THE LOOKER-ON .sx THE new American President takes office during January , so the awkward interval during which United States policy tends to mark time for want of leadership is already nearly over .sx It can sometimes be a very awkward interval indeed , especially when the change of President also means a change of the ruling party .sx When a Democratic President last succeeded a Republican in 1933 , it was during the same interim period that Hitler came to power in Germany and the Japanese delegation withdrew from the League of Nations .sx In those days , to make matters worse , the interim was nearly five months- a relic of the early times of the Republic when a newly elected President had to be given time to ride on horseback to his farm and put his affairs in order , before riding back to Washington .sx The inevitable pause in policy-making is no doubt one of the reasons why a change of President is so often said to mark the end of an era , or the beginning of a new one .sx Coincidence also sometimes contributes to the same idea .sx Just as Roosevelt's assumption of office coincided , within a few weeks , with the triumph of Nazism in Germany and the disruption of the League of Nations by Japan , so Eisenhower's election eight years ago was very closely succeeded by the death of Stalin and the signature of an armistice in Korea .sx The portents facing the new President are still not clear , but such as they are , it is in the United States' own policy rather than in the rest of the world that the changes are likely to come , if at all .sx Senator Kennedy has not been a man for dramatic or extreme commitments .sx The same was true of Vice-President Nixon , and Kennedy was even called 'a Democratic Nixon .sx ' This non-committal attitude in his past career had been held against him during the election campaign , but it will certainly be an asset now that he has become President ; for the Democratic Party even more than the Republican is a coalition of many diverse and even conflicting interests , some of which would have to be sacrificed by any President .sx Apart from the contention that American prestige has suffered abroad in the last few years , the President-elect has refrained from attacking the policies of his predecessor , so that the implication is that the change , if any , in foreign policy will consist rather of a freshness of approach than a revision of objectives .sx Senator Kennedy's statements about nuclear disarmament during the campaign are a case in point .sx He insisted that the Western Powers must not despair of reaching an agreement with the Soviet Government on the manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons , but must make one more determined attempt to break through the obstacles , though without abandoning the 'position of strength' which has been built up .sx It is almost inconceivable that any new President could have taken any other line .sx On the other hand , Kennedy went a good deal further in his undertakings about what is probably , for Americans , the most difficult and controversial of all matters of foreign policy , the relation with Communist China .sx While insisting that there should be no change affecting Formosa , he was explicitly in favour of a withdrawal of the Nationalist Chinese forces from the offshore islands , Quemoy and Matsu .sx It will be an extraordinarily painful step to negotiate .sx It seems likely also to be a step leading in the direction of recognising the Communist Chinese Government and trying to give its representative a seat at the United Nations , though perhaps without depriving Chiang Kai-shek's representative of a seat on behalf of Formosa .sx Probably only a newly elected Democratic President could take so far-reaching a step , and it would be better to take it sooner rather than later ( like President Roosevelt's decision to recognise the Soviet Government in 1933) .sx If so , then the new presidency might indeed mark the beginning of a new era , for it is certain that a comprehensive settlement of great-power relations and general disarmament will only be possible , if at all , when the Chinese Communists are included within the circle of settlement , by whatever means that is achieved .sx It is interesting to see how the new President's thoughts have shifted on this subject .sx In January 1949 he spoke of 'the disaster that has befallen China and the United States,' and urged the government to 'assume the responsibility of preventing the onrushing tide of Communism from engulfing all of Asia .sx ' Within the last year , he has spoken privately of indicating 'our willingness to talk with them [the Red Chinese] when they desire to do so , and to set forth conditions of recognition which seem responsible to a watching world .sx ' Both quotations are taken from the recent biographical work by an American professor , James MacGregor Burns , which was published in the U.S.A. in anticipation of Mr Kennedy's election .sx The author has worked with the new President , along with many other intellectuals of the same generation , and he respects and admires him , but safely 'this side idolatry .sx ' The book is largely intended to dispel common illusions about the new President- for instance , that he is unduly influenced by his father , who was one of the least successful American Ambassadors ever sent to this country , or by the Roman Catholic Church .sx Professor Burns makes the point that Kennedy's education was almost entirely secular and that he was never made to feel a second-class citizen in his boyhood , as can apparently still happen to American Catholics , especially those of Irish descent .sx But he does not hide the fact that the new President has in the past been sometimes ambiguous or evasive on matters in which religion could affect his judgment , such as civil rights or the condemnation of Senator McCarthy .sx Clearly he has still to reach his full stature ; but lesser men have made great Presidents before .sx One of the first problems confronting the new President in the field of foreign affairs will be that of the United States' future relation with Cuba .sx Whatever steps he may take , whether in the direction of reconciliation or of intensified hostility , will have a far-reaching significance beyond their immediate