Jeffrey Sachs & Kerry Kennedy | JFK & RFK Event | Oxford Union

[Music] [Music] good evening and thank you for your interest and everybody for coming Saturday night on a college campus and you're listening to a lecture my gosh that's impressive so you think of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan each in his own way is firmly set in a certain period of American history yet as vibrant as they were at the peak of their power and their influence none of these men would easily slip into the contemporary political world their leadership was unique to their time and to their plates that conclusion does not ring true for Robert F Kennedy his appearance has ever modern the shaggy hair the skinny ties the suit jacket off the shirt sleeves rolled beyond appearances what is striking about RFK are the themes he returned to again and again themes that still energized the debate and resonate neurone time and place think of the headlines over the last few years and it is easy to hear Robert Kennedy's voice and imagine him speaking out as he did 50 years ago on the madness of gun violence the shame of police brutality the need for compassion and welcoming immigrants and refugees the urgent need to defy the call to war and to where war has broken out seek peace the focus not only on stopping terrorism but of an understanding and addressing its root causes the destructive force of hate the disillusionment of young people the justice of a criminal justice system which discriminates based on race and class where thousands go to jail simply because they are too poor to make bail a system which gives massive tax breaks to the wealthiest in society who also happened to be the largest political contributors and then forces municipalities to make up for the lost revenue by targeting poor people for petty crimes and forcing them into increasing debt all part of the new Jim Crow and the duty to address the struggles of those who are not in the headlines the most vulnerable among us the farmworkers the small farmers the workers who long since soft factories and jobs that supported them replaced by cheap labor or more recently technology Native Americans those suffering the hollers of Appalachia Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta and the most destitute slums of our great cities Bobby Kennedy's presence was grounded not only in policy but most especially in values values that never wavered values that stand in high contrast with too much of our political leadership today integrity courage faith humanism patriotism toughness ambition all tempered by curiosity children and dogs laughter fun and most especially love Jeff Greenfield RFK speechwriter and Frank mankiewicz RFK press secretary posited that much of my father's credo was get your boot off his neck indeed daddy stood up to bullies throughout his life as a grade school student he disdained gossip and meanness as a college student he refused to play away games unless the african-american student on the Harvard football team was allowed to stay in the same hotel as the rest of the squad eventually the entire football team came round to his position he bravely took on father Feeney the anti-semitic chaplain at Harvard who spewed hate for insisting there is no salvation outside the church Feeney was later excommunicated he traveled to Israel in 1948 and advocated for us support for the new and beleaguered nation surrounded by enemies as a law student he and Ralph Bunche the first african-american to win the Nobel Peace Prize to speak at segregated University of Virginia and then successfully petitioned the UVA Law School to allow a bunch to speak before a mixed race crowd unable to find a hotel in the area which would take punch daddy and mummy invited ambassador bunch to stay in their tiny home where they endured a night of white supremacist hurling racial epithets and throwing Molotov Molotov cocktails at their house in the 1950s he worked for the Senate Committee on investigations for five months during which he focused on how US allies were benefiting financially by selling goods to China which in turn were using those goods to create the machinery of war and use it against US soldiers in Korea his report was lauded as exemplary and as the only usable intelligence to come out of the committee chaired by Joe McCarthy daddy spent the entirety of his time fighting the excesses of McCarthy and Roy Cohn and likened McCarthy's insatiable need for publicity as though he was on a wild toboggan ride so high on and addicted to the adrenaline of the press that McCarthy was unaware and uncaring about the tree at the end of the hill daddy then joined the majority committee and exposed the excesses which caused Cohn's resignation and led to the end of McCarthy's reign of terror asked a decade later by Peter Moss how he could have worked for Senator McCarthy daddy responded well at the time I thought there was a serious internal security threat to the United States and Joe McCarthy seemed to be the only one doing anything about it I was wrong that I was wrong you don't hear that from a lot of politicians he joined the brackets committee and pursued union bosses like Jimmy Hoffa who were stealing from the rank-and-file as Attorney General he stood up to Bull Connor Governor Paterson governor Wallace and other white supremacist on behalf of civil rights activists when Saint Edward County Virginia sought to avoid desegregation by closing all its public schools Robert Kennedy opened the st. Edward County preschools imported volunteer teachers from across the county of the country and made sure that black kids would receive an excellent education while the case when did its way through the courts at justice he obtained legislation to reform juvenile justice where he saw children mostly of colored the victims of a cruel system which pushed them to crime his focus on poverty and his establishment at the Department of Justice of the juvenile delinquency committee led to the establishment of Vista legal aid mental health centers youth development projects neighborhood services and the foundation of what would become the war on poverty he ordered the Justice Department for the first time in its history to resolve Indian land claims rather than fighting them as Senator his legislation assured Puerto Ricans the right to vote in New York he came to the aid of farmworkers in California miners in West Virginia African Americans in bedford-stuyvesant and Native Americans in New York State across the West but to leave it at stopping the bullies would not do justice to Robert Kennedy on that terrible night when he told a crowd in downtown Indianapolis that their leader Martin Luther King had been murdered he included in his remarks a quote from Aeschylus he said we must strive to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world indeed daddy focused much of his late aiming the savageness and prosecuting the bullies but he also made gentle the life of the world viewing the photographs from Daddy's 1968 presidential bid 50 years ago brings back a flood of memories images of people reaching out to him almost desperate to touch him they also remind me of the try math of daddy returning home his fingers red and swollen his cufflinks missing sometimes they would take his belt one time they even took his shoes how do you do that in the middle of taking people's hands I don't know but it happened and since then I've heard literally thousands and thousands of stories from people in my own country and all around the world