As Congress debates the agreement with Iran, there will be much bluster in the next couple of months about bomb grade fuel, breakout times, centrifuges, heavy water reactors, stockpiles of enriched uranium, and, of course, the impediments to inspection. But all this technical stuff will have nothing to do with what really bothers the most blustering of the nay sayers. In their view, we had the Iranians down. It hurt so bad they were screaming for us to let go. And now, for a bunch of promises, we are letting go. Soon they will bounce up, stronger than ever and just as defiant. That is why Jeb Bush and others are damning the agreement as appeasement. That is why Prime Minister Netanyahu condemns it as an historic mistake. In their view, we should keep the Iranians down and let them scream, try hurting them more, not less. That’s what you do with evil. It is a visceral feeling that has nothing to do with centrifuges and enrichment and all the other details of the agreement...

[OPINION] Private pro-democracy groups funded by the U.S. have a troubling history. Now that seven American pro-democracy workers have been allowed to post bail and return to the United States, perhaps we can examine what the U.S. was up to in Egypt using reason instead of patriotic emotion. The Egyptian furor over such seemingly idealistic work may strike us as wild and idiotic, but in fact, the Egyptians have a right to be suspicious. America's attempt to promote democracy around the world through private organizations has unsavory beginnings and a sometimes troubling history...

For many years, I have felt that the American way of democracy, with its federalism and checks & balances, could serve as a helpful model for peoples trying to forge some way of democracy for themselves. This is especially true in countries of the developing world that have to reconcile competing and sometimes conflicting tribes and religions. The Americans on trial in Cairo obviously agreed with me and were trying to impart some aspects of the American way to Egyptians about to embark on the democratic adventure. It would be a great travesty if the Americans were jailed for their efforts. Egypt would deserve the condemnation that would surely spew forth from irate Americans if their compatriots were punished so severely. Yet there is more to the case than a clash between American idealism and Egyptian stupidity...

After the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended in the last decade of the 20th century, American strategists turned their sights on another threat: the potential havoc that might come from a group of smaller countries like North Korea and Iran that the Americans called "rogue states." That name was a wonderful metaphor. It reminded everyone of "rogue elephant," the term that hunters and wildlife experts use for an elephant that breaks from the herd, follows its own rules, and goes on wild rampages. The antics of a rogue elephant sounded just like the threat of a rogue state, especially a rogue state trying to arm itself with nuclear weapons. But the metaphor had one flaw. No one tries to negotiate with rogue elephants. Hunters simply kill them...

A talented, ambitious woman whose judgment is clouded by intense loyalty. In late August 2005, Condoleezza Rice stepped into a Broadway theater to see the musical "Spamalot." At the end, when the lights came on, some in the audience noticed the secretary of State. Evidently angry about both the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, they stood up and booed. A careful, well-documented new biography, "Condoleezza Rice: An American Life," will not dissipate such anger. Elisabeth Bumiller, who covered the White House for the New York Times during most of George W. Bush's presidency, has labored to present an evenhanded look at Rice. She shows some sympathy for her subject and even more understanding. But, in the end, this is a portrait of a talented, ambitious woman who has allowed intense loyalty to cloud her judgment and good sense...

Recent weeks have brought us so much blather about the war in Iraq that it is difficult to hold on to realities. But let’s try. The President gave us his latest speech on Iraq in September. I often wonder who listens to him any more, who believes him any more. Yet I can’t help finding a certain fascination with his oratory. I am always astonished at what he will come up with next. He has a new though clunky slogan: Return on Success. Since the success is imperceptible, his pullback of troops is insignificant. But he does not say that, of course. Instead he insists that “the troop surge is working” and that this “measure of success” allows him to reduce his force enough for him and his critics “for the first time in years....to come together.” In short, he is telling us, the Great Decider has become the Great Compromiser. That is hard to swallow...

