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Great pleasure to welcome all of you on behalf of the faculty, staff and students of the American University to introduce Senator Kennedy. It's a pleasure to present to you

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the student director of the Kennedy Political Union, Jim Carroll. Thank you. Good afternoon.

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I'm Jim Carroll, on behalf of the Kennedy Political Union, a nonpartisan lecture bureau of the American University. Let me welcome you to this, the

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keynote address for our Symposium on Nuclear Armaments and Disarmament. This symposium commemorates the landmark address of President John F Kennedy here at the American

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University's commencement 20 years ago. In that speech, President Kennedy urged ERS announced that the United States would stop testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. He urged re-examination of American attitudes towards the

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Soviet Union and toward peace. He concluded that speech with the words we labor on, not toward a strategy of annihilation, but towards a strategy of peace.

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Now we assemble here today to listen to a keynote address on this issue by a man who is uniquely qualified to deliberate in Senator Kennedy's memorable speech at the 1980 Democratic convention.

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He used the phrase the cause endures, and that is especially true of this issue. Ted Kennedy has labored to move America towards a strategy of peace.

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Senator Kennedy has challenged America to rethink its attitude on many issues. However, no issue is more important than that which brings us here today.

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It has been 20 years since President Kennedy came to the American University to speak on halting the arms race, and it has been one year since Senator Kennedy came to the American University to announce introduction of the nuclear freeze

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resolution. Ted Kennedy's courageous leadership on this vital issue offers hope for those in this nation and in all nations who seek movement towards a strategy of

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peace. And that is why it is now my honor and privilege to ask that you join me in welcoming Senator Edward Kennedy.

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First of all. Let me thank Jim Carroll for their generous introduction. And on behalf of my family, let me say how honored we are at the name and the work of your political union.

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And let me acknowledge as well your provost, Doctor Milton Greenberg. For his kind and generous remarks. Before I start, let us try a little something.

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As you know, James Watt is back in the news. Let's have a show of hands. How many of you would rather go to a Wayne Newton concert? How many of you would rather hear

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the Beach Boys? Boy. I couldn't believe it. Well, so would I. So I guess we are all just members of what Mr.

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White calls the wrong elephant. I think I know the real reason why James White doesn't like hard rock. The oil companies just can't

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manage to drill through it. This day is an occasion not only for remembrance, but for reaffirmation of our commitment to creating a world safe for diversity and for human survival.

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20 years ago here at American University, President Kennedy called for a treaty to ban nuclear tests as the first step in a strategy of peace to ban nuclear war. The words he spoke then ring now with a timeless truth.

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And despite loose talk today about a nuclear warning, shock and a winnable nuclear conflict, we know the abiding truth of his warning that total war makes no sense in this age. And so we insist once more, as clearly as we can, that there is

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no such thing as a limited nuclear war. There will be a way out of control. Despite the escalation of bellicose Rhetoric from the centres of power in both of the most powerful nations.

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We know the enduring truth of John Kennedy's wisdom that no government is so evil that its people must be seen as lacking in virtue. As he said, we must not see a

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distorted and desperate view of the other side. We must not see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

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Two decades later, our leadership would do well to hear and heed that wisdom again. And so we say that we dare not misuse what is wrong in the Soviet system as an excuse for denying what is right in Soviet American

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relations, which is the overriding imperative of nuclear arms control. No government should be regarded as so much of an evil empire as to justify reckless policies which

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could subjugate so much of the world to a permanent, evil empire of radioactive death. We must demand a national leadership which will spend less time preparing for nuclear war and

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more time preventing one. On the arms race. The essential truths of 1963 remain the same in 1983. But some things have changed, and many of them for the worse.

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We have found reason for hope in the Test Ban Treaty and the other agreements that have followed it. At least we have not fought the third and last World War.

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At least we are all still here. But that is also far less than we could have sought, and far less than we should have achieved. For the mere absence of war has

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been accompanied by the increasing insecurity of a precarious nuclear peace. The knife's edge of the nuclear balance has been steadily sharpened.

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Arms control has often been twisted into a means for managing a faster arms race. In 1960, the combined total of deliverable nuclear explosives on station on both sides, with 6500.

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In 1983, the lethal number has multiplied by seven fold to 50,000. And while the negotiators have bargained, their governments have developed and deployed missiles

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with multiple warheads, greater accuracy and lesser warning time. Relentlessly, we have reduced the narrow span of minutes in which the fate of humanity can be decided by human beings. United States Senate has failed to ratify Sall2 and other relatively

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modest treaties, which would widen a little the margin between our existence and extinction. In Moscow, Soviet leaders reached for potential first strike weapons.