saying what Robert Kennedy meant to them each story is different but there's one common denominator that made my father so special he reached deeply into the hearts of his alliance and what he touched was the noble soul in each of us he he made us want to be our best selves and that was what was so extraordinary about him Robert Kennedy was a presidential candidate a senator the Attorney General his brother's confidant campaign manager a prosecutor a lawyer a husband a son brother and an uncle but his most important role as far as I was concerned was that a father to his brood what would become eleven children seven boys and four girls spanning 16 years so most of what I've said you can probably read in books and I hope a few of you have but I thought I'd just take a few minutes and tell you a few personal stories is that good yeah okay that's the right answer so so my parents really didn't separate their HomeLife from their from my father's professional life so when I was growing up my earliest memories are when my father was Attorney General at the height of the civil rights movement and there were always civil rights activist and social justice activists at our home and we also went to my father's office quite a bit and my mother would on typically pile six or seven kids into the back of her convertible with two or three dogs and always a football and bring us down to the Justice Department to visit my dad and we would run he had a huge huge huge office it was I would say it was about two-thirds of the size of this room I mean it was big it was big enough so that you could throw a football across head and that's why he loved that office I and that's why he he he used that particular office but anyway so we would go and we'd run around his office a little bit and then we'd go down to the bottom of the Justice Department and there was a hallway a secret tunnel that you could walk to the FBI building it and we would go over to the FBI building and watch the sharpshooters at practice and we love to do that and at the time the head of the FBI who knows who the head of the FBI was that anybody yep that's right j edgar Hoover was J Edgar Hoover so J Edgar Hoover was not known for his sense of humor or his love of children and he said at the time that the two biggest threats to American democracy are Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and my father was his boss so anyway so we were one day we were watching the Sharpshooter it sitting there was and this the weird part of the story there was a suggestion box in the bottom of the FBI building so you could put in a suggestion about what they could be doing better and um so my mother you know she saw that she took out her little telltale red pen and she made a suggestion she put that in the box and been very astute FBI agent went and took it out of the box and then ran it up to j edgar Hoover who immediately had it sent to daddy's office so by the time mommy got the all the kids and the dogs and the football and brought us back to daddy's office he was reading mummys suggestion which was get a new director so yeah so this was in a very early sort of lesson and the importance of speaking truth to power when we were kids we you know we we I had seven brothers there were a lot of battles in our house it was it was sort of constant and so but I remember this one battle and in particular my brother Michael is was 18 years older than me and so we were always together and we had a magnolia tree and a magnolia tree is Jean are you guys familiar with magnolia trees okay so they're the best climbing trees on earth they're amazing and so we had this great magnolia tree and we had not one but two tree houses in it and we were playing a game which we often played in which it was World War two and Michael because he was stronger and better aim was always the Americans and I was always the doomed Germans and so he was up in the top treehouse of Magnolia and he was taking Magnolia pods that look exactly like grenades but feel like rocks when they hit you in the head and I was supposed to go take over the fort and he was throwing you know rocks and ink and so well one too many hit my head and I scrambled out of the tree and I ran up to my father's office which the door was always open but it was closed you really could not go in there really that I guess so um I the door was closed I opened the door went running up to him like you know tears streaming down my face my little white satin bow askew and I told him the whole horrible story and he you know took me into his arms and kissed me and he dried my tears and he said you go get Michael and bring him here right now no it's right justice will be done this is the Attorney General okay so I go and get my brother and he comes in and and my father says okay Michael you tell me what happened and Kari you're not allowed to interrupt and then Kari you tell me what happened Michael it's not a lot to hand truck so I don't remember all the details of that story but I remember it was really hard not to interrupt and it was really it was very irritating and then he made us but you know a it in the end I realized that I wasn't alright Michael wasn't all wrong and then he made us kiss and make up and go to our rooms and read for an out and yeah so but I think the lesson that he had for us that day was the lesson that he had for our country which is which is we all have to take responsibility for our actions and we we have to look carefully out to be reflective look at them seriously with what's our what's our role in in our problems and that peace is not something just to pray for that we all have a responsibility for creating peace and and creating forgiveness and and not viewing our brothers as her enemy but viewing them as our brothers and and and we should read which is why it's good you're all here because reading is important understanding gaining knowledge getting a better sense of what's going on well then the last story I thought I tell you is is one other time when he and my mother were going a trip on a trip around the world and they wouldn't we daddy always read poetry to us and every Sunday night we all had to memorize a poem and say it out loud at the dinner table so he took out the poetry book that was always next to our dining room table and he read the charge of the Light Brigade so are you guys familiar with that poem okay so for those of you who aren't this is the story of a terrible bloody battle in which men four hundred men I'm trying to think it's four hundred right yeah it's four hundred yeah four hundred men charged into battle and they know that they're surrounded by the enemy and so they know they're all going to be slaughtered but they're the the head they're captain or whatever it is is telling them they have to do it and so they're going to and you know why would you ask your cute little five-year-old daughter with the blonde hair and the white bow to memorize that particular horrible bloody poem and I I think there are a couple reasons and I think number one daddy loved literature and he wanted us to love literature and appreciate poetry but there's there's I can't remember the whole poem now but I remember a couple of lines which there's was not to reason why theirs is but to do and die into the valley of death death rode the 600 there were 600 not incidentally but so it was at the time of the Vietnam War and he was saying you got it you've gotta ask questions you can't just follow Authority you have to question authority and that was very very