The enthusiasts who stormed into Iraq are incapable of letting go. It is not so much that President Bush and Vice President Cheney cannot face defeat. Far more important, they cannot face the enormity of the mindlessness that powered them to war. So they are hanging on with a stubborn show of honor and even political courage, persuaded that, despite their mistakes and misadventures, history will absolve them. To keep on in the face of congressional harassment and public discontent, they are spewing a lot of cant about terrorism, micromanagement, chaos and patriotism. It is not easy to see the awful situation clearly. There is no doubt that deadlines set by Congress smack of micromanagement. Ideally, Congress should leave war to the commander in chief and his generals. Try to imagine Congress passing a bill during World War II with a deadline for getting out. The thought is monstrous...

This is the season for summing up the legacy of Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General whose ten-year reign comes to an end on December 31. Just a few weeks ago, I attended a day-long seminar at Georgetown University assessing his "legacy for Africa." The forty scholars, diplomats and civil servants agreed that Africa had benefited from his campaigns against AIDS and poverty, his hectoring against military coups, his championing of peacekeeping missions, and his remarkable doctrine asserting that the UN has the right to trump sovereignty and cross any border to stop a government from abusing its peoples...

[OPINION] AMERICAN POLITICIANS have urged U.N. reform for decades. Lately, the cries have become so loud and incessant that it is hard to imagine what will satisfy the critics. Abolish the veto for all nations save the United States and elect John Bolton as secretary-general? Strange as it seems, even those steps might not be enough -- not for critics whose demands for reform mask a deeper goal. They will not be satisfied unless the U.N. submits to the will of the United States. I do not doubt that the U.N. needs reform -- just look at the scandal in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program for Iraq. But let’s put this into perspective...

When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, she proclaimed that he would serve in the tradition of our best ambassadors “with the strongest voices.” She cited Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jean Kirkpatrick as the models. But the Bolton nomination hardly fits any historical tradition. It is a defiance of history...

More than 30 years ago, during the dark days of the despicable Idi Amin, I would yearn for some way for the world to rid itself of tyrants. As a foreign correspondent covering Africa for the Los Angeles Times, the injustice of it all would torment me. Why should innocent people be forced to endure the terror and poverty inflicted upon them by the cruel whims of Idi Amin? Why should they be condemned because of their accidental birth in an unwieldy country put together by European colonial pooh-bahs in the 19th century? Could not some international entity like the United Nations be empowered to pluck him away?

So much wonderful critique of the Bushites, the foolish war, the botched occupation and the torture scandal has come forth recently (especially the articles by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, the daily news coverage in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and the extraordinary book of James Mann on Bush’s Vulcans) that there is no need to add comment. But I would like to summarize a little: 1. We all knew the cliché that war has unforeseen consequences. But I do not believe those of us opposed ever expected that things would go as badly as they have. More than 800 dead. More than 4,000 wounded. Torturers posing over wog victims. Conquerors riven with colonial arrogance. Democracy a fool’s goal. The country slithering toward theocratic rule or a breakup. It’s hard not to gloat if you opposed the war. But gloating gets us nowhere, 2...

THE U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have ignited so much confusion, controversy and cant that myriad books are sure to descend upon us for many years, all promising to shed light on the morass. Here are three of the first, all very different. The most surprising is “Allies: The U.S., Britain, and Europe in the Aftermath of the Iraq War” by William Shawcross, a British journalist who established himself in 1979 with the publication of “Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia,” an attack on U.S. intervention in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The intervention in Iraq does not bother him at all. In fact, he hails President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and their allies as “courageous in their determination finally to confront a regime that was an intolerable burden to its own people and an unacceptable affront to the world.” If you view the invasion as a misguided adventure, as I do, yet admire Shawcross enormously, as I do, the book may make you feel like the little boy in front of Shoeless Joe Jackson...

[OPINION] If Saddam Hussein had few or no weapons of mass destruction, why did he act as if he possessed arsenals of them? Why did Iraqis harass U.N. inspectors, bar their entry into certain buildings and sneak trucks out the back gates of compounds if there was nothing to hide? Analysts have been quick to suggest reasons. A prevailing view is machismo -- Hussein was trying to conceal his weakness, not his strength. Some experts, such as former weapons inspector David Kay, have said that scientists, seeking to enrich themselves with funds for phony projects, hoodwinked Hussein, not the inspectors. But one factor, just as important as the others, has been overlooked. U.N. inspections were undercut from the start by U.S. policy.

