World Peace Speech
On June 10, 1963, Kennedy, at the high point of his
rhetorical powers, delivered the commencement address at American University in
Washington, D.C. Also known as "A Strategy of Peace", not only did
the President outline a plan to curb nuclear arms, but he also "laid out a
hopeful, yet realistic route for world peace at a time when the U.S. and Soviet
Union faced the potential for an escalating nuclear arms race." The President wished:
to discuss a topic on
which too often ignorance abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived—yet it
is the most important topic on earth: world peace ... I speak of peace because
of the new face of war ... in an age when a singular nuclear weapon contains
ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied forces in the Second
World War ... an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange
would be carried by wind and air and soil and seed to the far corners of the
globe and to generations yet unborn ... I speak of peace, therefore, as the
necessary rational end of rational men ... world peace, like community peace,
does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they
live together in mutual tolerance ... our problems are man-made—therefore they
can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.
The president also made two announcements—
1.) That the Soviets had expressed a desire to negotiate a
nuclear test ban treaty, and
2.) That the U.S. had postponed planned atmospheric tests.
West Berlin speech
In 1963, Germany was enduring a time of particular
vulnerability due to Soviet aggression to the east as well as the impending
retirement of West German Chancellor Adenauer. At the same time, French President Charles de
Gaulle was trying to build a Franco-West German counterweight to the American
and Soviet spheres of influence. To
Kennedy's eyes, this Franco-German cooperation seemed directed against NATO's
influence in Europe.
On June 26, President Kennedy gave a public speech in West
Berlin. He reiterated the American commitment to Germany and criticized
communism, and was met with an ecstatic response from a massive audience. Kennedy used the construction of the Berlin
Wall as an example of the failures of communism: "Freedom has many
difficulties, and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall
up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us." The speech is
known for its famous phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a
citizen of Berlin"). A million people were on the street for the
speech. Kennedy remarked to Ted Sorensen
afterwards: "We'll never have another day like this one, as long as we
live."
Israel
In 1960, Kennedy stated, "Israel will endure and
flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be
broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of
democracy and it honors the sword of freedom."
As president, Kennedy initiated the creation of security
ties with Israel, and he is credited as the founder of the US-Israeli military
alliance, which would be continued under subsequent presidents. Kennedy ended
the arms embargo that the Eisenhower and Truman administrations had enforced on
Israel. Describing the protection of Israel as a moral and national commitment,
he was the first to introduce the concept of a "special relationship"
(as he described it to Golda Meir) between the US and Israel.
Kennedy extended the first informal security guarantees to
Israel in 1962 and, beginning in 1963, was the first US president to allow the
sale to Israel of advanced US weaponry (the MIM-23 Hawk) as well as to provide
diplomatic support for Israeli policies, which were opposed by Arab neighbors;
those policies included Israel's water project on the Jordan River.
As a result of this newly created security alliance, Kennedy
also encountered tensions with the Israeli government over the production of
nuclear materials in Dimona, which he believed could instigate a nuclear
arms-race in the Middle East. After the existence of a nuclear plant was
initially denied by the Israeli government, David Ben-Gurion stated in a speech
to the Israeli Knesset on December 21, 1960, that the purpose of the nuclear
plant at Beersheba was for "research in problems of arid zones and desert
flora and fauna". When Ben-Gurion met with Kennedy in New York, he claimed
that Dimona was being developed to provide nuclear power for desalinization and
other peaceful purposes "for the time being".
In 1963 Kennedy administration was engaged in a, now
declassified diplomatic standoff with the Israel. In a
May 1963 letter to Ben-Gurion, Kennedy wrote that he was skeptical and stated
that American support to Israel could be in jeopardy if reliable information on
the Israeli nuclear program was not forthcoming, Ben-Gurion repeated previous
reassurances that Dimona was being developed for peaceful purposes. The Israeli
government resisted American pressure to open its nuclear facilities to
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. In 1962 the US and
Israeli governments had agreed to an annual inspection regime. A science
attaché at the embassy in Tel Aviv concluded that parts of the Dimona facility
had been shut down temporarily to mislead American scientists when they
visited.