very important to him you got to make your own way you got to make your own mind up don't just take other people's opinions even people you respect even people you're supposed to follow even people whose society is telling you this is the person you go into battle as you gotta ask so I think all of those are really important lessons for today for our world today as we look around and I I want to end with showing you a video because this this is really amazing so this let me just set this up this was after Martin Luther King died daddy spoke to a crowd that was organized in downtown Indianapolis and it was an african-american part of the city it was in the ghetto and the police refused to give him an escort they said it's too dangerous and the mayor of Indianapolis said you cannot go and he said well they're here for me and I'm gonna go and he went and he explained to the crowd that their hero had just been killed and he did it with such compassion and such beauty that Indianapolis was the only real big city in America that did not burn not I but over a hundred cities across our country burn not night Indianapolis did not the next step and that's a very famous speech and I really urge you only like two or three minutes long go and look at it at YouTube after tonight if you're interested go and go and look at it's great but I didn't want to show you that because a lot of people have seen that speech I wanted to show you the speech he gave the following day he went he canceled all of his his political events but the african-american community urged him to go and speak at the Cleveland City Club and he talked about the mindless menace of violence and I want to show you this film because I think to me it demonstrates not only an issue that we're facing in our own country and around the world today but also how extraordinary extraordinarily important Robert Kennedy's words spoken 50 years ago still are in our world so let's watch [Music] there is another kind of violence slower but just as deadly destructive it's the shot or the bomb in the night this is the violence of institutions indifference in action and decay this is the violence that afflicts the poor the poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors but when you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color then you also learned to confront others not as fellow citizens but his enemies to be met not with cooperation but with conquest to be subjugated to be mastered this much is clear violence breeds violence repression breeds retaliation and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls we must admit the vanity of our false distinctions and learn to find our own advancement and search for the advancement of all [Music] [Music] boy are we lucky to be together with you today Carrie and thank you Chris and the Oxford Union for celebrating the 50th anniversary of Robert Kennedy speaking here it's breathtaking always to listen to Robert Kennedy's speeches and very not only incredibly moving but as Kerry said incredibly present because the themes of how to find some peace in our society are the compelling issues that we face every day and that we continue to struggle with and in a way in a very real way were we're all here and the world continued because Robert Kennedy and John F Kennedy understood how to make peace better than almost anybody else and when a moment came 55 years ago in 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis when the whole world could have ended even the Oxford Union and all the rest they knew how to find a way to have a peaceful resolution to a crisis that was bringing us to the brink of not only war but potentially complete nuclear war and nuclear annihilation and we're not past that yet unfortunately and we're really in the midst of another crisis right now and it's why it's so important to remember the wisdom of Robert Kennedy and John F Kennedy and especially about this question of peace and I want to follow Kerry by talking about this period of time in global diplomacy and especially the period of time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and just afterwards because the two brothers and President Kennedy as a leader of this effort at the time did something miraculous that we need to understand what he accomplished and how he accomplished it and how unusual it was what he did and how we have to learn fact and I came to understand what I'm going to talk about for a few minutes by loving a speech of President Kennedy and it's the centerpiece of this effort to make peace in 1963 with the Soviet Union after the Cuban Missile Crisis and I fell in love with the speech because it's a speech unlike any other speech an American president has ever given and I'll explain why but then as I started to learn about the speech and studied the speech I came to understand of course more the context of the speech and it became an even more amazing story and a story that I find completely gripping and completely relevant and pressing for us now because it is a key to how you make peace when it seems impossible and it also is a key to how to avoid stupid Wars and carry in my country unfortunately we have a bad habit of stupid Wars and Robert was fighting the nah more in his presidential campaign because he saw how useless and mindless it was and that there was a way to peace that's what he was proclaiming on his mission is running for president in 1968 and a few years before together they had demonstrated the feasibility of this very very different approach so that's what I want to tell you about in a few minutes so if we could start with President Kennedy's inauguration where he said something that is to my mind the defining statement of of our time it is really the the existential reality of the modern period unlike any other period of humanity when President Kennedy said the world is very different now for man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life that's an extraordinary fact of our time it's still true by the way we could end poverty it would be a good idea we've even pledged to do it and we could end up destroying ourselves of course through war but now we're so clever we could even do it through wrecking the climate in the environment and so this is part of our modern world that we have a fundamental choice of solving fundamental problems or creating fundamental threats well President Kennedy became president on January 20 1961 and the administration started out with a disaster actually and President Kennedy was part victim and part creator of the disaster a part victim because he was handed by the CIA a a war to fight at at the very beginning of the administration this was the Bay of Pigs invasion so-called the idea of a us-led effort to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba and this was like about a hundred fifty Harebrained Schemes of the CIA which continued to this day in my view the most failed institution of American history I the president was more or less pressed this was something cooked up in the last years of the Eisenhower administration and he was told you have to do this and of course he asked the CIA and they said no problem like they did about overthrowing Assad in Syria like they do all the time in every disaster that they've cooked up for us in dozens of years of overthrowing governments in other countries well President Kennedy might have said no though that would have been very very hard but he should have said no at the beginning of the administration he didn't say no he said