The Presidency: Time of Testing

It was inevitable that sooner or later there would be a contest of wills between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. The Kennedy Administration in its first days encouraged the clash to come sooner rather than later by naively letting the Russians know that the new team wanted a six-month lull in the cold war while it thought through its policies. Then, while Khrushchev toured the outer reaches of Russia, Communist guerrillas gobbled up a significant part of the tiny, faraway but significant Kingdom of Laos.

Last week brought a harsh and sudden intensification of events. In Laos, the Pathet Lao guerrillas advanced toward Luangprabang, the royal capital. In the United Nations, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko truculently renewed the Communist offensive against Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold. In Geneva, when U.S., British and Russian delegates to the nuclear-test-ban conference met again after a 3½-month recess, the Soviet delegate started off with a belligerence that appeared to rip apart the fragile little structure of agreement slowly pieced together since the talks began in October 1958 (see THE WORLD). Soviet diplomats spread the word that Khrushchev no longer cared about a summit meeting. And from behind the Iron Curtain drifted reports that Khrushchev was planning to use this week’s meeting of the Warsaw Pact (the Communist version of NATO) to get the cooled-off Berlin cauldron boiling again. Big Stick. Khrushchev was obviously engaging Kennedy in a contest of at-the-brink nerves. If he could force Kennedy to back down, the President’s authority and prestige, his capacity to lead the U.S. and the free world, would be gravely damaged. Kennedy elected to meet the attack, and to meet it on the question of Laos—even though that was his most precarious battleground. In meeting that test, the President avoided any tone of belligerence, offered to settle for minimal terms. He called for a neutral rather than a pro-Western Laos, a cease-fire rather than a rollback of the Pathet Lao; he was even willing to let Communist China take part in the conference that would work out a settlement.

Achievement of a neutral Laos would be no Kennedy victory, but if neutrality could be preserved, it would be an acceptable stopgap solution. Implicit in Kennedy’s words was a hint of a big stick—a warning that, in spite of all the hazards of warfare and the possibility of another Korea, the U.S. would fight if necessary to keep the Reds from overrunning Laos. The troops were ready, and Secretary of State Rusk was at the SEATO conference in Bangkok to rally the U.S.’s allies (see following story).

Soft Talk. Since Khrushchev had little to lose by negotiation under such terms, he might well decide to negotiate. At week’s end Foreign Minister Gromyko asked for a conference with the President, was granted time for this Monday. Kennedy, meanwhile, got in touch with Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, in the West Indies en route to the U.S., and the two met on Sunday in Key West, Fla.

Already the seeds of Communism had been sown in Laos, and they would doubtless sprout and grow during any drawn-out peace conference. But in the long perspective of the battle for Southeast Asia, the Laotian showdown could sow important seeds of its own. The President had faced up to the crisis with great coolness and style. He was newly familiar with the face of the enemy on the battle line, and newly familiar with the weapons at his command. In leading an attack on free Asia, Nikita Khrushchev also contributed to the seasoning of the West’s cold-war commander in chief.