the looker-on . 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 . it can sometimes be a very awkward interval indeed , especially when the change of President also means a change of the ruling party . 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 . 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 . 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 . coincidence also sometimes contributes to the same idea . just as Roosevelt &apos;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 &apos;s election eight years ago was very closely succeeded by the death of Stalin and the signature of an armistice in Korea . the portents facing the new President are still not clear , but such as they are , it is in the United States &apos; own policy rather than in the rest of the world that the changes are likely to come , if at all . Senator Kennedy has not been a man for dramatic or extreme commitments . the same was true of Vice-President Nixon , and Kennedy was even called a democratic Nixon . 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 . 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 . Senator Kennedy &apos;s statements about nuclear disarmament during the campaign are a case in point . 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 . it is almost inconceivable that any new President could have taken any other line . 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 . 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 . it will be an extraordinarily painful step to negotiate . 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 &apos;s representative of a seat on behalf of Formosa . 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 &apos;s decision to recognise the Soviet government in 1933 ) . 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 . it is interesting to see how the new President &apos;s thoughts have shifted on this subject . 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 . 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 . 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 &apos;s election . 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 . 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 . Professor Burns makes the point that Kennedy &apos;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 . 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 . clearly he has still to reach his full stature ; but lesser men have made great Presidents before . one of the first problems confronting the new President in the field of foreign affairs will be that of the United States &apos; future relation with Cuba . 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 . the parallel is reinforced by a further coincidence : one of the most important international interests guarded , or threatened , by the rising dictator &apos;s territory is a canal . 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 . 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 . the experience is all the more alarming for the Americans because the threat is so near home . hitherto the American hemisphere , though liable to constant revolutions , has been immune from ideological movements showing close affinities with communism . the only similar threats in recent years have been those of Dr Jagan &apos;s government in British Guiana in 1953 and President Arbenz &apos;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 . with Fidel Castro in Cuba it could conceivably be different . unfortunately the Cuban situation was allowed to become a contentious issue in the U.S presidential election . Senator Kennedy accused Vice-President Nixon of having presided over the communisation of Cuba . he pledged himself to strengthen and support the democratic anti-Castro forces inside and outside Cuba . 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 . 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 . 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 &apos;s government after they had seized most of the American assets in the country . 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 . 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 &apos;s exports go to the U.S.A , the severity of the reprisal is obvious . the presumption that it is politically motivated was corroborated by Vice-President Nixon &apos;s further statement during the campaign , comparing the action taken against Cuba with the process which unseated Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 . 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 . in the ugly situation that has developed , it was inevitable that Castro should have looked to the Soviet bloc for support . patriotic Americans would argue that the order of events was the other way round : the quarantine was imposed because he had already showed communist tendencies . in any case , it does not seem that Castro received much practical comfort from the U.S.S.R or China . crude oil came in Russian tankers to supply the Cuban refineries , but apparently only in token quantities . Soviet technicians came to replace American and British , but not in great numbers . 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 : I want that declaration to be , in effect , symbolic . no doubt neither of the great powers is willing to let Cuba become a casus belli . but the present tension can hardly just go on indefinitely . the basic questions for the new American administration are two : need the quarrel with Cuba ever have happened , and , can it be put into reverse ? the first question can be broken down into two further questions : do Cuban and American interests necessarily conflict , and is Castro really a communist ? to the first the answer is clearly , no . 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 . that Castro is really a communist can also be denied in the sense of an obedient satellite of Moscow . 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 . 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 . Senator Kennedy campaigned in support of a sympathetic policy towards under-developed countries . he now has the chance to recognise ( if he can eat his own words ) that charity begins at home , or at least on one &apos;s own doorstep . 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 . 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 . Algeria was in the forefront of every Frenchman &apos;s mind at that time , because it was a crisis in Algiers that brought about the appeal to de Gaulle to return . 