kind of which was we'll do it but no air cover and no sign of us US presence around this all right this was not a good decision by the way and the CIA launched this overthrow attempt with Cuban mercenaries so-called Cubans that were trying to retake the country from Castro they were all it was all intercepted and they were all caught or killed on the beach of the Bay of Pigs and what ensued was if you go to the next slide was in exchange one of the incredibly smart things in fact there was a world saving thing that had done was to suggest to nikita khrushchev his counterpart at the soviet union that they have a secret correspondence and that this correspondence would be seen only by the two leaders and their very closest advisors and they kept that word never leaking about a hundred thirty letters that they sent to each other during the time of their correspondence which was from the beginning of president kennedy's term indeed a congratulations from Khrushchev to the end of President Kennedy's life in November 1963 they wrote to each other in the u.s. only six or seven aides sought and Kennedy described who they would be and said otherwise we will never use this for public relations or a leak and neither side did so they could talk to each other well this was not it not not the best day of interchange because President Kennedy wrote to Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy I'm writing to alert you that a crime is being committed in your country's name I'm sure you don't know about it mr. president but there was an effort by part of the US government to overthrow Castro and Kennedy wrote back I have previously stated and I repeat now that the United States intends no military intervention in Cuba while refraining from military intervention and the people of the United States do not conceal their admiration for Cuban Patriots who wish to see a democratic system well this was an outright lie this was not the finest moment and Khrushchev wrote back you write the United States intends no military intervention but numerous facts known to the whole world and to the government of the United States of course better than to anyone else speak differently and Khrushchev goes on saying never write to me like this again because this was really the Cold War two major nuclear powers one of them trying to overthrow a country violently the president as Eisenhower had done just the year before when a spy plane was shot down and Khrushchev said the Russian said the spy planes been shot down but the CIA told Eisenhower there's no way that they shot it down and if it's shot down it's designed to disintegrate and if by any chance the pilot were to survive he takes the cyanide pill so there's no chance that any of this is found at which point Eisenhower denied the whole thing at which point Khrushchev brought out the pilot to worldwide cameras who was fully alive and the whole plane had been captured so this is a bad habit of the CIA getting presidents into trouble and presidents telling lies on behalf of secret wars which we should not be fighting well the the point is that Jampa I thought you were here to talk about how great these guys are I'm gonna talk about I'm gonna what are we getting to that part it's very important to understand and and at all seriousness because this is the shaky start and then the greatest diplomacy and statesmanship we have ever seen comes so if you go to the next step controversy a heightening of the Cold War mutual recrimination President Kennedy came in absolutely to make peace but within the first year the tensions with the Soviet Union were exploding and the Bay of Pigs was part of it it wasn't the only part of it there's a was a very deep very real very complex and very much unsolved question about the state of Germany and nuclear weapons in Europe that was part of this heightened Cold War and there had never been a peace treaty after World War two so there were many issues that were unsolved and this confrontation threat the world in the late summer as Berlin became the center of potentially world nuclear war the same way North Korea is today the Soviet Union started to build or East Germany and Soviet under the Soviet decisions started to build the Berlin Wall and you see that going up and soon afterwards there was a showdown which was another moment when we could have gone to nuclear war when tanks from both sides faced off and they just stood there and if one side had shot it might have been the end of escalation finally they were able to resolve it and the tanks withdrew but this was a standoff 56 years ago almost 2 - the day that we are here in which the world could have come to an end well 1962 proved to be an absolutely terrifying year because Khrushchev said ok we'll teach the Americans a lesson I we're gonna put nuclear weapons into Cuba secretly will spring the fact after the 1962 midterm elections it'll be a fait accompli and it'll teach him a lesson first they won't invade Cuba and second the US has nuclear weapons in Turkey in Greece that's what we have right on our border we have American nuclear weapons we'll teach him a lesson well Khrushchev told this to his foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and Gromyko was horrified and so what are you talking about you all have will have war and Khrushchev said oh this isn't about war this is just to put the you know put it back to them this is just to teach him a lesson and this is another illustration of craziness how dangerous our world is because Khrushchev absolutely did not mean war but we nearly ended up in complete disaster by this provocation so as I hope you know the the history the Soviet Union started to move in nuclear weapons into Cuba secretly but the CIA did the the thing the CIA actually does right sometimes and that is that it collected information you see the CIA remembers two things it's an Intelligence Agency and it's a secret army when it serves as a secret army its disaster beginning to end because there should not be secret armies and secret Wars but when it collects intelligence that could be important and it took photographs of the weapons being smuggled under tarpaulin zhan Russian Soviet ships and the missile sites being constructed and this came to President Kennedy's attention in early October 1962 and it was the greatest crisis the world had ever known what could be done the Soviet Union had sworn repeatedly they would not militarized Cuba and that there would not be offensive weapons in and this was discovered and then it was denied and the Soviet Union had completely lied about this in the most direct way and President Kennedy knew this was a crisis that could be the crisis that would be the the end of all crises and gathered a committee around him became called XCOM to deliberate on what to do and we have all the records all the speeches because it was taped for posterity and what we know is that the generals mostly did what generals do which is to say we can take him out we can shoot him down they're not yet ready we learned dozens of years afterwards the missiles were ready to fire they were all set if there had been any kind of attack we would have had nuclear war the generals had it wrong and the generals approach this from a military point of view two people said no we're going to find a way to bid for time and that was JFK and RFK and there were generals the head of the Air Force at the time Curtis LeMay who was essentially insubordinate and almost mutinous at the time huffing that this is cowardice that you're