To Move the World

by Jeffrey D. Sachs

  Eisenhower called for patience in moving the world “out of the dark chamber of horrors into the light.” He called for a step-by-step process of agreements on disarmament. And specifically, he suggested that both sides allocate a fraction of their fissionable material “to serve the peaceful purposes of mankind,” for agriculture, medicine, and electrical power.

  Yet the hopes of 1953 proved evanescent. The Soviet Union was torn by an internal power struggle, pitting Khrushchev against his competitors for power, Lavrentiy Beria, Georgy Malenkov, and Vyacheslav Molotov. Khrushchev won the backing of Soviet generals in part by urging a hardline response to the United States. And equally important, Eisenhower’s own side pushed back, especially Secretary of State Dulles. Both sides missed the most important opportunity since the end of World War II to halt the spiraling instability and escalation.

  Prime Minister Churchill met with Eisenhower in Bermuda in December 1953 to urge a new peace initiative. Convinced that Stalin’s death offered a rare opportunity to wind down the Cold War, Churchill told the House of Commons on May 11, 1953, that “[i]t would be a mistake to assume that nothing can be settled with Soviet Russia unless or until everything is settled.”12 Yet Eisenhower was more skeptical. He told Churchill rather brutally that Russia “was a woman of the streets and whether her dress was new, or just the old one patched, it was certainly the same whore underneath,” demonstrating his deep hesitation about negotiating with the Soviets despite his desire for peace.13 Churchill was dismayed to watch the United States squander this opportunity under the thrall of simplistic Cold War ideology and the dogma of “massive retaliation.”

  Nevertheless, Eisenhower longed to be a peacemaker. Given the severe limitations in mutual understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union, however, his moment never arrived. Stubborn disagreements between the United States and the Soviet Union over whether onsite inspections were required to distinguish underground nuclear explosions from earthquakes (as the United States held) prevented the completion of a much-discussed test ban treaty. And as so often happened in the Cold War, even when events were moving slowly in the right direction, they were knocked off track by miscalculation: Eisenhower’s last push for peace in 1960 ended in the flames of Gary Powers’s downed U-2 spy plane.

  Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

  (January 17, 1961)

  Eisenhower delivered his most famous speech just three days before he left the White House to John Kennedy.14 Only two presidential farewell addresses are widely remembered today. George Washington used his to warn Americans about “entangling alliances overseas.” Eisenhower used his to warn Americans about entangling alliances right at home, specifically those among the military, industry, and the government. Eisenhower’s warning about the risk of the “military-industrial complex” has reverberated through a half century.

  How poignant and powerful for America’s greatest twentieth-century general to caution America about the threat the military posed to American democracy. No one besides Eisenhower could have had the stature and credibility to deliver this message:

  In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

  We must never allow the weight of this combination to endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

  These words were prescient, and also bittersweet. Eisenhower had wanted to make peace with his Soviet counterparts, but he never succeeded. Events, experts, the CIA, and cabinet members always put obstacles in his path. He himself was perhaps too skeptical and detached. Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, but he never really held it in check, or found the voice and presidential direction to achieve agreement with the Soviet Union.

  Kennedy’s Inaugural Address

  (January 20, 1961)

  Kennedy would draw on these precedents of public persuasion, and especially on Churchill’s concepts and phrases, in his own quest for peace in 1963. He would talk about the mutual gains from disarmament; the need to stop the upward ratcheting of risks; the danger of accidents; and the interests of both sides in peace. Yet Kennedy also made important innovations in rhetoric and strategy, innovations that reflected his hard-won insights and personal courage.

  Kennedy spoke of the quest for peace on countless occasions, starting with the powerful words of his inaugural address on January 20, 1961.15 In his first moments as president, he stated clearly the unique challenge and risk of the time. “[M]an holds in his mortal hands,” said Kennedy, “the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.” This echoed the paradox previously expressed forcefully by Churchill, that “[w]e, and all nations, stand, at this hour in human history, before the portals of supreme catastrophe and of measureless reward. My faith is that in God’s mercy we shall choose aright.”16

  Kennedy called on both sides to “begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.” He then spelled out his strategy in an uncanny way. Echoing Eisenhower’s words in the 1953 “Chance for Peace” address, Kennedy said, “[N]either can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course—both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.” This called for negotiation, Churchill’s “jaw-jaw” over “war-war.” Characteristically, Kennedy would pose that challenge as a collective one, something for “us” as Americans. “So let us begin anew,” he invited his compatriots, “remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

  And here was another famous Kennedy locution: antimetabole, a word derived from the Greek and meaning the repetition of words in transposed order. Kennedy and Sorensen loved the device (“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country”). It expressed well Kennedy’s sense of irony, complexity, and play, and it conveyed rhetorically the powerful idea of human choice: Would we choose to negotiate or be overwhelmed by fear?

