Foreign affairs are almost always the most pressing concern of national governments. From Kennedy's youth in London until his appointment to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1957, and he had regarded himself as something of a specialist in foreign policy. His journey to Indo-China had left him nothing but contempt for French imperialism, the British were winding down their empire with commendable speed, he did not value Portugal as an ally enough to compromise over issues concerning its colonies, and Belgium stood openly disgraced as a brutally incompetent imperial power which had left behind an insoluble problem when it scuttled from the Congo. Kennedy's real weakness lay in the difficult area where grand designs have to be turned into concrete policies. He had no direct experience of it: it is one of the faults of a system of separated powers, as opposed to a parliamentary one, that a politician can reach the presidency without having had any ministerial training.