putting the whole country at risk this is reckless but they held the line to say we will wait we will see and as you know the story they opened up a secret negotiation with the Khrushchev through the ambassador in Washington and Robert was the the liaison and they established on the one side a quarantine that said no more ships can come in to Cuba demanded the withdrawal and then secretly agreed with Russia that the US would withdraw the missiles from Turkey and and the euro and Russia the Soviet Union would withdraw the missiles from Cuba and this is how the crisis ended all through these terrible days which I can remember absolutely vividly because I was in second grade and we looked up at the planes and said are they coming to bomb us because that's what we understood and to this moment I remember that because it was the most terrifying days even if you were a second grader I was seven years old at the time and there were so many accidents and President Kennedy said no more secret flights because that could be a provocation but of course another one went and famous line of President Kennedy is that there's always the son of a that doesn't get the word meaning that there's always the potential of an accident in this kind of event one pilot went off course from an Alaska base and ended up flying hundreds of kilometers over Soviet airspace in in the Pacific region of the Soviet Union and did not provoke World War three thank God well at the end of this and this is what brings me to the speech and to what I think is the most miraculous year of a presidential leadership and the most incredible statesmanship President Kennedy who had come into office determined to find a way to make peace absolutely understanding because he was very explicit and analytical about it how accidents could lead to disaster and one of his favorite books of the time was Barbara Tuckman's book August 1914 about the onset of world war one and about how accidents and created this complete disaster and then having found himself to have been part of this sequence of mistakes misunderstandings lies on both sides escalation and then to have come to the very edge of the very disaster that he was most committed to avoiding launched a wondrous year determined to find a way back from the cliff and the strategy was to negotiate a test ban treaty with the Soviet Union and the idea by itself was in a way outlandish because how in the very midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis could you have a treaty with the other side it would be exactly the United States or I won't even go into the analogies right now I'll come back to them in a moment because you can't imagine it quite with our current circumstance but President Kennedy said we need to find a way back and he understood and this was the genius of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the genius of this decision he understood the Khrushchev must have been in the same situation as him surrounded by generals saying go to war surrounded by advisers pushing the hard line and he realized that his real bond was with Khrushchev that there were two human beings trying to keep peace and he intuited that Khrushchev did not want war and that he meant it when he said it and that this was something that had gotten completely out of hand and so in 1963 President Kennedy began an incredible campaign unique in modern times to make to find constructively a path to peace and it's just what Kerry said peace doesn't just happen it's not the absence of war you have to fight against all the tendencies of hate doubt what's called the strategic dilemma which is a even if I want peace they're going to attack first so I have to attack first leading to the mechanisms of escalation and Kennedy said we have to wind that back and so you could go on next so another a third individual in the world that I want to mention because he played a wonderful role in this Pope John Paul II Pope John the 23rd who was dying of cancer in exactly those days said that his last efforts on earth would be to try to help create a space for peace to be found between the u.s. and the Soviet Union and interestingly Khrushchev took a great interest in the Pope and in what the Pope wanted to say and of course President Kennedy it did as well and a go-between Norman Cousins and leading editor of the day carried the Pope's message peace on earth Pat Ramon Terrace a great encyclical of 1963 in Russian translation to Khrushchev that very moment that day and one came to President Kennedy in the White House Kennedy was determined then to launch a public campaign and he began it with this speech at American University June 10 1963 and when you go home and listen to Robert's speech in Minneapolis listen to President Kennedy's speech in American University June 10 1963 you're gonna get one more assignment also in a moment this is the greatest foreign policy speech ever given by an American president it's unbelievably wise and unbelievably beautiful and unbelievably unusual because what President Kennedy did in this speech was speak to the American people about how important it was for the American people to believe in the possibility of peace he made no threats to the Soviet Union he made no demands to the Soviet Union he said peace depends on our attitude because the message was on the other side they want peace too and it's an extraordinary idea because presidents like I'll use a technical term the idiot we have as president today who stood at the General Assembly and said we will destroy your country to North Korea just a few weeks ago where Sonja and I were sitting almost there and hearing these shocking words it's the opposite what President Kennedy did was say let us examine our own attitudes to peace I want to read you a few excerpts of it he said 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 refused 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 see did the far corners of the globe and to the generations yet unborn he goes on today the expenditures 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 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 tasks and this is I find incredible some say it is useless to speak a piece 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 to do it but I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitudes as individuals and as a nation for our attitude as essential 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 who talks like this what president talks like this by examining his own attitude towards the possibilities of peace toward the Soviet Union towards the course of the Cold War and towards freedom and peace here at home so let us persevere peace need not be impracticable 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 people to see it to draw hope from it and to move irresistible toward it now what he did then was go on to praise the Soviet Union to praise the adversary to talk about the Valor to talk about the Soviet heroism in World War two to talk about the Soviet contributions to the Arts because his message was it's human beings on the other side and they yearn for peace so just to read you quickly 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 achievements in science and space and economic and industrial growth in culture and acts of courage and then he goes on to talk about the horrific sacrifice of the Soviet Union in world war ii and defeating hitler you can go on well Khrushchev was monitoring the speech he heard it it was the brilliance of President Kennedy in