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In Washington, the president claims he favors arms control and that his administration has proposed it. But in fact, and sometimes in the strongest terms, he has opposed every single arms control agreement since he entered public

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life two decades ago. So we have come to the dangerous place where we now find ourselves on the brink of Cold War two. We can continue to practice that brinkmanship and to proclaim our

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own toughness. And if those who advocate such mindless toughness prove to be mistaken, and their mistake leads us to the last Great War, they may be safe.

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In a protected bunker, inside a mountain and behind steel doors. But the rest of the earth will be dying, and there will be few, if any, of us around to blame them for the most catastrophic error in all of recorded history.

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I reject that risk. And I reject the advice that we must not offer an alternative because it will undermine the present negotiations. That is what other administrations have said in their effort to mute

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dissent in other dark days, on other difficult issues, and in the case of Vietnam, tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese died before the lesson was learned that the answer to failure is not more of the same.

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The greatest strength of a free society is that we can differ and speak out. We can develop and stand for different policies.

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And on the nuclear issue, that strength may be the saving virtue of our national life and the life of all the world. We now have the obligation and the

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opportunity to turn aside from another Cold War and to create instead a new strategy of peace. That strategy must be based on a realistic assessment of our relationship with the Soviet

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Union. For too long, we have strayed between two misconceptions about the Russians, between overblown illusions of cooperation and overstated notions of

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confrontation. An arms control treaty will not tame Soviet misconduct in other areas, and the refusal to negotiate such an agreement, even when it is in our national

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interest, will not free Afghanistan or break the repression in Poland. In short, we cannot punish the Russians by raising the risk of nuclear war.

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We hear about linkage, but we must not forget our fundamental common link as people on this planet, that we shall all live or die together. We will find ourselves at odds

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with the Soviet Union far into the foreseeable future. We need not fear. An economic competition for our economy is rich in resources and potential, and capable of

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performing at much higher levels than it has in recent years. The Soviet economy is inefficient, corrupt, and dependent on the catalyst of Western technology. Nor need we fear an ideological

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rivalry. We believe in individual liberty and human dignity, and with inspired leadership, that belief can have the most powerful appeal as it has in the past.

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To the rest of the world. How many immigrants have ever moved to the Soviet Union in search of a better life? In this arena, The Soviets can gain only when we betray our own

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best ideals. The one place where the Russians know they can compete is military power. And they will pay any price to prevent us from forcing them into

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a position of military inferiority. We can, and we should maintain strategic parity, which requires a sufficient and secure deterrent. We can, and we should strengthen

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our conventional forces so that we can limit our reliance on nuclear retaliation during a crisis. We can, and we should withhold our financial critics when they are paying for martial law in Poland,

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because the Soviets, too, cannot demand leakage as the price of limiting weapons. But for both great powers, arms control is a far saner way to preserve strategic parity than an

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endless arms race. Despite the differences which divide the United States and the in the Soviet Union today, and which will divide us for years or generations to come.

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What must unite us as an unflagging determination to avoid nuclear annihilation, we must seek to maintain our freedom and the peace at the same time. For there will be no such thing as

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liberty in a lifeless land. United States and the Soviet Union now possess the equivalent of 3 million Hiroshima bombs, a total of four tons of TNT for every man, woman and child presently living

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on this planet. Even in the unlikely event of a successful Soviet first strike against our land based missile, we would still have over 3500 warheads at sea and on bombers,

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enough to destroy every Soviet city and town seven times over. Secretary of defense and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have testified that they would not exchange the deterrent forces of the United States for those of the Soviet Union, because

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this is so. A year ago, a number of us in Congress took up a cause and a challenge that had already stirred at the grass roots across this country.

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We called for an immediate, mutual and verifiable freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of Soviet and American nuclear weapons. That idea has enlisted the

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energies of ordinary citizens everywhere. And next week, the House of Representatives will debate and vote on the freeze resolution. Those who oppose it have put forth

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a changing array of arguments that range from the disingenuous to the dishonest. First, we repeatedly hear the outright falsehood that the priest is somehow unilateral.

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The purveyors of that distortion either cannot read the resolution or care more about making their case than keeping to the facts. Perhaps they think that if they repeat themselves often enough, they can fool at least some of the people into believing some of

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their scared charges. The freeze is plainly, unequivocally, and indisputably bilateral in supporting it. We do not, and would not suggest that Americans on the other side

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want a nuclear war. So I wish they would stop suggesting that in some sense we want unilateral disarmament. Second, the opponents of the nuclear freeze contend that we

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cannot halt the arms race in the face of a continuing Soviet buildup. But in fact, a biomedical priest is the best way to prevent that buildup.

