American University Peace Speech

"This is my favourite speech from President Kennedy so I think it is always worth reading! But it is a very, very important speech in our history because of its demonstration of statecraft in the finest and most important way. The speech was given in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The world was perilously close to nuclear war and we needed an active approach to break through. So President Kennedy decided he needed to do something as leader of the United States and as a human being to bring the world back from the abyss, and the approach that he took was to try to negotiate a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. He wrote this speech as an explanation of what he had in mind. It really is a brilliant speech, especially because what he says is not a list of commands for the Soviet Union but he calls upon Americans to rethink their own ideas and principles and he says that he depends on Americans and their ability and confidence to understand the other side. So what I really like about this is that he is saying both to the American people and to the Soviet people that we want peace but we understand this is a matter of our responsibility first, and it was such a compelling and powerful statement that when the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev heard the speech he said that this was the finest speech by an American president since Roosevelt, and they signed a treaty a few weeks later. The speech has a wonderful paragraph in it, which for me is the most beautiful and eloquent statement about global society. Kennedy says, ‘Let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to 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.’ To my mind those few sentences summarise the ethic that we need if we are going to find our way to the Millennium Development Goals and find our way to peace. I commend this speech to everybody."