words of this scintillating inspiration and eloquence that Khrushchev called immediately the American envoy in Moscow Averell Harriman and his words Gabriel Harriman as these are the finest words of an American president since Franklin Roosevelt I want to make peace with this man and that was June 11th 1963 the day after and within seven weeks the nuclear test ban treaty was signed so by creating the underlying conditions of trust by explaining how both sides can yearn for peace by praising the other side not attacking the other side it was possible in a very short period of time indeed to tap into the humanity of the other side and the humanity of the leader and find this remarkable outcome one of the things President Kennedy said I don't think I haven't in the the PowerPoint but it's very important for us now in the speech he said 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 does that resonate today do you say little rocket man will destroy you this is exactly the challenge we face today let me read it one more time nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war as President Kennedy said such an approach is either a mark of bankruptcy of policy or a death wish now your third assignment this was a busy time and this greatest speech on peace was followed the next day by one of the greatest speeches on civil rights ever given because this was the height of the civil rights tensions and this was a speech in which Robert played a huge role together they said we must speak to the nation and Robert was pushing for also that moral voice that was needed that this wasn't technical issues this had to be explained and President Kennedy gave the very next day it was also a very busy two days for his speechwriter Ted Sorensen gave a most wondrous speech and by the way it was put together these four such filled days that the text wasn't when the first text came back President Kennedy said I want more I want this has to be put in very stark moral terms so the speech ended up getting typed and delivered to the President's desk 10 seconds before the live national cameras went on President Kennedy was very cool character and he sat there and he started the speech which he had never seen fully assembled and read through until that moment and he made this wonderful statement which reverberates till today in talking about civil rights in America he said we are confronted primarily with a moral issue it is as old as the scriptures and as as clear as the American Constitution the heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated well one more which you can listen to but only three assignments this one's optional but it is a wonderful moment when President Kennedy spoke in Berlin because just after these two speeches he took a European tour which I don't have time to talk about the depths of it but it was to prepare the way for the peace and prepare the way for the partial nuclear test ban treaty and he spoke to famously in Berlin and declared ich bin ein Berliner I'm a Berliner to a country that was divided that had created the most horrible crimes a generation earlier but he was inspiring them to be a great new democratic nation and it stuck because nobody in Germany ever forgets this speech and the miracle of the inspiration that it gave next then he went to the Irish parliament on the way home also visited the Irish homestead it's another magnificent speech the prime minister at the time of Ireland was de Valera who had been born Irish in Brooklyn United States actually and had then come back as a young boy to Ireland and become the Irish leader and President Kennedy started out his speech in the Irish dial the Irish parliament by saying that if my great-grandfather had not left County Cork when he did I might if I were fortunate be down there together with you in the Parliament and if your Prime Minister had not left Brooklyn when he did he might be up here as president and but then he went on to praise the role of Ireland as a peacemaker but oh but he said something which is also very important for us to always remember indeed across the Gulf's and barriers that now divide us we must remember that there are no permanent enemies hostility today is a fact but it is not a ruling law the supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet extremely important because we have knee-jerk reactions Iran is our enemy most Americans all except the ones in this room probably couldn't name two cities in Iraq know nothing about Iran but they know it's our deadly enemy it's in Sandy it's a kind of collective insanity and what President Kennedy says is don't think like this there are no permanent enemies there are solutions if we find the rational pursuit of peace next so he came back and this was essentially the last campaign the last campaign for peace and the last campaign in his life and it was to take the case to the American people because a treaty had been signed at this point he unveiled it in the most beautiful words always he explained this is not the end of war this is not the solution to everything but it is a step and he knew that right-wing opposition would denounce this and would say it's appeasement it would say you're gullible you're setting us up you're selling us out all the things that are said always by the belligerence in politics and so he was worried because in America you need a two-thirds vote of the Senate to ratify a treaty and he knew that in America of course one of the most famous treaties the Versailles Treaty had been rejected in America had never joined the League of Nations after World War one because Wilson was not able to get that crucial treaty through the US Senate and Kennedy was not only at this point the soaring Statesman the greatest I think we've had in foreign affairs certainly in since his time by far but one of the greatest ever in our history but he was also a ward politician who knew how to get votes and won all his elections and was gonna win this one too and so he went barnstorming around the country and he explained why this was in America's interest and in the end it was ratified eighty-two fourteen he had a decisive complete victory in in the US Senate and his popularity was soaring and his re-election in the next year was basically a foregone conclusion Kennedy had grown to become one of our greatest presidents and one of our greatest statesmen in history and you watched that growth and the eloquence and the wisdom that had that had developed it's it's an unbelievable story and his last great speech on on this was September 20th 1963 to the very chamber that I talked about I'm an un advisor I sit in this chamber often and I always think about this speech because this is this President Kennedy speaking to world leaders and he was the leader among the leaders he had made peace he had found the way to avert war he had won the peace within America he had negotiated the first decisive step away from the Cold War he was determined to avoid war in Vietnam he was determined to negotiate a non-proliferation treaty to follow the test ban treaty and he came and he spoke to the world leaders as the leader among the leaders and he said something I also find unbelievably beautiful just the beauty of it is so striking and how much it sticks with you he tells them two years ago I told this body that the United Nations 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 it can be a lever and Archimedes in explaining the principles of the lever was said to have declared to his friends give me a place to stand 