The U.S. Can Take Care of Itself

President Kennedy was loafing through the weekend at his Middleburg, Va., estate when he got a call from his press secretary telling him that Congolese ex-Premier Patrice Lumumba was officially dead. It was, the President knew, an omen of worse to come. He issued a moderate statement expressing his "shock" at the news, then waited edgily for the predictable Russian response.

It came quickly. Across the world--and even in the sleek chambers of U.N. headquarters in Manhattan--Communist-inspired squads broke into rioting (see FOREIGN NEWS). The Soviet Union threatened military intervention in behalf of the Communist-lining Congolese Pretender Antoine Gizenga. It reopened its campaign to destroy the authority of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold and. in effect, to destroy the U.N. as a force for law and as a workable instrument of orderly neutrality.

At the U.N., U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson spoke his part forcefully and well, but the questioning world turned to Washington for a sign of the new Administration's reaction to the first full-blown crisis. In his fourth presidential press conference, John Kennedy had an ideal forum for an answer. The conference was shown live on television, at a prime evening hour (7 p.m. E.S.T.).. Prompted by the sudden shift in world events, more than 350 newsmen, photographers and technicians gathered in the room to hear what Kennedy had to say.

The President's youthful vigor and serious demeanor served him well as he convincingly made it clear that 1) the U.S. could "take care of itself; 2) the U.S. intended to support and defend the U.N.for the sake of smaller independent nations who need it more than the U.S. does; 3) the Russians would be fooling with trouble if they tried to intervene in the Congo.

Kennedy was quite willing to risk a showdown in calling the Soviet bluff. For unlike the battlegrounds of Korea and Laos--where the problem of supply is simple for the Communists but difficult for the U.S.--the Congo is a Russian strategic nightmare. Gizenga's headquarters in Stanleyville is 3,400 miles from the Russian border, 2,400 miles from supply depots in Sekou Toure's friendly Guinea.

Lacking the ability to mount a serious airlift to the embattled Congo, the Soviet Union could not. if the U.S. and the U.N. took a vigorous stand, intervene militarily without risking either a big defeat or the kind of all-out war that Nikita Khrushchev seems not to want.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.