[OPINION] A little more than 50 years ago, the United States signed a pact with Generalissimo Francisco Franco allowing U.S. military forces to use air and naval bases in Spain. The agreement was a momentous event for Spain, and its repercussions still matter. For Americans, however, the pact, though significant, was a minor moment in the Cold War. U.S. historians barely mention it. The 50th anniversary passed in September with hardly any notice in Washington. Yet, the event should not be overlooked, especially at a time when the president proclaims his commitment to whip up democracy throughout the Middle East. The pact is a bald and astonishing example of how easily the United States can abandon a commitment to freedom -- even one for which almost 300,000 American soldiers died during World War II. What counted more in 1953 -- and probably still does -- was stability and the U.S. perception of what is best for the United States in the short term...

More than 40 years ago, I sat in the Western Nigeria House of Assembly in Ibadan and marveled at how well the British colonial government had implanted its democratic parliamentary system into this new African country. An African page in blue knee breeches and red stockings walked into the chamber carrying a mace. “The Speak-uh,” he cried. The Speaker, a tall African in white wig and black robes, entered, strode across the chamber and sat in his enormous chair. The page carefully put the mace on its stand on the table below the Speaker and saluted him...

In the 1990s, while I was covering the United Nations for the Los Angeles Times, Madeleine Albright approached my table at a banquet in New York. My wife hugged her warmly, exclaiming: “Madeleine, you’re doing a wonderful job as U.N. ambassador!” “Yes,” Albright replied, “but Stanley doesn’t think so.” I grinned foolishly. I kept recalling that encounter as I read this engaging memoir of a remarkable foreign-born woman who came here as a refugee child and later negotiated the political thickets of Washington to become this nation’s first female secretary of State. No one could accuse Madeleine Albright of timidity; she is always blunt and direct. Perhaps more important, the remark reflected a troubling reality: Although I admired and respected her, I often found her words and actions as U.N. ambassador and secretary of State disappointing. I was not alone. She faced a barrage of criticism from reporters, foreign policy wonks and State Department professionals throughout her tenure. This book is her spirited defense...

Those of us who opposed the war were probably right. Iraq posed no danger to Americans. It had few, if any, prohibited weapons ready to strike. No link with terrorism was ever proven. No doubt Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant but we have always tolerated - and still do - a globe full of them. But none of this really matters. We might as well, like Lear, rail at the wind and storms. History belongs to the victors. Only they can gloat...

The United Nations has been castigated by critics for weeks as a toothless organization loaded with appeasers and weasels, as a throwback to the League of Nations, as a cracked body tottering on the brink of irrelevance. George F. Will, the erudite conservative columnist, even suggested it was heading the way of the medieval Hanseatic League. Yet the current Iraq crisis may actually prove one of the UN's finest hours...

We have seen a frightening performance in the last few weeks. President George W. Bush has shown us the ease with which a relentless and obsessed president, wielding simplistic language, exaggerating dangers, distorting history, invoking patriotism, churning fear and nightmarish memories, can smother debate and take almost all of us along for his ride. True debate was impossible because he made many politicians with doubts fear that the public would brand them as traitors rather than doubters. Never has the presidency seemed more imperial. The Iraqi adventure may go as smoothly as the Chenites and Rumsfelders want, but the precedent strikes me as threatening to both democracy and good sense. The president, even when trying to assuage his allies, cannot rid himself of his bellicose tone. He revels in it, in fact...

El ataque terrorista que destruyó las Torres Gemelas y causó importantes daños en el Pentágono fue un acto que no tiene justificación alguna y ante el que había que responder. Pero, aunque la tragedia fue de gran magnitud, los Estados Unidos no pueden enfrascarse en una guerra de castigo unilateral contra los países que componen lo que Bush llama el "eje del mal", desvirtuando la actuación internacional contra los movimientos terroristas y convirtiéndola en una guerra abierta de devastación de territorios y poblaciones civiles...