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It would hold the entire new generation of weapons which the Soviets are now developing, including the black Jack bomber, the typhoon submarine crews and land based mobile missiles. The cries of alarm about Soviet advances in the future amount to a

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compelling reason to freeze the present balance of forces, and to stop the threatening trends now. The administration instead prefers to respond with a $2 trillion American military buildup.

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But the lesson of the last generation is that the Soviets will match US bomber for bomber, missile for missile, warhead for warhead. Third, we are told that a freeze

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at this time would prevent us from perfecting our own deterrent. For example, by creating a new type of bomber which for at least a while will be less vulnerable to Soviet defenses. But at any time, there will always be some imperfections in the

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military forces on either side. And that reality can be used every time to justify one more little round of the arms race. That is all they want, they say.

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And then we will have enough. But the Soviets have learned to make that argument, too. And so we drift, as Einstein said, towards an unparalleled catastrophe.

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We must reject policies which claim, for the moment, to make the world a little more secure. But in the end, make the world more unsafe and unstable. Place.

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Fourth, our opponents say that a freeze is impossible to verify. This may be the most deceptive contention of them all.

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For impartial experts have testified again and again that a freeze is at least as verifiable, and probably more so than other arms control agreements, including the president's own staff proposal.

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Moreover, we have made it clear from the beginning that anything which cannot be verified will not be frozen. The administration had better be careful for their careless and baseless attacks on verification will become a basis, and a

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rallying cry for extremists who will oppose any and every arms accord. We do not advocate a freeze because we trust the Russians.

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But we do distrust those who would continue the arms race at any and all costs. Finally, there are opponents of the nuclear freeze who explain that they favor reductions instead.

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But there is a darker side to their slogan. Reductions are not all that they want. While professing limits in some areas, they want no limits on the newest and most modern weapons, which are also the costliest and

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the most dreaded. Indeed, the administration's own staff proposal for reductions proves the point. For example, it would permit us to build the B-1 bomber, which is

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nothing more than a supersonic Edsel in the sky. And the administration's proposal would even permit the unrestrained pursuit of their new scheme for outer space, which would open another arena for the arms race and set another tripwire for

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nuclear war. You know, this is really very strange idea. We cannot found national policy on

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fond memories of radio serials, dreams of the Old West quest and the thrilling days of yesteryear. We must reject the preposterous notion of a lone ranger in the sky, firing silver laser bullets

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and shooting missiles out of the hands of the Soviet outlaws. The best defense against nuclear war is arms control and then disarmament. The administration answers that we

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need the threat of new weapons as bargaining chips for negotiation. And they say we need the MX missile because of the window of a vulnerability. Now, let's all try hard to

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understand this. Mr. Reagan claimed we were vulnerable because the Russians could hit and destroy existing Minuteman silos.

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So he appointed a commission which reviewed every conceivable solution to the problem of Minuteman vulnerability. And did you hear what they have

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just come up with? They want to put the new MX missile in the old vulnerable Minuteman silos. You know what this is like. It's like having a car that is

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getting wet because of a leaky garage roof, and then trying to solve the problem by changing the maker of the car. The president has already declared that the MX is not on the bargaining table at the start, talks that he will never trade it

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away. So let us say now it is time for Congress to take it away. It's time for the president of the

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United States to admit that the mm is a mistake. That it is a missile without a mission and a weapon without a hole. It is time to make it clear that

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even by the administration's own logic, the MX and Minuteman silos is a sitting duck. And the state clearly that by any rational standard, the MX missile in any form is a dead duck.

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Both sides should renounce forever the pursuit of the phantom of nuclear advantage. We must free our diplomacy from the myth that more megatons means bigger bargaining chips.

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We must reject the foolish theory that we can have fewer bombs tomorrow. Only if we have more bombs today. The administration defends this as a negotiating strategy.

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I call it voodoo. Arms control? Yes. We must ask a simple question of

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them. Instead of piling overkill upon overkill. Why not start now with a freeze?

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Why not stop where we are so that at last we can begin to turn? The arms race around? We face a new and uncertain time. The continued advance of technology will move us steadily back from the possibility of peace.

