To Move the World

by Jeffrey D. Sachs

The final Senate vote came on September 24, with a resounding tally of 80 to 19 in favor of the treaty. Kennedy released a statement that day declaring the ratification “a welcome culmination of this effort to lead the world once again to the path of peace … I congratulate the Senate for its actions.”20 Through personal leadership, Kennedy had achieved his historic success, with an enormous and bipartisan margin.

  Global Approval

  The treaty was opened for signature by other countries immediately upon the signing by the Soviet Union, United States, and the United Kingdom on August 5. As of that date, more than thirty other countries had already signaled their intention to accede. By the time the treaty went to the Senate floor on September 9, ninety countries had signed. The White House closely tracked international opinion.21 The United States had hoped that the Soviet Union could sway China to sign, and the Soviet Union hoped the United States would do the same for France. Neither came to pass. China and France were determined that they would not be deterred from pursuit of their own nuclear arsenal.

  Kennedy Reaches Out to World Leaders

  The hopes of the world were lifted by the signing of the treaty. At this moment of high hopes, on September 20, Kennedy stepped up to the rostrum of the UN General Assembly to address fellow world leaders and senior statesmen, two long years after he had last spoken there.22

  “We meet again in the quest for peace,” he began. “Twenty-four months ago, when I last had the honor of addressing this body, the shadow of fear lay darkly across the world … Those were anxious days for mankind.” But this time, Kennedy brought good news:

  Today the clouds have lifted a little so that new rays of hope can break through … And, for the first time in 17 years of effort, a specific step has been taken to limit the nuclear arms race.

  I refer, of course, to the treaty to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and under water—concluded by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and already signed by nearly 100 countries. It has been hailed by people the world over who are thankful to be free from the fears of nuclear fallout.

  Kennedy delivers his address to the UN General Assembly (September 20, 1963).

  Once again, he underscored the positive by beginning with the negative. “The world has not escaped from the darkness. The long shadows of conflict and crisis envelop us still.” “But,” he continued, “we meet today in an atmosphere of rising hope, and at a moment of comparative calm. My presence here today is not a sign of crisis, but of confidence.”

  This was Kennedy’s chance to speak heart to heart with his global counterparts. “I am not here to report on a new threat to the peace or new signs of war. I have come to salute the United Nations and to show the support of the American people for your daily deliberations.” He repeated the theme from the American University address that peace is a process, not some grand declaration or magic formula. “Peace,” he emphasized, “is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. And however undramatic the pursuit of peace, that pursuit must go on.”

  As he had told the American people eight weeks earlier, he told the General Assembly that the treaty was merely the first step of a journey, not the end:

  Today we may have reached a pause in the cold war—but that is not a lasting peace. A test ban treaty is a milestone—but it is not the millennium. We have not been released from our obligations—we have been given an opportunity. And if we fail to make the most of this moment and this momentum—if we convert our new-found hopes and understandings into new walls and weapons of hostility—if this pause in the cold war merely leads to its renewal and not to its end—then the indictment of posterity will rightly point its finger at us all. But if we can stretch this pause into a period of cooperation—if both sides can now gain new confidence and experience in concrete collaborations for peace—if we can now be as bold and farsighted in the control of deadly weapons as we have been in their creation—then surely this first small step can be the start of a long and fruitful journey.

  Kennedy emphasized the universal responsibility for peace. As he had told the Irish parliamentarians, it is for small nations as well as large ones:

  The task of building the peace lies with the leaders of every nation, large and small. For the great powers have no monopoly on conflict or ambition. The cold war is not the only expression of tension in this world—and the nuclear race is not the only arms race. Even little wars are dangerous in a nuclear world. The long labor of peace is an undertaking for every nation—and in this effort none of us can remain unaligned. To this goal none can be uncommitted.

  And as he had two years earlier from the same rostrum, Kennedy described what he hoped would be the next steps of the journey:

  I believe, therefore, that the Soviet Union and the United States, together with their allies, can achieve further agreements—agreements which spring from our mutual interest in avoiding mutual destruction.

  There can be no doubt about the agenda of further steps. We must continue to seek agreements on measures which prevent war by accident or miscalculation. We must continue to seek agreements on safeguards against surprise attack, including observation posts at key points. We must continue to seek agreement on further measures to curb the nuclear arms race, by controlling the transfer of nuclear weapons, converting fissionable materials to peaceful purposes, and banning underground testing, with adequate inspection and enforcement. We must continue to seek agreement on a freer flow of information and people from East to West and West to East.

  Yet Kennedy raised the world’s sights still higher. Peace could make possible a new surge of global problem solving, a new attention to the world’s common interests:

  The effort to improve the conditions of man, however, is not a task for the few. It is the task of all nations—acting alone, acting in groups, acting in the United Nations, for plague and pestilence, and plunder and pollution, the hazards of nature, and the hunger of children are the foes of every nation. The earth, the sea, and the air are the concern of every nation. And science, technology, and education can be the ally of every nation.

  Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world—or to make it the last.

  Remarkably, Kennedy set out a technological agenda that would presage the world’s sustainable development efforts for decades to come:

  • A world center for health communications under the World Health Organization could warn of epidemics and the adverse effects of certain drugs as well as transmit the results of new experiments and new discoveries.

  • Regional research centers could advance our common medical knowledge and train new scientists and doctors for new nations.

  • A global system of satellites could provide communication and weather information for all corners of the earth.

  • A worldwide program of conservation could protect the forest and wild game preserves now in danger of extinction for all time, improve the marine harvest of food from our oceans, and prevent the contamination of air and water by industrial as well as nuclear pollution.

  • And, finally, a worldwide program of farm productivity and food distribution, similar to our country’s “Food for Peace” program, could now give every child the food he needs.

  Kennedy also drew the deep links between peace and human rights, and the challenge of ending long-standing discrimination in the United States and elsewhere. Building on the American University speech of June 10 and his civil rights address of June 11, he said:

  I know that some of you have experienced discrimination in this country. But I ask you to believe me when I tell you that this is not the wish of most Americans—that we share your regret and resentment—and that we intend to end such practices for all time to come, no
t only for our visitors, but for our own citizens as well.

  I hope that not only our Nation but all other multiracial societies will meet these standards of fairness and justice. We are opposed to apartheid and all forms of human oppression.

  Toward the end of his remarks, Kennedy reminded his fellow leaders that peace “does not rest in charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people”:

  So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper; let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace, in the hearts and minds of all our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.

  “Two years ago,” Kennedy recalled, “I told this body that the United States had proposed, and was willing to sign, a limited test ban treaty. Today that treaty has been signed. It will not put an end to war. It will not remove basic conflicts. It will not secure freedom for all.” But, he said, “it can be a lever.”

  [A]nd Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends: “Give me a place where I can stand—and I shall move the world.”

  My fellow inhabitants of this planet: Let us take our stand here in this Assembly of nations. And let us see if we, in our own time, can move the world to a just and lasting peace.

  Kennedy had moved the world. In the twelve months since October 1962 he had kept his gaze on peace. He had held fast to his faith in humanity. He had trusted the virtue of America’s adversaries. And he had been vindicated: mankind was not doomed, gripped by forces beyond its control.

  Against the Odds

  After the fact, historical events have an air of inevitability, because we forget the many contingencies—personal leadership, luck, timing, and accidents—that made them possible. Yet we must remember: there was nothing inevitable about achieving a test ban treaty. Here is how the historian Vojtech Mastny described the policy scene as of early 1963:

  Even though Kennedy wanted a rapprochement between the superpowers, he, like Khrushchev, could not easily afford it. The European allies, while favoring détente in principle, were nervous about a superpower deal over their heads. Within the United States, members of Congress pilloried the Soviet Union for its behavior in Cuba and cited it as evidence that Khrushchev could not be trusted. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were dead set against a nuclear test ban, arguing that it would compromise the U.S. strategic deterrent. Senator Everett Dirksen branded the talks on nuclear testing an “exercise not in negotiation … but in give-away.” Within NATO, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer denounced the test ban as an invitation to Soviet blackmail. Among Washington’s major allies, only the British favored the ban, urging U.S. concessions to make it possible.23

  The Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed and ratified for one overwhelming reason: Kennedy campaigned for it. He was a gifted campaigner: in six campaigns between 1946 and 1960, he had not lost a single one.‡ And he triumphed again in the summer of 1963.

  When the treaty was adopted, both Kennedy and Khrushchev believed that further easing of tensions would soon follow. This was to be, as Kennedy said so frequently, the first step on a journey. In a short period of time, there would be others: cultural exchanges; the famous “hotline” for direct communication and crisis management, agreed upon ten days after the Peace Speech; the sale of $250 million worth of wheat to the Soviet Union;24 potential cooperation in space, as Kennedy had offered in his September 1963 address to the UN General Assembly.

  But the world’s hopes were followed by despair just eight weeks later when Kennedy was assassinated. The outpouring of grief was beyond any easy reckoning. For all of the limitations of his brief time in office, for all of his missteps and incomplete work, Kennedy had touched the hearts of people around the world, had caused them to share a goal of peace and to move irresistibly toward it.

