John F. Kennedy made his opposition to this approach very public in a set of speeches given in the years after Bandung. In a speech harshly criticizing the French for attempting to hold on to Algeria by force, he said that “the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the Iron Curtain.”
