How JFK would pursue peace in war-torn Ukraine
Firefighters extinguish a fire at a medical facility, the site of a missile strike, in the city of Dnipro on May 26, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
President John F. Kennedy was one of the greatest peacemakers. He led a peaceful solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis and successfully negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
At the time of his assassination, he was taking steps to end US involvement in Vietnam. In his dazzling and unsurpassed Peace Speech, delivered 60 years ago, on June 10, 1963, Kennedy laid out his formula for peace with the USSR.
The Peace Speech highlights how US President Joe Biden’s approach to the Russian-Ukrainian war needs a dramatic reorientation. Biden is yet to follow the precepts that Kennedy recommended to find peace.
A mathematician would call the speech a “constructive proof” of how to make peace, since it contributed directly to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between the US and USSR in July 1963. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told Kennedy’s envoy to Russia, Averell Harriman, the speech was the greatest by an American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt and he wanted to pursue peace with JFK.
In the speech, Kennedy describes peace “as the necessary rational end [goal] of rational men”. Yet he acknowledges that peacemaking is not easy: “I realise 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.”
The deepest key to peace, in his view, is that both sides want peace. It is easy to fall into the trap, he warns, of blaming a conflict only on the other side. It is easy to fall into the trap of insisting that only the adversary should change their attitude and behaviour. Kennedy is very clear: “We must re-examine our own attitude—as individuals and as a nation—for our attitude is as essential as theirs.”
Kennedy attacked the prevailing pessimism at the height of the Cold War that peace with the USSR was impossible, “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 man-made—therefore, they can be solved by man.”
Crucially, he said, we must not “see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side”. We must not “see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.” Indeed, we should “hail the Russian people for their many achievements—in science and Space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage”.
He warned against putting a nuclear adversary into a corner, leading them to desperate actions. “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.”
Mutual interest
Kennedy knew that since peace was in the mutual interest of the US and USSR, a peace treaty could be reached. To those who said that the USSR would not abide by a peace treaty, he responded that “even the most hostile of nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.” He emphasized the importance of direct communication between the two adversaries.
Peace “will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. Increased understanding will require increased contact and communication” between Moscow and Washington.
In the context of the Ukraine war, Biden has behaved almost the opposite of JFK. He has personally and repeatedly denigrated Russian President Vladimir Putin. His administration has defined the US war aim as the weakening of Russia. Biden has avoided all communications with Putin. They have, apparently, not spoken once since February 2022. And Biden rebuffed a bilateral meeting with Putin at last year’s G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia.
Biden has refused to even acknowledge, much less address, Russia’s deep security concerns. Putin repeatedly expressed Russia’s ardent opposition to the Nato enlargement of Ukraine, a country with a 2,000-kilometre border with Russia. The US would never tolerate a Mexican-Russian or Mexican-Chinese military alliance in view of the 2000-mile Mexico-US border. It is time Biden negotiated with Russia on Nato enlargement to end the Ukraine war.
When he came into office in January 1961, Kennedy stated his position on negotiations: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us.” The Peace Speech reminds us that what unites the US and Russia 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.”
Prof Sachs is professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. www.jeffsachs.org.
