The new administration of John E Kennedy came into office just as the ris-
ing level of violence in South Vietnam was beginning to attract the attention
of worried policymakers in Washington. Until late in 1960, the major area
of crisis had been in Laos, where the hard-line anti-Communist position of
the Eisenhower administration had resulted in the fall of the neutralist
Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma and the defeat of his efforts to establish a
coalition government with the Communist Pathet Lao. With the rise to
power of the U.S.-supported General Phoumi Nosavan -- of whom trouble-
shooting diplomat Averell Harriman was to remark, "If he's our strongman,
we're in trouble" -- the smoldering crisis in Laos threatened to erupt into
full-scale war.

By contrast, until the final days of the Eisenhower administration,
Washington had viewed the situation in South Vietnam as generally under
control. For several years Ngo Dinh Diem had been able to draw upon a
reservoir of U.S. goodwill stemming from his surprising success in consoli-
dating his rule in Saigon during the months following the Geneva Agreement. As Diem's weaknesses became more apparent in the final years
of the decade, Washington did not immediately take note and continued to
slumber in the illusion that all was reasonably well in Saigon. By mid-1960,
with the rapid escalation of violence in the countryside, such illusions could
no longer be held, and Vietnam was among the major problems that
President Eisenhower bequeathed to his successor.

Southeast Asia was not the only area of the world where U.S. foreign pol-
icy appeared to be unraveling. Before the new leadership in Washington had.
had adequate time to prepare its own foreign policy initiatives, it was faced
with a confrontation in Berlin, the Bay of Pigs disaster in Cuba, and an un-
satisfactory meeting between President Kennedy and Soviet Party chief
Khrushchev in Vienna, where the Soviet leader confirmed the suspicions
aroused by his speech in January that Moscow was about to give more open

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