To make cold sense out of the events of last year, I have been trying to order some of my thoughts. The situation is so complex that it spawns at least a dozen issues: 1. The destruction of the World Trade Center was a despicable, incredible act that can not be justified in any way. Americans have the right to feel fury and contempt for the perpetrators and those who gloat over their deed. Their deed was so foul that I turn away from the television screen whenever the events of September 11th are replayed. I feel too drained, at least so far, to spend time at Ground Zero when in New York...

An all-out American war against terrorism is unprecedented. But much of the rhetoric by our politicians has a familiar ring. The president says we are in a "crusade" against "a new kind of evil" and that each nation must decide whether "you are with us or you are with the terrorists." ... These words echo from the past in an eerie way. I heard these kind of arguments from American politicians and diplomats often as a foreign and Washington correspondent for more than 30 years during the Cold War...

I have just finished reading Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey by Michael Dobbs, the second Albright biography that I have read in a year. The other was Seasons of Her Life by Ann Blackman. That's a lot of biography for a secretary of state in office. I don't believe anyone ever wrote one about Warren Christopher, and I haven't heard of any publishing house hawking a Christopher bio now that he's out of office. But Madeline Albright is a secretary of state with pizzazz, sort of like a rock star...

The backbiting and ass-covering erupted in Washington soon after the bombs began pounding Yugoslavia in March. The rush to escape and stamp blame was clear evidence that something had gone awry. The powers in the capital had obviously hoped and expected Slobodan Milosevic to put up no more than a show of resistance before signing with shaking hands any damn paper we would set before him. His defiance and the terrible fury hurled at the Kosovo Albanians surprised President Clinton and his foreign policy mavens. No matter how loud NATO and Washington may trumpet victory at the end, there is no doubt that a grievous miscalculation occurred at the beginning. And most people are blaming Secretary of State Madeleine Albright...

The United States on Wednesday ordered three Cuban diplomats at the United Nations to pack their bags and leave the country “for activities incompatible with their status as members of a U.N. mission,” a diplomatic euphemism for spying. The expulsions, which must be carried out by 5 p.m. EST Monday, were ordered because of activities that amounted to “violations of U.S. laws and endangerment of our national security interests,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said in a statement. Rubin said that “this action was taken as a result of evidence developed during an exhaustive investigation by the FBI.” But he offered no details. Both the Associated Press and Reuters, however, reported that the diplomats under expulsion had some connection with 10 Cubans arrested in Miami two months ago on charges that they had tried to infiltrate anti-communist Cuban exile groups and to spy on U.S. military bases for Cuba...

As the United States and Britain relentlessly carried out a third wave of airstrikes early today, the Iraqi regime fought back on the stage of world opinion, with President Saddam Hussein telling Arab television viewers that he will kneel only “before the face of God” and never to his enemies. And in a witting echo of Republicans during impeachment proceedings on Capitol Hill, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz branded President Clinton a liar to his people in the Monica S. Lewinsky affair and declared that the U.S. president has also been lying to Americans about Iraq. In Washington, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen told reporters that U.S. ships and warplanes had already launched more cruise missiles against Iraq than the total number fired at the country during the entire five weeks of bombing in the 1991 Persian Gulf War...

The Clinton administration and international donor organizations, heeding a warning from four Central American presidents that the ravages of Hurricane Mitch are endangering democracy in their countries, pledged more than $1 billion Thursday in relief and interest-free loans to the devastated region. “You are our neighbors, our friends, our partners,” Undersecretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat said during an emergency meeting of the visiting presidents and a group of donor organizations. “When you suffer, we suffer. When you hurt, we hurt with you. When you need help, we are there to help.” It was not clear, however, whether the promises of aid would match the enormous need. Describing the extent of the horror six weeks ago, President Carlos Flores of Honduras said Thursday that the storm “destroyed 50 years of efforts to build an infrastructure and stole away assets of two generations of Hondurans...”

The American impasse on Iraq derives from two American faults: sound-bite thinking and too much empty bombast. For almost a decade, American policy towards Saddam Hussein has been based on the assumption that he can't last very long. This has produced a lot of threats and blather without too much thought about what would happen if someone didn't rescue us from our threats. The confusion has led us to the present snarl where options are limited and we do not know what to do. None of this would be with us, of course, if President George Bush had finished the job and ordered the troops into Baghdad to bring down Saddam. But we can't blame Bush much for this. That was not a war aim at the time. Policymakers, in fact, did not want Iraq so weak that it could not balance the power of our then bête noire, Iran. Moreover, the Bush people had every right to expect the Iraqi military to get rid of its disgraced leader. It's hard to recall any leader in the last century or so who survived a defeat as total as Saddam's. Napoleon III, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, Mussolini all died or were dumped into oblivion...