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 time can move the world to adjust and last in peace you can imagine the ovations and you can listen to them that that that come from this so this is the story vision eloquence great politics winning votes getting the job done and it's two brothers who did that and we've not seen anything like it since that was fantastic thank you we have 10 minutes for questions I think we should go straight into questions so if you have a question please raise your hand nice and high and wait until a microphone guest to you yeah let's start with you on the front just wait for the microphone my question is for Miss Kennedy as a profound admirer of your mother it was really struck by the anecdote you told about her earlier what do you think her role was in your father's legacy it's very nice child tell her that that was the first question we don't love that you know my mother was is this incredibly joyful fun energetic booster and she is so she she was not she was not involved at all in policy decisions or in any of that kind of the substance of what they were doing or the decisions that the jack and daddy were making or what was going on in the world but she was creating an atmosphere that bolstered everything that they were doing and and making it possible and making it fun too to be part of their world so I think that was that was her role that's what she loved to do and that's why God put her on this earth and she did an amazing job of it if you actually there's a great book bike what's his name somebody Clark Kent remembers Thurston Clark Thurston Clark and it's called the last campaign and it's about the 85 days of my father's presidential campaign and it's just this wild wild rollercoaster ride of what was happening in that campaign but there's description given to the atmosphere on the plane and the atmosphere on the bus and the trains that they took across the country in this kind of bonding between the candidate and the press and everybody sort of being together and having sharing birthdays and singing songs and making up lyrics to you know to old songs and really enjoying themselves and and several of the people who followed my father's last campaign asked that they be removed because they said as Richard Hart would one of them said I've fallen in love with the candidate I can't be and I think that my mother played a really central role in creating that kind of atmosphere of of joy and fun and adventure and so yeah yeah thank you for that question yeah my my question is for professor Sachs I was just wondering how you deal with two criticisms of Kennedy's foreign policy one that is at least partially to blame for the Cuban Missile Crisis by driving Castro towards Khrushchev Castro only formally declared himself a Marxist after the Bay of Pigs invasion and secondly you talked about Vietnam Kennedy actually was the first president to commit military advisors to Vietnam which Johnson later escalated and he also sanctioned the disastrous coup that ended in Nodine geum's assassination and plunged South Vietnam into turmoil for at least the next decade so just wondering how you reconcile that bit the United States unfortunately is is a war machine and it's like a vehicle that is always in gear and always revving and you have to keep your foot on the brake all the time because there are so many forces around that are pushing for expanded military reach you know the US has military positions in more than 170 countries on a recent count we don't even know where they are by the way but in bases all over the world and people stationed all over the world and this is the American security state that got completely out of hand that Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex and we're still there so the Bay of Pigs was a provocation not Kennedy demanding it but a provocation from this machine that has viewed hostile governments or governments that are not seen to be America's friends as governments that are right for being overthrown and this has happened all over the world it has happened of course in the Middle East repeatedly in recent years with the Saddam with Assad with Qaddafi it's a disaster so Kennedy took his foot semi off the brake because he was just coming in he was assured the military Eisenhower this was all cooked and that was I think the the explanation of it can I just clarify because you asked about the Cuban Missile Crisis no I'm going to come today oh oh sorry sorry also did thank to the in Vietnam maybe I misunderstood your question but because I didn't hear all of it but you asked also about the overthrow of diem because that was another harebrained bad idea Kennedy was pushed and pushed we need to get rid of him we need to get rid of him and cabot lodge who was the ambassador in in vietnam at the time that kennedy didn't trust was pushing back we need to move we need to remove this guy and again this was a case where Kennedy was extremely reluctant I it was he believed also that this was going to be peaceful diem was assassinated in the end and when somebody walked in famously and whispered in his ear that diem was dead he put his hand over his mouth and rushed out of the Oval Office he was aghast he was horrified by it and this was again this problem you know we talk now it's the most common slogan in in the newspapers the adults in the room because we have a president that obviously is not up for this is unfit has no attention span and has dangerous instincts and so we talk about the adults in the room who were the adults in the room general this general that general that one know that's American history tells you they're not the adults in the room if you don't have civilian adults in the room we're in trouble and we are in trouble right now we should face it we are in trouble because the American system pushes war and it's very rare that you have leaders that are able to keep the foot on the brakes Kennedy knew and Robert knew it don't get into a land war in Asia Kennedy had been in a war in Asia they I'm absolutely I've you know have having studied this question I think thoroughly this particular one I have no doubt Kennedy would never have gone the way that Johnson went and that while there were advisors he had already told senator Wayne Morris and others were I'm getting out but the American politics is tough and you're pushed and you're egged on and you're accused of being an appeaser and and and not having guts and so forth and it takes a very unusual leadership to face that down and that's what Kennedy learned to do and so I think for me the my point of having started that way also is to show the unbelievable growth because I believe Kennedy came in with the potential of greatness but he achieved greatness in the third year and the first year was mishaps and but 1963 was in in his achievements and foreign policy were of the ultimate and consummate statesmanship and he was growing into the job of the most gifted statesmen on the planet okay can I could I respond as well could I add to that you better first of all I agree with everything that Jeff says and I so I'm so happy to be here with you Jeff and to be having this discussion but so Jack's one of his best friends was a guy called Ben Bradley who is the editor of The Washington Post and he said to Ben Bradley what I want on my grave was he kept the peace and from his inaugural speech on to his entire presidency if you just had to characterize it in one way it was trying to stop war and trying to keep the peace which he had