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But a nuclear freeze can give the two great powers breathing room before they rush into a nuclear future that may threaten the future itself. It can halt new technologies that

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will be dangerous and destabilizing, and may be impossible to stop once they are started. Some critics say that the freeze does not go far enough, which is what so many of them said 20 years ago when a test ban treaty was

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proposed in this very place. We remember the answer that was given. Then a journey of a thousand miles

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begins with a single step. And so today we reply. The long journey of survival in the nuclear age begins with the nuclear freeze.

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Support for the freeze does not mean that we seek a weaker America. We have watched in recent weeks, as ministers of the gospel have been urged to preach in favour of an escalating arms race.

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But in the scriptures I have read, nowhere does it say. Blessed are the war makers and the munition manufacturers. We have witnessed the revival of mccarthyite tactics, which equate dissent with disloyalty and which imply that the advocates of freeze

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are somehow dupes or fall. But someone should tell the apostles of this reincarnation reincarnated red scare that the freeze movement began in Massachusetts and Vermont, and the

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freeze movement did not begin in Moscow and Vladivostok. There is support for the freeze does not mean being in opposition to a strong national defense. I favor real growth for 5% of the

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military budget to assure the readiness and the reliability of our forces. The president is demanding twice as much, but we cannot afford military waste, which weakens the

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nation and which has subverted the national consensus with sustained improvement in our defenses, especially our conventional capability. Instead of lavishing our treasure

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on first strike weapons, let us spend it on first class schools. Yeah, yeah. You got it, man. It's not just falling apart.

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The first grade through student loans for college and graduate study. And let us never forget that national security includes the condition of our society, as well as the size of our missiles.

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The world in an arms race is also a world impoverished for America. Running that arms race cripples our capacity to do anything else. Today, we are cutting immunization for children in order to finance the weapons that may someday kill them.

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Every new shelter for a missile means fewer homes for our families. Every new warhead guidance system that can read enemy defenses means more pupils who will not learn to

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read. Every new escalation that could mean death at an early age across the earth also darkens the years of our senior citizens.

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Now we hear rhetoric from our highest officials about eliminating budgetary waste. If they are serious. Let them enter into a nuclear

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freeze. Let them pursue nuclear reductions. Let them eliminate the

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expenditures that now make a desert of our dreams, and that someday could make a cold wasteland of all the earth. What more can we gain if we drain more of our resources into nuclear overkill? The American and Soviet arsenals

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are already bristling with weapons that could kill more people, burn more buildings, sack more cities than in all the conflicts from the beginning of history until now. The greatest works of human

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enterprise and spirit could be vaporized in a single instant by the most terrible work of human invention. It. Despite all our bombs and all our missiles, we stand essentially defenseless upon a stage on which the human drama could be closed in

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the flashing of a fireball. As an American, I believe in a national defense. Second to none sufficient to deter

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any attack from any adversary. But I also believe that we must preserve and protect a world which is now only a second away from nothingness.

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In closing, let me say something special to each of you who are students here and to all those of your age who share the high ideals of this occasion the conscience, the caring, the commitment that you and your generation bring to

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the nuclear issue can help to change the direction of our country and even the fate of the earth. Others before you have faced a similar test. The young were there in the 1960s, in the forefront of the fight for

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civil rights and the struggle against the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Your older sisters and brothers summoned America to provide equality for the majority of our

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people who are women. And to prevent the poisoning of the land and the air and the water that are the greatest natural gifts of this continent.

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Now, in the 1980s, a moment of history and a sense of hope. Call your generation to a work as great as any that has gone on before.

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Indeed, the greatest work of our time of all time, the work of peace. The challenge comes especially in this decade, because the danger has become so present and so

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clear. The difference each of you can make, if all of you will try, may make a difference between peace and war, between a just society and a garrison state.

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Many of you were not even yet born when John Kennedy was here in 1963. But as he said then, he was speaking on your behalf, on behalf of future generations.

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And for the sake of all those in America and in the Soviet Union who cherish our children's future. He reminded us that we are all mortal, and in the summer that followed, he felt that he would

00:33:25.090 - 00:33:42.820

rather lose the next election than lose the Test Ban Treaty. The years have passed and so have presidents. But the meaning of that message has not passed away. You have lived and grown in these dangerous years, and now you must

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cherish your own future. You are the sons and daughters of this atomic age, and now you must resolve that it shall not be succeeded by a second Stone age.

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You know that we are all mortal, and so let all of us seek to end the mortal danger, and let us see to it that 20 years from now, on the 40th anniversary of President Kennedy's speech, your children can gather on this campus to

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celebrate his call to a world at peace, not merely as a promise to keep, but as a dream that has finally come true.