In the "good old days" of the late 1960s, when Zaire was known as the Congo and its leader did not yet call himself Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga (the all-conquering warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake), the United States proudly had the huge, unwieldy, volatile country wrapped around its little finger. The US propped up Joseph Désiré Mobutu, enriched him, shielded him and spoke for him. When a band of mercenaries and Katangese gendarmes led by the Belgian Jean Schramme rebelled and took over the eastern Congo in the summer of 1967, the Mobutu government did not bother briefing the hordes of foreign journalists arriving in Kinshasa. The US embassy did the job instead...

When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright showed up for a breakfast session with the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times recently (an event carried live on C-Span television), she began by chiding the reporters: "It is a sign of my undying affection for the Los Angeles Times that I'm here, but I don't know why I came, because you're the only paper in the United States that did not put my picture on the front page, my brilliant performance throwing out the ball..."

In the 1970s, when Kurt Waldheim was Secretary-General, reporters at the United Nations used to call him The Headwaiter. "He always stood there," recalled Don Shannon, the U.N. correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in those days, "as if he were wringing his hands on a towel, asking what he could do for the powerful countries." That kind of a scene would warm the hearts of American officials these days...

Premier Jacques Chirac of France faced bitter condemnation from Britain and growing suspicion within France on Tuesday over his deal with Iran for the release of two French hostages in Lebanon. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, commenting on the French concessions that brought the two hostages home, told the House of Commons in London that “treating with terrorists only leads to more kidnappings and more violence.” “That is the way we will not do it,” she went on. “The best defense against terrorists is to make clear that you will never give in to their demands.” Even before Thatcher spoke to Parliament, an aide to Chirac said in Paris that “we are a little astonished” at reports of the fury of Thatcher and British Foreign Minister Geoffrey Howe and at editorials in London newspapers that accused France of “betrayal” and of “a cynical compact with terror.” A cartoon in the Independent, a London newspaper, showed France pulling down the French flag from the Eiffel Tower and replacing it with a white flag of surrender. In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman also was sharply critical, although he stopped short of accusing Paris of paying ransom...

Spanish and U.S. officials failed again Friday to reach agreement on a new treaty to keep U.S. military bases in Spain, sending their negotiations into a critical final phase that will determine the bases’ fate. Both sides sought to minimize their failure and emphasized that they have decided to meet next month for an eighth round of talks on the bases, which grew out of a joint defense agreement signed in 1953, when Gen. Francisco Franco was the chief of state. But Spanish officials said they will formally notify the United States by letter next week that they do not want the present treaty automatically extended for another year when it lapses next May 14. That, in effect, sets a six-month deadline for the two sides to agree on a new treaty...

Americans, when they think of Mexico, see it as a pleasant place for midwinter holidays, a rich source of (perhaps authentic) pre-Columbian treasures, an accommodating provider of divorces, or a more or less permanent refuge from the demands of 20th-century industrial life. However, Mexico presents no problems, and therefore Americans do not think about it very much. But for Mexicans, the United States is the big problem and they think about it all the time. They have been doing so with renewed intensity during the current administration of President Luis Echeverria, a proud, ambitious man in a proud, small country. Mexican relations with the United States have long been founded on humiliation and dependence. Mexicans know that the United States is usually strong enough to work its will - whether conquering all the land from Texas to California or invading in pursuit of bandits or closing the border to punish Mexico for lax drug enforcement. All this is seen by Mexicans as a reflection of their weakness as much as American strength. It is not an easy assessment for them to accept. No matter how urbane he may seem, a Mexican official has trouble keeping resentment out of his feelings when he deals with the United States...

