To Move the World (26 page)

We have learned many lessons from Kennedy’s experience and its aftermath. We learned that only those leaders with a holistic and empathetic view are able to achieve success in complex negotiations with an adversary. Otherwise, the pessimists, hardliners, and fearmongers on each side can create self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. Kennedy therefore had to assert his leadership among his own colleagues just as much as with Khrushchev.

Another basic lesson is this: The path to success lies in the nature of the process of negotiation and mutual accommodation itself. Kennedy and Khrushchev signed agreements in 1963 because by then they knew and trusted each other, in part because of the bluster, bluffs, and near disasters that had come before. They had exchanged dozens of letters and suffered the consequences of many misunderstandings. By 1963 each had arrived at a realization he could not have had earlier: their situations were symmetrical. They each sought peace with the other despite a mood of militarism, the skepticism of the generals and hardliners, the vested interests of the military-industrial complex, and the interests and opportunism of their political competitors.

In the academic sphere, where many battles are also surprisingly bitter (“because,” as the saying goes, “the stakes are so low”), the great economist (and Kennedy adviser) Paul Samuelson offered his own wisdom on the art of persuasion. He said that to convince another academic of a point, “give him a half-finished
theorem.” That is, let the other person reach his or her own conclusions, not through bluster, but through independent inquiry, guided by a half-finished product.

I want to urge a similar approach to the practical work of sustainable development. One of the reasons for the bitterness between Israelis and Palestinians, Indians and Pakistanis, Americans and Iranians, and other conflicting parties, is the almost complete lack of practical experience in solving problems together, working on “half-finished theorems.” How easy it is to dehumanize one’s adversaries when you peer at them through the lens of a drone, rather than work beside them in some common endeavor. And consider how many of our problems today are problems that cross national boundaries, and how easy it would be to share the burden and excitement of problem solving as well. Israelis and Palestinians share a small sliver of land facing increasing drought and depletion of freshwater resources. So far, Israel has faced this problem by commandeering a disproportionate share of the region’s scarce water supply, but climate and demographic forecasts convince us that this is a losing battle for both sides. The dwindling freshwater resources will not sustain the combined populations of the two sides. Many (including me) have discussed this issue at length with Israelis and with Palestinians. Yet they have rarely discussed it with each other.

President Obama was on to something important in Cairo in 2009 when he proposed the establishment of a set of scientific centers of excellence “in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and the appointment of new Science Envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new crops.”
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This is the right approach. It echoes Kennedy’s remarkable call for scientific collaboration in his speech to the UN General Assembly in 1963. Disappointingly, till now Obama’s vision remains only that, a vision. It is high time to fulfill it, since surely it would mark a step toward peace.

And as always with trip wires of war, we may not have much time. The United States and Iran, for example, seem now to be on a relentless collision course, though the two countries could find much common ground if they tried. Iran is home to great culture, history, and know-how that could help to improve conditions not only in its own region, but in other parts of the world as well. Engagement, joint problem solving, and an honest negotiation over political differences would be vastly more fruitful and prudent than a military faceoff and the possibility of outright conflict.

Leadership and History
 

We owe our very lives to John Kennedy’s grace under pressure in October 1962. We owe the eventual end of the Cold War in part to his ability to forge a measure of trust and respect between Americans and Russians in 1963, the final year of his life. Between then and now, though, we’ve squandered enormous opportunities. Millions have died needlessly in proxy wars with no real purpose; trillions of dollars, enough to end human poverty in all its forms, have instead been wasted on the Cold War arms races and outright conflicts.

Historians have long debated the great theme of whether people and societies can truly help to steer their fate. Are we but the flotsam on the turbulent seas of technological and social change, rising and sinking in waters beyond our control? Or, as Kennedy insisted, can man be as big as he wants? Is Kennedy right that no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings?

Not every moment of history is equally pregnant with the possibility of constructive choice. Some times are times of stasis that resist change. Others are periods of great flux, in which individual acts of leadership can make a profound difference for good or ill. Deep economic and geopolitical crises are such periods. At the height of the Cold War, with its potential for total destruction,
Kennedy had the opportunity to exercise choice, and he showed us how it could be done.

The stakes were so high in 1963 in large part because of the new technological realities, the new face of war in the nuclear age. As Kennedy noted in his inaugural address, man now held “in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.” We have been struggling to save ourselves ever since, and that struggle continues until today.

At such a hinge of history, individuals can make a vast difference, and Kennedy was fully aware of the high stakes. His struggle was with the genie of nuclear power, and the unknowns of coexistence with a communist superpower. “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

Now it is our turn. We still confront the nuclear genie and the thousands of warheads that continue to threaten human survival. We are still challenged by the lack of trust within and between societies. We have developed and mastered remarkable new technologies but still flounder in the art of self-preservation. We still threaten ourselves with our own destruction, whether with our armaments or through the world’s remarkable economic productivity coupled with a still-reckless disregard for the natural environment.

We know that our tasks are large, but so too are the acts of past leadership that inspire us and encourage us on our way. We have been granted the lessons of John Kennedy’s peace initiative, and the gift of his and Ted Sorensen’s words for our age and beyond. We are not gripped by forces beyond our control. We too can be as big as we want. We too can take our stand and move the world.

June 10, 1963
 

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.