechoslovak Regime

An analysis of Solidarity's increased support to Czechoslovakia's opposition.

June 3, 1989

Poland: Solidarity Outcampaigns Party

An analysis of what political actions Solidarity must take to assert its role in the new government.

April 6, 1989

Special Analysis: Poland: Roundtable Accords Signed

An analysis of Solidarity's legalization and its effects on Polish politics.

Pagination