In these negotiations the United States Government will continue to follow the principles that we have pursued for 30 years-of working toward nondiscriminatory trade and granting trade concessions on a most-favored-nation basis. During the past few weeks we have all heard suggestions that the United States might join a new trade grouping, might create a kind of residual trading bloc of the industrial nations not members of the European Common Market. This would not, in my view, be sound policy. If we are true to our leadership role, we should work not for discrimination but for the expansion of a free flow of trade throughout the free world.

I look forward, throughout the next few years, to great progress toward the building of a strong Atlantic partnership. The tides are running in this direction. The tides of European unity and Atlantic cohesion have been strong enough to carry us through crises in the past-for example, the failure of the plan for a European Defense Community in 1954 63 and the Suez crisis of 1956.64 These tides continue to run strongly.

In the Atlantic community we have a long agenda of vital problems in front of us. Our task is to move forward on these steadily, learning as we go, keeping the faith that the tragic lessons of the last half century, as well as the hopeful lessons of our common achievements since 1945, have been well learned.

Likewise, in the world as a whole we shall continue to work toward our great goal-in President Kennedy's words: ". . . a peaceful world community of free and independent states, free to choose their own future and their own system so long as it does not threaten the freedom of others." 65

This goal and the Communist goal are incompatible. We shall persevere in this worldwide struggle until freedom prevails. We move into the future not only with resolution but with measured confidence.

I-4

SECURITY AND FREEDOM: A FREE WORLD RESPONSIBILITY: Address by the Secretary of State (Rusk) Before the Texas Daily Newspaper Association, Houston, February 26, 1963 66

6 See American Foreign Policy, 1950–1955: Basic Documents, vol. I, pp. 1200– 1201.

See American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1956, pp. 579–702.

63 The statement was made in the state of the Union message, Jan. 11, 1962; see ibid., 1962, pp. 1–8.

60

Department of State press release 105, revised; the Department of State Bulletin, Mar. 18, 1963, pp. 383-388.

I-5

"IT IS IMPORTANT ... FOR US TO TRY TO FIND ELEMENTS OF COMMON INTEREST WITH THE SOVIET UNION IN ORDER TO DISCOVER WHETHER BRIDGES MIGHT NOT BE THROWN ACROSS, ALONG WHICH SOME ELEMENTS OF PEACE CAN BE GRADUALLY BUILT": Remarks Made by the Secretary of State (Rusk) Before the Advertising Council, Inc., Washington, March 12, 1963 67

I-6

"WE CANNOT SHAPE THE WORLD PRECISELY TO OUR OWN LIKING ANY MORE THAN RUSSIA CAN, AND, HAPPILY, WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO DO SO": Address by the President's Special Representative and Adviser on African, Asian, and Latin American Affairs (Bowles), at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C., April 29, 1963 68

I-7

"TOWARD A STRATEGY OF PEACE": Address by the President (Kennedy) at Commencement Exercises, The American University, Washington, June 10, 1963 69

"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a University," wrote John Masefield, in his tribute to the English universities-and his words are equally true here. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was "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 this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace. What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of 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, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to 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 for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes

* Department of State press release No. 126, Mar. 13, 1963; the Department of State Bulletin, Apr. 1, 1963, pp. 467-472.

* Department of State press release No. 233; the Department of State Bulletin, May 27, 1963, pp. 817-823.

"White House press release dated June 10 (as-delivered text as printed in the Department of State Bulletin, July 1, 1963, pp. 2–6).

Docs. I-5, 6, 7

no sense in an age when 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 when a single nuclear weapon contains almost 10 times the explosive force delivered by all of 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 the 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 to use them is essential to keeping the 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 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.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world 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 attitude, 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 toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war, and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it 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 values 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.

With such a peace there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor; it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on military strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars... that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries... [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars."70

Truly as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements-to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning-a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievementsin science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's

See Marshal V. D. Sokolovsky, ed., Military Strategy: Soviet Doctrine and Concepts (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1963), pp. 57, 59, 68, 72.

territory, including nearly two-thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland-a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again-no matter howour two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironical but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countriesincluding this nation's closest allies-our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other and new weapons beget counterweapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours, and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So 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 planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different. We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. 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.

To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in selfrestraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our guard.