  In his condolence letter to President Johnson, Khrushchev wrote that Kennedy’s death was a grievous loss for the United States, and “that the gravity of this loss is felt by the whole world, including ourselves, the Soviet people … it was an awareness of the great responsibility for the destinies of the world that guided the actions of the two Governments—both of the Soviet Union and of the United States—in recent years. These actions were founded on a desire to prevent a disaster and to resolve disputed issues through agreement with due regard for the most important, the most fundamental interests of ensuring peace.”25 Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to Khrushchev:

  I know how much my husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you and him was central to this care in his mind. He used to quote your words in some of his speeches—“In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.” You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up. You respected each other and could deal with each other.26

  Not long after Kennedy’s death came Khrushchev’s political demise. Kennedy’s bond with Khrushchev had certainly helped to sustain the Russian leader in 1963 even after Khrushchev’s missteps in Cuba and elsewhere. With Kennedy gone, Khrushchev’s hold on power soon weakened. Within four months, Leonid Brezhnev began to plot Khrushchev’s ouster, which occurred in October 1964, eleven months after Kennedy’s death. The peaceful ouster itself reflected a forward movement of Soviet politics, as Khrushchev himself acknowledged to a confidant:

  I’m old and tired. Let them cope by themselves. I’ve done the main thing. Could anyone have dreamed of telling Stalin that he didn’t suit us anymore and suggesting he retire? Not even a wet spot would have remained where we had been standing. Now everything is different. The fear is gone, and we can talk as equals. That’s my contribution. I won’t put up a fight.27

  With the protagonists gone so quickly from the scene, Kennedy’s peace initiative was prematurely put to the test. Would the Partial Test Ban Treaty prove to be the first step of a journey toward peace, even one of a thousand miles? Or would it prove to be a fleeting moment, a brief Camelot in the Sturm und Drang of the raging Cold War?

  * The cigar-smoking LeMay served as the model for air force general Jack D. Ripper in the 1963 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 345.

  † Yet there may have been a bit more to it as well. Rumor had it that Kennedy’s assent to halt a corruption investigation of a former top Eisenhower official was another powerful lure to Dirksen for his support of the treaty. Seaborg, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban, 280.

  ‡ The closest he ever came to losing an election was at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, where he was nominated for vice president but finished second in the balloting to Senator Estes Kefauver. At the same convention, Kennedy’s future negotiator of the test ban treaty, W. Averell Harriman, finished second in the presidential balloting to nominee Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy’s ambassador to the UN.

  Chapter 8.

  THE HISTORIC MEANING

  OF KENNEDY’S PEACE

  INITIATIVE

  AS KENNEDY HIMSELF had acknowledged, the treaty was not the millennium: it did not end conflicts, lead to peace, or halt the arms race. In many areas, the spirit of cooperation that began in 1963 was overwhelmed by the ongoing and intrinsic dynamics of the Cold War. Yet it made a lasting difference, one that inspires and challenges us in our own time.

  Doomsday

  In 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock, which indicated how close humanity was to global disaster, or “midnight.” In 1947 the clock was placed at seven minutes to midnight; by 1949, humanity had given up four minutes of its margin, with the clock at just three minutes to midnight. The Soviet Union had become a nuclear power: the nuclear arms race was on. By 1953, humanity had given up another minute: the clock stood at just two minutes to midnight. Both sides had thermonuclear weapons. “Only a few more swings of the pendulum, and, from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western civili
zation.”1

  Eisenhower had left the clock at seven minutes till midnight, the same position as in 1947, the start of the Cold War. Kennedy’s peace initiative pushed the minute hand back to twelve minutes before midnight in 1963, a new margin of safety. The treaty contributed to a decade of détente. Yet matters began to unravel once again after 1972, and the minute hand moved forward perilously over the coming dozen years, reaching just three minutes to midnight in 1984. Then, at a moment of high peril, the momentum shifted again toward peace with the accession to power of Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s reforms brought the Cold War to a peaceful end in 1991, pushing the minute hand back to seventeen minutes before midnight, the largest buffer of safety since the start of the nuclear era. Yet even that dramatic gain has proved to be evanescent. In our time, the minute hand has rushed forward once again to just five minutes to midnight.

  Figure 1. Doomsday Clock: Minutes to Midnight, 1947–2012.

  Throughout these ups and downs, the Partial Test Ban Treaty helped to keep humanity away from the precipice. Its most direct long-lasting impact was on nuclear proliferation, just as Kennedy had hoped. Yet its larger significance was as conclusive proof that cooperation between the superpowers was possible, a fundamental lesson and legacy of enduring significance.

  The Partial Success of Non-Proliferation

  The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) proved that agreements could be reached and honored by both sides, and in this way it gave a powerful impetus to a series of arms control treaties along the lines that Kennedy had outlined in his 1961 speech at the UN. Kennedy had suggested six steps: (1) a test ban; (2) a stop to the production and transfer to other nations of fissionable material; (3) a stop to the transfer of control over nuclear weapons to states that do not own them; (4) a prohibition of nuclear weapons in space; (5) a gradual destruction of existing weapons; and finally (6) a halt to the production of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles and their gradual destruction. Steps 1 through 4 were substantially achieved before the end of the Cold War, and the progress that was made owes much to the Partial Test Ban Treaty, while steps 5 and 6 have proved to be far more elusive until recently.