A Familiar Frontier: The Kennedy Administration in the Congo ...

Next, Chapter Two deals with the efforts to set up a legitimate government inLeopoldville that would be acceptable to the international community. It picks the storyup with the news that Lumumba is dead, representing a major shift in the politicaldynamics of the Congo. The Kennedy Administration turned to the task of selecting areplacement for Lumumba, someone more likely to policies more in line with U.S.interests in the Congo. Various American officials considered a few options beforesettling on Cyrille Adoula and using superpower influence to push him into thePremiership. The diplomatic wrangling of this period, in which the U.S. and U.N.representatives in the Congo had to negotiate with envoys from each of the threegovernments, culminated with the successful conference in Lovanium that finally chose anew government. Again, Kennedy’s moves mirror those of Eisenhower, who was amongthe multitudes dissatisfied with Lumumba and therefore started to look for possiblereplacements not long after the Prime Minister had taken office.Finally, Chapter Three concludes the story with an exploration of the events inElisabethville, a part of the equation that had been largely ignored for almost a year assuccession battles raged in the rest of the country. During the final few months of 1961,Katanga saw substantive fighting between U.N. forces and a variety of local andEuropean supporters of Moise Tshombe’s secessionist regime. This period representedthe most direct involvement by the U.S. and the U.N. in Congolese affairs, somethingthat prompted both to work for a reduction of their role. Tshombe had been a secondarycharacter for most of the events of 1960-61, playing his most significant parts at thebeginning and end of this story. Despite the enormous changes in the nation over thattime, Kennedy dealt with him much as Eisenhower had done, with both demonstrating a10