Nor do we mistake honorable negotiation for appeasement.
John F. Kennedy
The Public Record
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president, at 43 years, and the first Catholic president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress before his presidency.
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For we believe that, in the end, it is the only way to assure the security of all without impairing the interests of any.
We do not dismiss disarmament as merely an idle dream.
But our commitment to national safety is not a commitment to expand our military establishment indefinitely.
For threats of massive retaliation may not deter piecemeal aggression--and a line of destroyers in a quarantine, or a division of well-equipped men on a border, may be more useful to our real security than the multiplication of awesome…
But until that choice is made, and until the world can develop a reliable system of international security, the free peoples have no choice but to keep their arms nearby.
But if all these trends and developments can persuade the Soviet Union to walk the path of peace, then let her know that all free nations will journey with her.
And all the world knows that no successful system builds a wall to keep its people in and freedom out--and the wall of shame dividing Berlin is a symbol of Communist failure.
They need only compare the disillusionment of Communist Cuba with the promise of the Alliance for Progress.
New nations asked to choose between two competing systems need only compare conditions in East and West Germany, Eastern and Western Europe, North and South Viet-Nam.
For a closed society is not open to ideas of progress--and a police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow.
One is the historical force of nationalism--and the yearning of all men to be free.