Jeffrey D. Sachs - To Move the World: JFKs Quest for Peace

Copyright 2013 by Jeffrey D. Sachs

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sachs, Jeffrey.
To move the world : JFKs quest for peace / Jeffrey D. Sachs.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-8129-9493-3
1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 19171963. 2. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 19171963Oratory. 3. United StatesPolitics and government19611963. 4. United StatesForeign relationsSoviet Union. 5. Soviet UnionForeign relationsUnited States. 6. World politics19551965. I. Title.
E 841. S 16 2013
327.7304709046dc23
2013007914

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Jacket design: David G. Stevenson
Jacket photograph: Jacques Lowe

v3.1

The Speeches:

THERE S ALWAYS SOME son-of-a-bitch who doesnt get the word, John F. Kennedy exclaimed in frustration. The president and his advisers were huddled at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, with the United States and the Soviet Union on the brink of nuclear war. Kennedy had grounded U-2 spy-plane missions to avoid a provocation that might lead accidentally to a shooting war. Yet one Alaska-based U.S. Air Force pilot had not gotten the message. After taking off to collect air samples to check on Soviet nuclear testing, the pilot had become disoriented and inadvertently flown his plane into Soviet airspace. Soviet fighter jets scrambled to intercept the U-2, while due to the high alert status prompted by the crisis, the U.S. planes sent to escort it back to base were armed with nuclear warheads and had the authority to fire.

Such was the slender thread of humanitys survival on those bleakest of days, the closest that the world has ever come to self-destruction. Looking back fifty years, its hard to imagine, or even to believe, that humanity nearly squandered everything over issues and causes that dont even exist today. One of the two superpowers no longer survives. The cause of global communism is defunct, a failed idea that was abandoned by its own protagonists more than two decades ago. The politics of Cuba and Berlin, two of the most intractable conflict points of the Cold War, hardly seem matters on which human survival should turn.

We are tempted to say Never mind about a struggle that makes little sense in todays context. Yet we mustnt turn our back on that history. We must understand how two superpowers not only came to the brink of global annihilation, but built thousands of nuclear warheads, including single warheads that had vastly more destructive power than all the bombs dropped in World War II combined. We must also remember that the superpower conflict was not really cold at all, as it resulted in countless proxy wars that claimed millions of lives across several continents. We are still living in the world created by the Cold War, and we are still living under the shadow of thousands of nuclear warheads, even if their numbers are down and the hair-trigger rules for their deployment are gone. We also need to understand the Cold War because the human instincts and political institutions that created it still shape our countrys approach to the world and the strategies of other countries. Many of todays unnecessary conflicts are directly descended from the dynamics and outcomes of the Cold War.

There is a more positive and dynamic reason to understand those times as well. The great turning point of the Cold War, the stepping back from the nuclear abyss, was an act of political grace and courage, led by President John F. Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Communist Party chairman Nikita Khrushchev. These two men, in their distinct ways, both said Enough. They came to the realization that the world could not afford to lurch from crisis to crisis, with one son of a bitch or another failing to get the message and thereby plunging the world into horror and darkness. Kennedy and Khrushchev knew too well that their own colleaguesthoughtlessly, ruthlessly, stupidly, or navelymight be contributors to such a world-shattering blunder. We must understand how humanity was saved from the accidents, miscalculations, bravado, and supposedly sophisticated strategic thinking that almost ended it all.

This book recalls John F. Kennedys annus mirabilis, from October 1962 to September 1963, when he and Khrushchev saved the world, and left a legacy, a blueprint, and an inspiration for those who would follow. Kennedy had come to office in January 1961 inexperienced, the youngest elected president in American history. Like all national leaders of the day, he was a Cold Warrior himself, determined to preserve American liberty in the face of a perceived threat of global communism. Yet he was also determined from the first day of his administration to find a path to peace. That path was unclear, and both Kennedy and Khrushchev would stumble badly along the way, from the Bay of Pigs to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Despite these errors, missteps, and near disasters, and because of the lessons learned from them, Kennedy and Khrushchev found a path back from the brink and toward the peaceful resolution of the Cold War. Kennedy campaigned for peace on three fronts: with Khrushchev, both an adversary and partner; with the U.S. allies, who were never simple and often divided on key issues; and with the U.S. political system, which was deeply entrenched in the Cold War and not easily moved toward peace. Kennedys peace campaign found its greatest eloquence during the summer of 1963, leaving us a legacy of words and deeds of historic proportion.

Fifty years on is a fitting and appropriate time to recall these events and to seek to learn from them. Yet this project jelled in my mind several years ago, when I fell in love with Kennedys great proclamation on peace, his Strategy of Peace address given as the American University commencement address in June 1963. This peace speech, although admired by some as one of Kennedys finest, has never achieved the fame of his inaugural address or the great speech on civil rights that he delivered just one day after the Peace Speech. I had not really known the Peace Speech until I came across it a few years ago while working on issues of global poverty. The speech moved me deeply, not only for its eloquence and content, but also for its relevance to todays global challenges. For in it Kennedy tells us about transforming our deepest aspirationsin this case for peaceinto practical realities. He almost presents a method, a dream-and-do combination that soars with high vision and yet walks on earth with practical results.

I included a discussion of these remarkable features of the Peace Speech in the Reith Lectures that I gave for the BBC in 2007. The third of these lectures took place at Columbia University, my home institution, and the event was most special because of the man sitting front and center in the first row: Ted Sorensen, John Kennedys intellectual alter ego, counselor, and gifted speechwriter, the man who had not only drafted the Peace Speech but had worked intimately with Kennedy for a decade on the concepts and dreams articulated in it. Sorensen was much more than a draftsman. He was a moral force and intellectual partner of John Kennedy, and the Peace Speech is a product of and tribute to the Kennedy-Sorensen duo in the deepest sense.