context , because Fidel Castro has by this time become a kind of symbol of independence and social change in Latin America , much as President Nasser became a few years ago in the Middle East .sx The parallel is reinforced by a further coincidence :sx one of the most important international interests guarded , or threatened , by the rising dictator's territory is a canal .sx And one of the chief purposes of the American base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is to cover the approaches to the Panama Canal , just as one of the chief purposes of the British base in the Suez Canal Zone until 1954 was to guard our Middle Eastern artery .sx The American people are now learning the hard way how difficult it is to act in accordance with cool and rational principles when a supposedly vital national interest is threatened by a dictator with a highly charged weight of public emotion driving him forward .sx The experience is all the more alarming for the Americans because the threat is so near home .sx Hitherto the American hemisphere , though liable to constant revolutions , has been immune from ideological movements showing close affinities with Communism .sx The only similar threats in recent years have been those of Dr Jagan's government in British Guiana in 1953 and President Arbenz's government in Guatemala in 1954 ; and both were fairly easily disposed of , nor did ( nor perhaps could ) the Soviet Government lift a finger to succour them .sx With Fidel Castro in Cuba it could conceivably be different .sx Unfortunately the Cuban situation was allowed to become a contentious issue in the U.S. presidential election .sx Senator Kennedy accused Vice-President Nixon of having 'presided over the communisation of Cuba .sx ' He pledged himself to strengthen and support the democratic anti-Castro forces inside and outside Cuba .sx Those outside Cuba include , of course , substantial numbers of vocal would-be counter-revolutionaries on American soil , alleged to be organising forces to invade Cuba from Florida .sx Senator Kennedy no doubt meant only moral support , but as American citizens have already been caught and executed in Cuba for rebellious activities , and as a contingent of U.S. marines was recently added temporarily to the strength of the garrison at Guantanamo Bay , his words could easily be misinterpreted and misused .sx Vice-President Nixon , on the other hand , spoke of Cuba as having been put 'in quarantine' by the measures of economic blockade taken against Castro's government after they had seized most of the American assets in the country .sx The principal reprisal taken by the U.S.A. was to cut the importation of Cuban sugar on the technical ground of Cuban discrimination against American goods .sx Given that over sixty per cent of cultivated land in the island is devoted to sugar , that the U.S.A. is by far the largest importer of Cuban sugar , and that two-thirds of all Cuba's exports go to the U.S.A. , the severity of the reprisal is obvious .sx The presumption that it is politically motivated was corroborated by Vice-President Nixon's further statement during the campaign , comparing the action taken against Cuba with the process which unseated Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 .sx But the Latin Americans will not have forgotten that that process included an armed invasion from Nicaragua , with U.S. blessing if without U.S. troops .sx In the ugly situation that has developed , it was inevitable that Castro should have looked to the Soviet bloc for support .sx Patriotic Americans would argue that the order of events was the other way round :sx the 'quarantine' was imposed because he had already showed Communist tendencies .sx In any case , it does not seem that Castro received much practical comfort from the U.S.S.R. or China .sx Crude oil came in Russian tankers to supply the Cuban refineries , but apparently only in token quantities .sx Soviet technicians came to replace American and British , but not in great numbers .sx And although Mr Khrushchev ostentatiously wooed and embraced Castro at the U.N. General Assembly , and ebulliently promised to supply rockets for the protection of Cuba against American aggression , he later explained that :sx " I want that declaration to be , in effect , symbolic .sx " No doubt neither of the great powers is willing to let Cuba become a 6casus belli .sx But the present tension can hardly just go on indefinitely .sx The basic questions for the new American administration are two :sx need the quarrel with Cuba ever have happened , and , can it be put into reverse ?sx The first question can be broken down into two further questions :sx do Cuban and American interests necessarily conflict , and is Castro really a Communist ?sx To the first the answer is clearly , No .sx With Cuba normally receiving three-quarters of its imports from the U.S.A. and sending two-thirds of its exports to the U.S.A. , their interests are reciprocal .sx That Castro is really a Communist can also be denied in the sense of an obedient satellite of Moscow .sx Many well-informed Americans welcomed his rising against President Batista , and consider that he only turned towards Moscow when he was rebuffed during his visit to the U.S.A. in 1959 , perhaps chiefly because the American companies with investments in Cuba disliked his proposals for land reform .sx It may already be impossible for American policy to take a new direction in dealing with Cuba , but the advent of a new administration certainly provides a new opportunity .sx Senator Kennedy campaigned in support of a sympathetic policy towards under-developed countries .sx He now has the chance to recognise ( if he can eat his own words ) that charity begins at home , or at least on one's own doorstep .sx The only alternatives seem to be the use of force ( even if not American forces ) or a state of chaos in Cuba from which an even worse dictatorship might emerge .sx When General de Gaulle came back to power two and a half years ago , there was a general wave of optimism about his chances of bringing the tragic problem of Algeria to a settlement .sx Algeria was in the forefront of every Frenchman's mind at that time , because it was a crisis in Algiers that brought about the appeal to de Gaulle to return .sx