JFK’s Peace Speech


by John F. Kennedy
American University Commencement Address
Delivered June 10, 1963



President
John F. Kennedy’s speech, “A Strategy of Peace,” was the
American University commencement address delivered on June 10, 1963,
in Washington, DC. The president announced the development of the
Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and his decision to unilaterally suspend
all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing so long as all other nations
did the same. His peaceful outreach to the Soviet Union was unusual,
coming at the height of the Cold War. Kennedy was outlining a new
direction for his administration.

As author/researchers
Peter
Janney
and James
W. Douglass
have made clear, Kennedy prepared this speech with
only a handful of close, trusted aides ,and were careful to keep
its contents secret from the national security establishment. As
Janney says: “The powerful speech marked an abrupt departure
from Cold War bluster and announced a new era of cooperation and
coexistence.”

This is
remembered as one of KennedyÂ’s finest and most important speeches,
and the changes it heralded, many scholars believe, ] was the catalyst
for the conspiracy that ended his life, and changed for the worse
the course of American and world history.

President Anderson,
members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests,
my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through
many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine
in the next 30 minutes, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with
great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American
University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop
John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson
in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already
fulfilled Bishop Hurst’s enlightened hope for the study of history
and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and
to the conduct of the public’s business. By sponsoring this institution
of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color
or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve
the Nation’s thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow
Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should
be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident
that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this
institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents,
a high measure of public service and public support. “There
are few earthly things more beautiful than a university,” wrote
John Masefield in his tribute to English universities – and
his words are equally true today. He did not refer to towers or
to campuses. He admired the splendid beauty of a university, because
it was, he said, “a place where those who hate ignorance may
strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make
others see.”

I have, therefore,
chosen this time and 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 peace do
I mean and 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,
and 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 in all time.

I speak of
peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in
an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable
nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces.
It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains
almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied
air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age
when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be
carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of
the globe and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure
of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose
of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of
peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles – which
can only destroy and never create – is not the only, much less
the most efficient, means of assuring peace. I speak of peace, therefore,
as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit
of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently
the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more
urgent task.

Some say that
it is useless to speak of peace or world law or world disarmament,
and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union
adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we
can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our
own attitudes, as individuals and as a Nation, for our attitude
is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every
thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace,
should begin by looking inward, by examining his own attitude towards
the possibilities of peace, towards the Soviet Union, towards the
course of the cold war and towards freedom and peace here at home.

First examine
our attitude towards 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. I am not referring to the absolute, infinite
concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies
and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams
but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that
our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus
instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on
a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in
human institutions – on a series of concrete actions and effective
agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is
no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to
be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product
of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static,
changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace
is a process – a way of solving problems.

With such a
peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as
there are within families and nations. World peace, like community
peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor, it requires
only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their
disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches
us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not
last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the
tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the
relations between nations and neighbors. 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 towards it.

And second,
let us reexamine our attitude towards the Soviet Union. It is discouraging
to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists
write. It is discouraging to read a recent, authoritative Soviet
text on military strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless
and incredible claims, such as the allegation that American imperialist
circles are preparing to unleash different types of war, that there
is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American
imperialists against the Soviet Union, and that the political aims
– and I quote – “of the American imperialists are
to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist
countries and to achieve world domination by means of aggressive
war.”

Truly, as it
was written long ago: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.”

Yet it is sad
to read these Soviet statements, to realize the extent of the gulf
between us. But it is also a warning, a warning to the American
people 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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.
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.

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.

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. We must, therefore,
persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive
changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions
which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a
way that it becomes in the Communists’ interest to agree on a genuine
peace. 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.

To secure these
ends, America’s weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled,
designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces
are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. Our diplomats
are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical
hostility. For we can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing
our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove
we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of
fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system
on any unwilling people, but we are willing and able to engage in
peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile,
we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial
problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop
it into a genuine world security system – a system capable
of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security
of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which
arms can finally be abolished. At the same time we seek to keep
peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of
them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity,
which invite Communist intervention, or which threaten to erupt
into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle
East, and the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient
despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an
example for others, by seeking to adjust small but significant differences
with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and Canada.

Speaking of
other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many
nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern
and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western
Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because
of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make
no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and
other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also
because their interests and ours converge. Our interests converge,
however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in
pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope, and the purpose of
allied policy, to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should
let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does
not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to
impose their political and economic system on others is the primary
cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that if
all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination
of others, the peace would be much more assured.

This will require
a new effort to achieve world law, a new context for world discussions.
It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and
ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact
and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement
for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each
side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of
others’ actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also
been talking in Geneva about our first-step measures of arm[s] controls
designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and reduce the
risk of accidental war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva,
however, 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. The
pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since
the 1920’s. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations.
And however dim the prospects are today, we intend to continue this
effort – to continue it in order that all countries, including
our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of
disarmament are.

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.

I’m taking
this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions
in this regard. First, Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan,
and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin
in Moscow looking towards early agreement on a comprehensive test
ban treaty. Our hope must be tempered – Our hopes must be tempered
with the caution of history; but with our hopes go the hopes of
all mankind. Second, to make clear our good faith and solemn convictions
on this matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose
to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states
do not do so. We will not – We will not be the first to resume.
Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty,
but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty
be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve
it.

Finally, my
fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude towards peace and
freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society
must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in
the dedication of our own lives – as many of you who are graduating
today will have an opportunity to do, by serving without pay in
the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps
here at home. But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives,
live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together.
In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because
freedom is incomplete. It is the responsibility of the executive
branch at all levels of government – local, State, and National
– to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by
all means within our authority. It is the responsibility of the
legislative branch at all levels, wherever the authority is not
now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility
of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights
of others and respect the law of the land.

All this –
All this is not unrelated to world peace. “When a man’s way[s]
please the Lord,” the Scriptures tell us, “He maketh even
his enemies to be at peace with him.” And is not peace, in
the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights: the right
to live out our lives without fear of devastation; the right to
breathe air as nature provided it; the right of future generations
to a healthy existence?

While we proceed
to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human
interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the
interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage
of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security
against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can, if it is
sufficiently effective in its enforcement, and it is sufficiently
in the interests of its signers, offer far more security and far
fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

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
must labor on – not towards a strategy of annihilation but
towards a strategy of peace.