According to Seymour Hersh, the Israelis set up false
control rooms to show the Americans. Israeli lobbyist Abe Feinberg stated:
"It was part of my job to tip them off that Kennedy was insisting on [an
inspection].” Hersh contends that the
inspections were conducted in such a way that it "guaranteed that the
whole procedure would be little more than a whitewash, as the president and his
senior advisors had to understand: the American inspection team would have to
schedule its visits well in advance, and with the full acquiescence of
Israel." Marc Trachtenberg argued
that "[a]lthough [he was] well aware of what the Israelis were doing,
Kennedy chose to take this as satisfactory evidence of Israeli compliance with
America's non-proliferation policy." The American who led the inspection team
stated that the essential goal of the inspections was to find "ways to not
reach the point of taking action against Israel's nuclear weapons
program".
Rodger Davies, the director of the State Department's Office
of Near Eastern Affairs, concluded in March 1965 that Israel was developing nuclear
weapons. He reported that Israel's target date for achieving nuclear capability
was 1968–1969. On May 1, 1968,
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach told President Johnson that Dimona
was producing enough plutonium to produce two bombs a year. The State
Department argued that if Israel wanted arms, it should accept international
supervision of its nuclear program. Dimona was never placed under IAEA safeguards.
Attempts to write Israeli adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) into contracts for the supply of U.S. weapons continued throughout 1968.
Iraq
Relations between the United States and Iraq became strained
following the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy on July 14, 1958, which resulted
in the declaration of a republican government led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim
Qasim. On June 25, 1961, Qasim mobilized
troops along the border between Iraq and Kuwait, declaring the latter nation
"an indivisible part of Iraq" and causing a short-lived "Kuwait
Crisis". The United Kingdom—which had just granted Kuwait independence on
June 19, and whose economy was heavily dependent on Kuwaiti oil—responded on
July 1 by dispatching 5,000 troops to the country to deter an Iraqi invasion.
At the same time, Kennedy dispatched a U.S. Navy task force to Bahrain, and the
UK (at the urging of the Kennedy administration) brought the dispute to United
Nations Security Council, where the proposed resolution was vetoed by the
Soviet Union. The situation was resolved in October, when the British troops
were withdrawn and replaced by a 4,000-strong Arab League force.
In December 1961, Qasim's government passed Public Law 80,
which restricted the British- and American-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)'s
concessionary holding to those areas in which oil was actually being produced,
effectively expropriating 99.5% of the IPC concession. U.S. officials were
alarmed by the expropriation as well as the recent Soviet veto of an
Egyptian-sponsored UN resolution requesting the admittance of Kuwait as UN
member state, which they believed were connected. Senior National Security
Council adviser Robert Komer worried that if the IPC ceased production in
response, Qasim might "grab Kuwait" (thus achieving a
"stranglehold" on Middle Eastern oil production) or "throw
himself into Russian arms". Komer also made note of widespread rumors that
a nationalist coup against Qasim could be imminent, and had the potential to
"get Iraq back on [a] more neutral keel".
In April 1962, the State Department issued new guidelines on
Iraq that were intended to increase American influence there. Meanwhile,
Kennedy instructed the CIA—under the direction of Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt
Jr.—to begin making preparations for a military coup against Qasim.
The anti-imperialist and anti-communist Iraqi Ba'ath Party
overthrew and executed Qasim in a violent coup on February 8, 1963. While there
have been persistent rumors that the CIA orchestrated the coup, declassified
documents and the testimony of former CIA officers indicate that there was no
direct American involvement, although the CIA was actively seeking a suitable
replacement for Qasim within the Iraqi military and had been informed of an earlier
Ba'athist coup plot. The Kennedy
administration was pleased with the outcome and ultimately approved a $55-million
arms deal for Iraq.
Ireland
During his four-day visit to his ancestral home of Ireland
in June 1963, Kennedy accepted a grant of armorial bearings from the Chief
Herald of Ireland and received honorary degrees from the National University of
Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin. He
visited the cottage at Dunganstown, near New Ross, County Wexford, where his
ancestors had lived before emigrating to America.
Kennedy also was the first foreign leader to address the
Houses of the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament). On
December 22, 2006, the Irish Department of Justice released declassified police
documents indicating that security was heightened as Kennedy was the subject of
three death threats during this visit.
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