and military-industrial complex and Jeff mence mentioned Curtis LeMay these crazies in the Pentagon who were urging him to nuclear war again and again and again at the confrontation at Checkpoint Charlie in Vietnam at the Bay of Pigs at the Cuban Missile Crisis and and those are just a few examples but it went on and on and on and he was trying all the time to pull it back pull it back pull it back in the 1950s Jack and Daddy and one of my aunts went to Vietnam and and then and they talked to Charles de Gaulle who is a friend of my grandfather's and they they knew Jack knew there was no way that the United States could win should win or should be involved in a war in Vietnam and that's why and all of his foreign policy advisers all the entire Pentagon kept urging him send troops and troops and troops because there China had fallen to the Communists and now Vietnam was going to fall to communist and now it's going to have the domino effect across Southeast Asia so there was an enormous amount of pressure on him to send troops in and he never did it and when when he in in November in 1963 we had 16,000 advisers not one troop in Vietnam you know how many troops we had in Alabama 20,000 we have 20,000 creeps in Alabama we had 16,000 advisers in Vietnam and Jack had already written a memo demanding that we pull our troops out by january of nineteen sixty three sixty four sixty four sorry thank you sixty-four a thousand troops had already been brought out of Vietnam and at home with the intention of bringing the rest and then of course he died and Johnson came in and sent 500,000 young Americans to fight that war and was in 1968 was general westmoreland had asked for 250,000 more and Johnson was about to send them and then you know the whole campaign happened but he was he was working really really hard on peace great thank you for that question and thank you for those answers yeah let's go to you yeah thank you for coming to speak to both of the speakers I have a question for Miss Kennedy I'm a proud Indianapolis native and so we obviously have a very special place in our hearts for Albert F Kennedy in his speech I run by the memorial every day when I go for my morning run I was hoping you could comment on history seems to be a very circular right now we seem to be experiencing a lot of the problems that both Kennedy's were encountering both in the foreign policy aspects of our American times right now and in our social domestic policy I was wondering if either of you had any advice on what we could take from both Kennedy's legacies and apply to practice in our world today both at home and abroad Thanks yeah so I think that I think that again if you sort of look at daddy's life so much of it was about taming the savageness of man and making gentle the life of the world it's sort of the bookends of what he did and he so you have to prosecute the bad guys when bad things are happening you have to hold people responsible you have to go and look into it and be tough and so we need to we need to do that we need to hold perpetrators for injustice on the other hand we also have to understand the struggles that people people's lives are about every single day and and approach them and approach our policies based on that idea that the that every every human being is a child of God and the central force of government the reason for government is to protect dignity and maximize human freedom and that we have to be driven to reach those goals by a sense of love and compassion I think that that's that sort of formulation really describes both what uncle Jack's life was about and what daddy's life is about and it's really completely the opposite of what Donald Trump's life is about and so I think that if you measure any particular policy against that in you sort of figure out what you should be doing what do we do about refugees are we treating people with dignity are we prosecuting the bad guys the people who are driving them to this are we treating the human beings with dignity are we motivated by love and compassion or are we doing something that's opposite of that how do you deal with with Syria what should we be doing in that situation what do you do when Ebola comes up what do we do about health care for all Americans so I think that that's I don't know that I mean I could go into each detail of different policies but I think overall that's the framework I would approach with maybe I would add a couple of related thoughts one of the beautiful ways that they led and that President Kennedy exemplified in leadership is was one of those quotes that I read which said by defining our goal more clearly by making it seem more manageable and less remote we help all people to see it to draw hope from it and to move irresistible toward it it's a kind of leadership style which is define goals explain where we could be show how they can be achieved and I think that this was one of the brilliant ways and why we remember so vividly the leadership because they were inspiring us constantly with goals and saying we should do this and of course one of the most famous ones in May 1961 was I believe this country should commit itself to sending a man to the moon before and returning him safely to earth before the end of this decade and that became an inspiration for for the moonshot and a pretty cool way to spend your childhood watching all those Rockets go up and get to the moon before the end of the decade so this kind of goal based idea I think is very powerful and we don't use it very much in our politics where politicians say this is where I want to take us and this is how it can be done and that's essentially how Kennedy described the nuclear test-ban treaty as well the other point that I think is the a common understanding and a common part of the moral approach is this realization that when you have an adversary they're also human beings and they also want the same things as you it takes a lot of honesty and under handing and empathy to see through the other's eyes this is crucial if you have a confrontation the key is first to understand the other side not to demonize it but to understand it and to try to find a way to reach a resolution and I think that the it's not just tactical though tactics are also important that you understand the way that an adversary is seeing something but it's also a moral idea because Kennedy for example in the Cuban Missile Crisis had the gut feeling that Khrushchev was not trying for war then he was a human being that he was trying for the same thing that the Russian people were not out for war and my favorite lines that I did not read I think was the the last slide which I missed but I want to tell you these lines because I think that they exemplify the moral approach that is so important in this diverse world Kennedy says in this great speech so let us not be blind to our differences but let us direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved and if we cannot and 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 small planet we all breathe the same air we all cherish our children's futures and we are all mortal and for me not only is that beautiful but it's an essential moral basis for action which is you're dealing with human beings on the other side so find a way to make peace with them I'm afraid I think that's all we have time for so please join me in thanking Kari you

Channel: OxfordUnion

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Length: 91min 26sec (5486 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2017