To Move the World (13 page)
Authors: Jeffrey D. Sachs
U.S. foreign policy speeches from 1945 until the Peace Speech contained a litany of sins committed by the Soviet Union, matched by proclamations of America’s unerring and unswerving goodwill. Kennedy sought to make a very different point. He was not interested in condemning the Soviet Union, in “piling up debating points,” as he put it later in the speech, but rather in convincing Americans that the Soviet Union shared America’s interests in peace, and so could be a partner in peace.
Kennedy began this next section of the speech with a passing critique of Soviet propaganda, dryly commenting on it by quoting the scriptures: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” (Secretary of State Dean Acheson had used the same biblical reference in 1949 congressional testimony about Soviet opposition to NATO.) But Kennedy quickly turned the tables. He did not want to castigate the Soviet Union but to warn Americans “not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.”
For Kennedy’s real intention was to humanize the “other side,” to show Americans the Soviet interests in peace. He started by reminding Americans not to demonize the Soviet people, however much Americans might abhor the communist system:
No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage.
Peace, Kennedy was emphasizing, requires respect of the other party, a fair and generous appraisal of the other’s interests and worth. And Kennedy’s praise for the Russians was generous, speaking of their virtue and courage, the classical ideals of citizenship he held highest.
Here, too, he followed Churchill, who had told the American people in “Sinews of Peace”:
There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain—and I doubt not here also—towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships … Above all, we welcome, or should welcome, constant, frequent and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic.
Measure by measure, phrase by phrase, Kennedy brilliantly drew America and the Soviet Union into a shared embrace of peace:
Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other.
Here is a paradox indeed. Two countries at the brink of war, yet in their long history, “almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other.” And Kennedy reminded his listeners of something equally fundamental: the Soviet Union’s unmatched sacrifices as the recent ally of the United States in the war against Hitler:
And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes
and families were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland—a loss equivalent to the destruction of this country east of Chicago.
But what binds the United States and the Soviet Union most in the quest for peace is an irony even stronger than recent history. Though the two countries are the world’s strongest, they are also perversely the world’s most vulnerable. Such is the reality of the nuclear age:
Today, should total war ever break out again—no matter how—our two countries will be the primary target. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours.
Kennedy did not stop there, with the devastating tally of a future war, but went on to remind Americans (and Russians) of the crushing costs of the current Cold War itself:
And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this Nation’s closest allies, our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle, with suspicion on one side breeding suspicion on the other, and new weapons begetting counter-weapons.
Putting together the pieces, the point is clear and overwhelming. Both the United States and the Soviet Union abhor war. They
have never fought each other. They were allies in war. They can admire each other’s virtue and valor. They risk mutual annihilation. They are squandering their wealth in an arms race. Therefore, they also share a common interest in peace:
In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours. And even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.
This last sentence, regarding a country’s keeping treaty obligations that are in its own interest, was vintage Churchill, who told the House of Commons in November 1953:
The only really sure guide to the actions of mighty nations and powerful Governments is a correct estimate of what are and what they consider to be their own interests. I do not find it unreasonable or dangerous to conclude that internal prosperity rather than external conquest is not only the deep desire of the Russian peoples, but also the long-term interest of their rulers.
6
In reaching this conclusion, Kennedy’s rhetoric soared with empathy and insight, in what to my mind are the most eloquent and important words of the speech, and perhaps of his presidency:
So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help
make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.
Kennedy was not yet done batting down the preconceptions, stereotypes, and myths that held the world at the brink of the abyss. He enjoined us to learn the lessons of the Cold War and the harrowing Cuban Missile Crisis. As he had remarked soon after the crisis, we can’t go on living this way. Once again, he returned to a note of hard realism:
Third, let us reexamine our attitude towards the cold war, remembering we’re not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.
The Cold War can too easily become a hot war. We must comport ourselves, on both sides, to avoid disaster. Once again channeling the lessons of Liddell Hart, and of the recent crisis, he warned us of the dangers of pushing foes to the point of a humiliating retreat:
And above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy
of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.
Kennedy was teaching us about the dangerous dynamics of crises. These are not just about power, military might, and strategic calculations. They are about pride and humiliation. Any leader must put himself in the position of his counterpart, to understand the implications of his or her own actions for
the other side
—in human, psychological, and social terms.
Kennedy spoke about America’s weapons, emphasizing their defensive posture, calling them “nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use.” These ideas followed the prevailing doctrine of deterrence, emphasizing an equilibrium in which neither side instills the fear of a first strike. Yet they are probably the least persuasive part of the speech. However the United States may have viewed its military might, the Soviet Union continued to harbor the belief that the United States was preparing a first strike. And this was not mere propaganda; it was a real and palpable fear.
To defuse the tensions of the Cold War, Kennedy had taken steps toward an “increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves,” building on “increased contact and communication.” He endorsed a hotline for direct contact between the two sides, having experienced the laborious difficulties of communication during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when every lost minute risked a devastating mistake.
Much more important, he called for a resumption of disarmament talks, implicitly returning to the timetable he had proposed at the UN General Assembly in September 1961:
Our primary long range interest … is general and complete disarmament, designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms.
Kennedy’s primary focus in these disarmament talks would be a nuclear test ban treaty:
The only major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security; it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.
Kennedy prioritized a ban on nuclear testing for several reasons: widespread public concern over nuclear fallout from the tests, which had steadily grown since several Japanese fishermen died from fallout poisoning after a U.S. nuclear test in 1954; a hope that a test ban would slow proliferation, notably to China; a belief among scientists that weapons design could proceed even without the tests; and an overarching hope that an agreement on tests would create the momentum for further agreements.
Kennedy concluded the Peace Speech with two important announcements. The first was that Khrushchev, Kennedy, and U.K. prime minister Harold Macmillan, the leaders of the three nuclear powers, had just agreed to talks in Moscow to try to complete a test ban treaty. The second was a matter of goodwill, that the United States would not conduct nuclear tests as long as other states did not do so. The United States, said Kennedy, will not be the first to resume testing. This was a signal that the United States would renew a cooperative strategy, and would stay cooperative as
long as its counterparts did as well. Both announcements were interrupted by the vigorous applause of those gathered: the listeners that morning recognized that something new and important was getting under way.
The great domestic struggle of 1963 was the heating up of the civil rights movement. The day after the Peace Speech was the first day of racial integration at the University of Alabama.
§
Kennedy had flown to Hawaii just before the Peace Speech in order to address the nation’s mayors on the subject of the civil rights crisis. And he would address it again in a televised talk to the nation the day after the American University speech.
‖
Presidents don’t have the luxury of confronting one great issue at a time; for Kennedy, they came simultaneously.