American foreign aid is returning to the scene of one of its greatest disasters - Haiti. In 1963, the Agency for International Development (AID) closed its mission in Port-au-Prince and suspended most American aid there. The U.S. Government was at last fed up with the corruption, repression and harassment of the strange and tyrannical regime of the late President François Duvalier, better known as Papa Doc. Papa Doc died three years ago, and Haiti is now ruled by his 22-year-old son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, who, like his father, bears the title of President-for-Life. Last year, AID sent a chief of mission down to Haiti for the first time in a decade. Plans have been made, and agreements have been signed. Now Haiti will have an American aid program about as large as it used to be before the United States gave up on Papa Doc. U.S. officials have persuaded themselves that the regime of the son will be easier to work with than that of his father. They believe it is less corrupt and tyrannical and more efficient. Some even insist that Papa Doc's rule wasn't as bad as painted by Graham Greene, the movies and the American press. In any case, they say, something must be done to help the people of Haiti, who are among the poorest in the world...

The difficult negotiations now in process between the United States and Panama over a new Panama Canal treaty are almost certain to ignore the rights of one people: the descendants of the blacks who dug the canal in the first place. “We are just hoping,” said a black who lives in the U.S. Canal Zone, “that whatever happens between the two countries, our position doesn’t become worse.” It probably will. Although Americans look on the Panama Canal as one of their great engineering achievements, it was dug mainly by foreign workers, mostly blacks from the West Indies. Few of these blacks left when the job was finished in 1914. They stayed on to help run the canal or to work in Panama. Their children did the same. As a result, Panama’s two main ports, Panama City and Colón, have urban ghettos of English-speaking blacks in the slums near the U.S. Canal Zone, and the Canal Zone itself has embarrassing communities of virtually segregated blacks. They are a people without power. Although many are America-oriented, they are not American. Although they are now citizens of Panama, they are a distant cultural minority. Their descendants will probably be assimilated, some day into the racially mixed Panamanian culture, but that does not help the present generations...

When he gets to reviewing American images and interventions abroad, President Nixon might start with the way in which the State Department and other U.S. Government agencies overseas are sometimes upstaged by an old foe of his — American labor. For years, the AFL-CIO has pursued its own foreign policy in Latin America, boasting, among other things, of how it helped to bring down Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana (now Guyana). Now it is turning to Africa. Since the AFL-CIO activity there is fairly new, that might be a good place for President Nixon to choke it off. In its foreign operations, American labor sometimes acts, or tries to act, as an arm of the U.S. Government. But it can be an uncontrollable arm. In January, 1968, for example, Vice President Humphrey visited Kenya with a large party that included Irving Brown, executive director of the African American Labor Center, the main agency for AFL-CIO’s activities on that continent. American Ambassador Glenn W. Ferguson thought it unwise to include Brown because he is disliked by many Kenya leaders, who believe he has shown too much favoritism to Minister for Economic Planning Tom Mboya...

Questions for Brooke of Massachusetts Bristle With Attacks on American Policy - The African students at the University College of Nairobi seemed puzzled at first when they met Sen. Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.) on the next to last stop of his tour of 13 countries in Africa. Local newspapers and the U.S. information service bulletins had described him as the only Negro in the United States Senate, and a good number of the students probably came because they wanted to listen to an important American Negro visiting his ancient homeland for the first time. But, sometimes, when an American Negro meets an audience of Africans for the first time, he is too urbane, too Western, and, in fact, too lightskinned for the Africans to identify him right away as one of them, It makes no difference even if he talks of his "African brothers" and describes himself as an "Afro-American." That seemed true Friday when Brooke showed up in the junior commons room of the university to talk with 200 or so students...

Gained Rapport Mainly Through Vitality, Wit - The powers of his office are so limited that an American Vice President can bring Africa only good will and homilies and take back the same. That must be understood when trying to assess Vice President Humphrey's African tour. In his visit to nine countries in 12 days, Humphrey offered no new foreign aid projects, wrought no changes in American policy toward Africa, and solved no African problems. But he did show a flair for establishing rapport quickly with Africans, who liked his brashness, enthusiasm, vitality, frankness, wit, and interest. Without that rapport, the trip would have been lackluster and tepid, just like that of the last high-ranking American tour in Africa, Nicholas D. Katzenbach's, the phlegmatic undersecretary of state. Humphrey's trip seems to have been planned with two goals. The first was to demonstrate to African leaders that the United States, despite all its preoccupation with Vietnam, still cares about Africa. The second was to excite a little interest back home about American nonmilitary agencies abroad, like the Peace Corps, which is having trouble recruiting young people to its ranks, and the Agency for International Development, which is having trouble recruiting congressmen to its budget...