  Again and again, Kennedy would call on “us” to move forward, sometimes “us” Americans, and sometimes “us” meaning both the United States and Soviet Union. “Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.” After years of false steps, “let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms.” “Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.”

  In the inaugural address, Kennedy also emphasized, as Churchill and Eisenhower had before him, that progress would be incremental, not a single transformation. He aimed for a “beachhead of cooperation to push back the jungle of suspicion.” The quest for peace would take time. It would not be finished in his time or ours, but we must take the first steps:

  All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

  The first 100 days would bring the Bay of Pigs. The first 600 days would bring the world to the brink of annihilation. But the first 1,000 days would indeed be time enough to move the world.

  Kennedy’s Address to the UN General Assembly

  (September 25, 1961)

  To move the world, Kennedy knew, he would need the world, or most of it, to support
the cause of peace. World opinion would sway the opinions of the leading antagonists; a worldwide call for peace would help to enforce any bilateral agreement. So Kennedy’s next important speech for peace was eight months after his inaugural, at the opening of the UN General Assembly in September 1961.17 Here, in front of world leaders, he again emphasized the unprecedented reality of the nuclear age: the ability of man to end human life. The very meaning of war had therefore changed:

  [W]ar appeals no longer as a rational alternative. Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war—or war will put an end to mankind.

  Here again was antimetabole, conveying humanity’s most fundamental choice: to end war or be ended by it.

  Kennedy then invoked the grim prospect of threatened annihilation:

  Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

  He underscored the paradox of the prisoner’s dilemma: that self-interested and supposedly rational behavior leaves all sides at grave risk, “for in a spiraling arms race, a nation’s security may well be shrinking even as its arms increase.”

  He then laid out the framework to break the logic of the arms race. The starting point is to recognize the scope for mutual gain, to see that this is not a zero-sum struggle and that a negotiated outcome can benefit all parties. On that basis he called for an approach to disarmament that “would be so far-reaching yet realistic, so mutually balanced and beneficial, that it could be accepted by every nation.” Yet he also recognized that this agreement would not be reached in one fell swoop. Peace would be a process, which he dubbed a “peace race” instead of an arms race. The two sides should “advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved.” This echoed Churchill and Eisenhower, especially Churchill’s rejection of the assumption that nothing can be settled until everything is settled. In short, Kennedy urged, “general and complete disarmament must no longer be a slogan, used to resist the first steps.”

  Kennedy took pains to underscore what arms control would not do. His rhetoric, powerfully balancing vision and realism, gained credibility as he reminded the UN General Assembly what arms treaties would not accomplish: “Such a plan would not bring a world free from conflict and greed—but it would bring a world free from the terrors of mass destruction.” Kennedy would use the same rhetorical tactic later on when he presented the test ban treaty to the American people by listing all that it wouldn’t do, which served to strongly highlight what it would do.

  From there, Kennedy proposed a path to disarmament, a six-stage trajectory to success:

  First, signing the test-ban treaty by all nations.

  Second, stopping the production of fissionable materials for use in weapons, and preventing their transfer to any nation now lacking nuclear weapons.

  Third, prohibiting the transfer of control over nuclear weapons to states that do not own them.

  Fourth, keeping nuclear weapons from seeding new battlegrounds in outer space.

  Fifth, gradually destroying existing nuclear weapons and converting their materials to peaceful uses; and

  Sixth, halting the unlimited testing and production of strategic nuclear delivery systems, and gradually destroying them as well.

  Despite the wild swings of geopolitics, the brinksmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy’s assassination and Khrushchev’s ouster, and the Vietnam War debacle, Kennedy started a process that turned a significant part of his vision on that day at the UN General Assembly into global reality.

