John F. Kennedy's Vision of Peace
This speech was presented by Harley Schlanger at the Schiller Institute Conference In Strasbourg, France, on July 8, 2023. Schlanger is the Vice Chairman of the Board of the Schiller Institute.
John F. Kennedy's Vision of Peace
On June 10, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered a commencement address at American University, in Washington, D.C.. Coming in the midst of continuing tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, just eight months after the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war -- Kennedy's words offered hope for the opening of an era of peace:
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived—and that is the most important topic on earth: Peace.
What kind of a peace do I mean? What kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. 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 men and nations to grow and to hope and 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….
I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war—and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task….
First, examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade. Therefore, 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….
So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it….
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 and in acts of courage.
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 in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives….
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 future. And we are all mortal. [end video]
Schlanger: While Kennedy's eloquent appeal for peace was directed to the leaders of government and the people of both the Soviet Union and the U.S., the most immediate positive response came from the Russians. Soviet President Nikita Krushchev told Averell Harriman, the lead U.S. negotiator in talks to draft a nuclear test ban treaty with Russia, that he considered Kennedy's address to be "the greatest speech by any American President since Roosevelt." The text of the speech was published in the Soviet press, and was not jammed when broadcast in Russian on the Voice of America, which was the usual practice.
The speech had a less dramatic impact in the U.S It was minimized by some media, and ignored or panned by others. For example, the {New York Times} wrote that there was "not much optimism in official Washington" that the speech "would produce agreement on a test ban treaty or anything else," while the Columbus, Ohio {Dispatch} called it "an appeasement cue".
But the break with Cold War rhetoric signaled by the speech did reduce tensions. Within ten days, an agreement was reached to set up a "hotline" between Washington and Moscow, and on August 5, the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed, ending eight years of difficult negotiations. The question for Kennedy was then whether he could overcome the Cold War mentality in the U.S. Senate, so the treaty could be ratified. Following a fierce behind-the-scenes battle, in which he successfully appealed to his predecessor, President Eisenhower, to support him, the treaty was ratified on September 24.
Was Kennedy a "Cold Warrior"?
In the last months of his life, from the June 10th speech until his assassination in Dallas on November 22, JFK vigorously pursued his commitment to end the Cold War, and open relations with both the USSR and Cuba, to reduce the danger of nuclear annihilation. His closest friends acknowledged that, following the near-miss of a nuclear war over Cuba, he was driven by a fear of the threat of nuclear war, and the need to reduce, if not eliminate, that threat.
Toward that end, the back channels which had been opened to avoid nuclear war over Cuba were expanded. Kennedy considered proposals to eliminate all nuclear testing, and, in an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 20, proposed a joint mission with the Soviets to the Moon.
But nowhere was a change in policy so urgent as in dealing with the Communist insurgency in Vietnam. His battles with the War Hawks over Cuba had convinced him that if he left Vietnam in their hands, a new world war was likely, beginning in Indochina, which could quickly escalate to nuclear war.
In the first two years of his presidency, the number of U.S. military advisers in Vietnam had grown to more than 15,000. Planners from the Pentagon and the CIA said that a "more robust deployment" was necessary to win, and they publicly expressed optimism that it would succeed. Kennedy sent teams of envoys on fact-finding missions there, including one with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From their report, he concluded that the claims of the military and intel officials about the prospect of success were lies, a judgement fully confirmed eight years later, when Daniel Ellsberg released the "Pentagon Papers." JFK decided all U.S. troops must be withdrawn.
But with the exception of McNamara and his brother, Robert Kennedy, all his advisers told him withdrawal was "unthinkable," as it would undermine "American leadership in the fight against Communism."
There were thus two flanks to address: first, he had to outflank the war hawks, to prevent them from launching operations which would make war inevitable; and second, to overcome the psychological effects of Cold War brainwashing on the population, which had come to believe that it was "better dead than Red."