Nigeria may be rent with tribal hatred and bloodied by war, but optimism still reigns at the top levels of the U.S. Embassy here and governs American policy toward this sick and depressing country. The optimism is less rosy and more cautious than it was in the old days of 1960 to 1965 when the embassy used to describe Nigeria as a showcase of democracy and development, a description that later proved illusory. But, though it is restrained now, the optimism is still strong enough to persuade U.S. Ambassador Elbert G. Mathews and his senior lieutenants that the federal military government's present course of using military force to end the secession of Biafra will lead to a united, prosperous Nigeria. This view is challenged staunchly and, in some cases, bitterly by several junior officers in the embassy here, some influential policy-makers in the State Department and the official American on the scene in Biafra, Robert Barnard, the U.S. consul in Enugu. They believe a military conquest of Biafra will aggravate tribal hatred so much that Nigeria will never have stability...

Washington Has Kept Reds Out Without a Vietnam - Here in the Congo, it seems natural for U.S. Air Force C-130 transport planes to roar across Congolese skies with Congolese soldiers, ammunition and food. The C-130s may be controversial with some congressmen back home who fear the mission will lead toward entanglement of the United States in Congolese affairs. But the truth of the matter is that, even without C-130s, the United States is entangled in the Congo and has been for almost seven years. The sudden dispatch of three fat planes has not changed a thing. The United States probably has more influence in the Congo than in any other African state. That influence comes from years of involvement. Of course, in Africa, words like entanglement, influence and involvement must be put in perspective...

Undersecretary of State Nicholas D. Katzenbach is flitting through Africa these days on a frenetic trip that covers 12 countries in 18 days. Does the trip make sense? The answer seems to be that the trip has some limited significance for both the United States and Africa and that it probably made more sense to go than to stay at home. Katzenbach and the men around him say that the trip, which ends this coming weekend, has two objectives: 1 - To demonstrate American interest in African affairs. 2 - To educate the undersecretary about the continent. Katzenbach is the highest ranking American to visit Africa during the Johnson administration. His visit may persuade some heads of state that President Johnson is just as sympathetic to Africa as President Kennedy was. But he probably will fail to persuade Africans below the top level of government. For one thing, few Africans understand the importance of Katzenbach's job. In Kenya, for example, the press and radio continually call him the undersecretary of state for African affairs...

The furore in Kenya over former American Ambassador William Attwood's book on Africa is less important than the forces that fanned it. Since Attwood's "The Reds and the Blacks," was published in the United States, the book has been denounced by the vice president of Kenya, the attorney general, the minister of agriculture, the country's ruling party, the opposition party, the new American ambassador and the editors of Nairobi's two main English-language newspapers. The chief complaint, in the words of Vice President Daniel Arap Moi, is that the book "outrages every code of personal and diplomatic good faith." Kenya officials are angry because Attwood repeats private conversations they had with him when he was ambassador to Kenya from 1964 to 1966. Attwood's successor, Ambassador Glenn W. Ferguson, believes this has made his job extremely difficult; Kenyans won't trust an American ambassador any more...

Attwood Accused of Violation of Ethics and Error in Judgment That May Hurt U.S. - In a rare moment of diplomatic family feuding in public, the American ambassador to Kenya Tuesday accused his predecessor, William Attwood, of a violation of ethics and an error of judgment for writing a book on Africa that may hurt the United States. The accusation by Ambassador Glenn W. Ferguson reflected the bitterness both in the Kenya government and in the U.S. Embassy here over the speed of Attwood in publishing his book, "The Reds and the Blacks," less than a year after he left the foreign service to become editor-in-chief of Cowles Communications, the publishers of Look magazine. On Sunday, for example, Kenya Attorney General Charles Njonjo said Attwood was guilty of "a of faith and confidence" for reporting his private conversations with Njonjo in the book. Njonjo said he would now be suspicious of diplomats. That suspicion, Njonjo said, would make the work of Attwood's successor, Ferguson, more difficult...

