Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [163]
President Kennedy delivered three epochal addresses in June of 1963. The first was the commencement address at American University. It became known as his “Peace” speech. In it he spoke of his desire for a limited nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis, he knew, had been a terrifyingly close call.
“What kind of peace do I mean? Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time.”
He was calling on the Soviet Union to join with the United States to prove that peace was possible, conflict not inevitable. “The problems of man are man-made; they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe they can do it again.” With these words, he revealed that his highest commitment was not to arms control alone but to human hope.
Kennedy then expressed thoughts new to an American president, ideas especially startling coming from a man who’d once been a committed Cold Warrior. What he pointed out was the obvious but unspoken fact that the peoples inhabiting the two countries, the USA and the USSR, are not that different in their needs and dreams. “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet; and we are all mortal.” He went on to offer a gesture of respect that was even more unexpected. “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 and in acts of courage.”
He continued, powerfully, to make his case. “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. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least twenty million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland—a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.
“The one 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