Facing a re-election campaign in November 1964, he feared that pulling out troops would make him a target of the War Hawks, who would accuse him of being "soft" on Communism and an "appeaser", as they did when he refused to order an American invasion of Cuba when the CIA's Bay of Pigs fiasco failed, and when he rejected demands of the hawks to bomb Soviet missile sites during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
As I reported in an article in the {Executive Intelligence Review} in the June 30, 2023 issue, "JFK's Battle for Peace", there is rich documentation of personal accounts from friends and associates, that his goal was to withdraw fully from Vietnam -- after he was re-elected in 1964.
Some skeptics express doubt that Kennedy intended to get out of Vietnam, even though he pushed through a National Security Action Memo 263 on October 5, which specified a "phased withdrawal" of 1,000 advisers by the end of 1963, and the rest by the end of 1965. Two days after his murder, that Memo was replaced by another, NSAM 273. The withdrawal order from the earlier memo was never fulfilled, and a clause was inserted allowing for covert action against North Vietnam, by CIA-backed South Vietnamese forces. One such covert operation in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, provided the pretext for the deployment ultimately of more than half-a-million U.S. troops.
The murder of JFK removed the obstacle to escalation, clearing the way for the Hawks to destroy that country and its neighbors for nine more years. It also served as a warning to future would-be Presidents -- it is not wise to reject the demands of the Military-Industrial Complex!
These skeptics choose to ignore that his intent to break with the Cold War, which was clear in his June 10 speech, is coherent with statements he made as a U.S. Senator in the 1950s, speaking as an advocate of an American anti-imperial tradition.
The Anti-Imperial Tradition of the U.S.
Though such a tradition is not evident today, in the "American Exceptionalism" rhetoric of the U.S. as the gallant defender of the "Rules-Based Order", there exists an anti-imperial tradition which was the basis for the American Revolution, and the republican policies of the American Founding Fathers. This was explicitly expressed by Secretary of State (and future President) John Quincy Adams on July 4, 1821: "...the United States does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy....by involving itself in the internal affairs of other nations, the U.S. would destroy its own reason of existence: the fundamental axioms of her policy would become no different than the empire America's revolution defeated. It would be, then, no longer the ruler of itself, but the dictator of the world."
I wonder if today's snake-oil salesman for the Unipolar Order, Antony Blinken, is familiar with this address by one of his most illustrious predecessors!
This tradition was the basis of the war-time antagonism between President Franklin Roosevelt and Britain's Prime Minister Churchill. There are numerous reports of Churchill's surly responses when FDR insisted on eliminating all European colonialism at the war's end. Lyndon LaRouche, who served in the China-Burma-India theater during the war, said that FDR's view was adopted by many soldiers, especially those who experienced the conditions of the colonies during the war. He added that this was a part of JFK's mental map.
Here are two examples of his anti-imperial outlook from speeches he delivered as a U.S. Senator:
First, on April 6, 1954, he challenged U.S. support for France in Indochina. After reviewing the status of that war, he said that we should assist in the fight against communism there, if victory were possible; but we must recognize that many in Asia "regard this as a war of colonialism." As such, before Secretary of State Dulles pledges assistance to France, he hopes that he "will recognize the futility of channeling American men and machines into that hopeless internecine struggle." A month later, on May 7, the French forces surrendered at Dien Bien Phu, and began their withdrawal from Vietnam.
Second is a speech he delivered on July 2, 1957, on French colonialism in Algeria. He spoke of the "changing face of African nationalism", decrying the refusal to face this as the problem for the French, and the western world. He cited a diplomat who said that he was "at a loss to understand why the United States should identify itself with a policy of colonial repression and bias contrary to American political traditions and interests," a statement which clearly resonated with JFK.
In the language of these speeches as a young U.S. Senator, one discovers the still-raw origin of the eloquent spokesman for peace, which he had become by June 10, 1963. Challenged by the belligerence of members of his own administration, who were itching for war, fearful that their war would become a nuclear holocaust, Kennedy became a champion of peace -- and, as such, the worst threat to those corporate interests backing the War Hawks. Those he fought, including Allen Dulles and other representatives of the Military-Industrial Complex, silenced his voice in Dallas, and the result has been a period of perpetual war, for six decades.
He closed his American University address with the following words:
"The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough--more than enough--of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on--not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace."
This is John F. Kennedy's "Vision of Peace", and it is this vision that the Schiller Institute and our allies intend to make universally accepted today.
Thank you.