Countries Often Waste Money, Equipment Through Lack of Organizational Ability - Foreign aid often fails in Africa because everyone thinks big when they should think small. Now there are faint signs of a change. Most important, the United States has decided to revamp its African aid policy. There may be smaller visions in the new look. In the past, U.S. officials, acting as if they were back home, have sometimes blinded themselves to the frailties and limitations of African governments. In West Cameroon, for example, the Agency for International Development (AID) gave the Ministry of Community Development six pieces of road-building equipment a few years ago. The gift was a meager one by American standards worth several thousand dollars but it overwhelmed the ministry and almost destroyed it...

The United States is changing its old ways of giving aid to Africa. Money will now flow to a few favored countries. For the rest, in the main, it will be slowly cut off. No official announcement has been made of the new policy. But bits and snatches have been revealed by State Department and Agency for International Development (AID) officials in private conversation and public speeches. The President's recent budget message to Congress had a passing reference to the new policy. The details can now be pieced together. Besides concentrating on a few countries, the United States will try to put some of its aid into regional economic projects that could help unify areas of the splintered continent. There also will be an attempt to channel some American aid through international organizations like the African Development Bank. To implement the new policy, the United States will spend less money than before...

In 1963, during a Security Council debate on apartheid, Adlai Stevenson announced dramatically that the United States had banned all sale of arms to the Republic of South Africa. The step had been taken, he said, to show America’s deep concern that South Africa refused to abandon its racist policies. In March of this year, a reactor went critical at a research center near Pretoria, and South Africa joined the nuclear age. The feat was made possible by the firm that designed and built the equipment: Allis-Chalmers of Milwaukee. Juxtaposed, the two events drive home some little-known truths about America and apartheid. The United States, while mouthing its disdain for the Afrikaan regime, is an accelerator of the economic boom that insures the Verwoerd government’s confidence and self-righteousness. As an investor in South Africa and as a trading partner, the United States is outranked only by Great Britain. The investments and the volume of trade rise month by month. Seeing this growing American entanglement, South Africa takes with a grain of salt any rude comments that may come from official American sources...

The Alliance for Progress, whatever it signifies for Latin America, has meant for American labor an alliance with government and big business. American labor has never minced words about the unions of the Soviet Union. “The so-called trade unions in the USSR,” the AFL-CIO Executive Council has proclaimed, “are nothing but agencies of the Communist dictatorship.” The implication, sharp and clear, has always been: Unions of America are anything but agencies of government and big business. That has been a pride of American labor, but the new alliance raises questions that may make that pride ring a bit hollow. British Guiana is a good place to begin. American Government, business and labor have never been happy with the leftist administration of Cheddi Jagan that took office after the August, 1961, elections in the British colony. American woes and worries have multiplied with the approach of independence. The AFL-CIO boasts of its part in helping the trade unions there battle the Jagan government. “In British Guiana,” said a recent union advertisement, ‘‘the AFL-CIO has rendered generous aid to the free trade unions resisting the attempt of the pro-Communist Jagan regime to destroy their independence.” On the surface, American labor has moved into British Guiana to help brother unions fight communism. But the situation in British Guiana is far more complicated than that, and its “generous aid” has involved the AFL-CIO in racial and political strife. In addition, not all the aid given by the AFL-CIO has come from the labor treasury...

For the first time, the United States is at the door of the International Monetary Fund as a borrower. Few people prophesied this when the Fund was founded at the United Nations Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. But obviously times have changed. The United States which had huge supplies of gold in the early postwar period, has found its supplies dwindling. That is why President Kennedy told Congress Thursday that the United States has been authorized to draw up to $500 million worth of currencies from the Fund this year. This transaction is a classic example of how a nation uses the Fund when it has a balance of payments problem. That's what the Fund is for, and other countries have been using it for years. The United States has a balance of payments problem because it sends more dollars overseas than it takes in...