  The Papal Encyclical Peace on Earth

  (April 11, 1963)

  Kennedy’s Peace Speech would put peace in moral terms, as a basic human right and a reflection of our common humanity. These were powerful and brave sentiments at the height of the Cold War, when readiness for war, not peace, was seen as the measure of strength and patriotism. Kennedy was most likely encouraged to put the moral arguments so directly and cogently in part by Pope John XXIII’s encyclical on peace, which was delivered just weeks before the pope’s death from cancer. As the pope said to Norman Cousins: “World peace is mankind’s greatest need. I am old but I will do what I can in the time I have.”18 The pope also reflected on the power of speaking about peace:

  We must always try to speak to the good in people. Nothing can be lost by trying. Everything can be lost if men do not find some way to work together to save the peace. I am not afraid to talk to anyone about peace on Earth.19

  The key to the encyclical (which Cousins hand-delivered to Khrushchev in Russian translation) is that peace is part of a moral order. Morality demands peace, and peace makes morality possible. Society itself is grounded in moral law, wherein “men recognize and observe their mutual rights and duties.”20 On the global level, deterrence through arms is no basis for peace. The principle of deterrence “must be replaced by another, which declares that the true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms but in mutual trust alone.”21 Leaders should study the problem of peaceful adjustment among nations “until they find that point of agreement from which it will be possible to commence to go forward towards accords that will be sincere, lasting, and fruitful.”22

  The pope gave hope to the possibility of a negotiated peace:

  We grant indeed that this conviction is chiefly based on the terrible destructive force of modern weapons and a fear of the calamities and frightful destruction which such weapons would cause. Therefore, in an age such as ours which prides itself on its atomic energy it is contrary to reason to hold that war is now a suitable way to restore rights which have been violated.

  Nevertheless, unfortunately, the law of fear still reigns among peoples, and it forces them to spend fabulous sums for armaments, not for aggression they affirm—and there is no reason for not believing them—but to dissuade others from aggression.

  There is reason to hope, however, that by meeting and negotiating, men may come to discover better the bonds that unite them together, deriving from the human nature which they have in common; and that they may also come to discover that one of the most profound requirements of their common nature is this: that between them and their respective peoples it is not fear which should reign but love, a love which tends to express itself in a collaboration that is loyal, manifold in form and productive of many benefits.23

  Eight weeks after issuing this encyclical, Pope John XXIII was dead. Yet his message lived on in Kennedy’s Peace Speech, delivered the following week.

  * Eisenhower had wanted to make such a speech for some time. Though the rhetoric in the final version was slightly toned down, he told his speechwriter Emmet Hughes that the essence of what he wanted to say was “The jet plane that roars over your head costs three quarters of a million dollars. That is more money than a man earning ten thousand dollars every year is going to make in his lifetime … We are in an armaments race: everyone is wearing himself out to build up his defenses. Where is it going to lead us? At worst, to atomic warfare, and we can state pretty damn plainly what that means. But at the least, it means that every people, every nation on earth is being deprived of the fruits of their own toil … Now, here’s the other choice before us, the other road to take—the road of disarmament. What does that mean? It means for everybody in the world: butter, bread, clothes, hospitals, schools—good and necessary things for a decent living.” Evan Thomas, Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World (New York: Little, Brown, 2012), 60.

  †
The drafting of the “Atoms for Peace” speech was a huge collaborative effort, spanning almost nine months from the time of Stalin’s death to the day of Eisenhower’s speech at the UN on December 8. The project was known as “Operation Wheaties” because the participants held breakfast meetings to discuss it. Meena Bose, Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security Decision Making of Eisenhower and Kennedy (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998), 83.

  Chapter 5.

  THE PEACE SPEECH

  THE PEACE SPEECH IS a work of magnificent culmination. Kennedy’s oratory, backed by Sorensen’s gifted phrases, was always powerful, but never more so than in the Peace Speech, where rhetoric, history, leadership, and morality converged. In fact, the two greatest moral themes of the time converged at that very moment: global peace and human rights. Kennedy’s Peace Speech on Monday, June 10, was followed the very next evening by his great speech on civil rights. In both cases, Kennedy was not only the nation’s political leader but also its moral leader. In these speeches Kennedy emphasized the strong interconnectedness of the global and national agendas, and the inevitable intertwining of peace and justice.

  To this day, Kennedy’s speech stands out as a unique approach to global affairs. Its power derives not only from its bold vision of peace between the United States and the Soviet Union, but also from its call upon Americans to reexamine their own attitudes toward peace. Kennedy’s point was basic, yet remarkably unusual in international affairs: that there was humanity, decency, and valor on both sides of the Cold War divide. And because both sides shared in the same human drama, both sides would share in the gains from peace. A peace agreement was therefore feasible, because it would be mutually beneficial.