50s. .. to move the world, kennedy's quest for peace. i just finished reading it and recommended wholeheartedly. and since it's a book of history and not a fiction, i hope you go

mind if i give away the ending, which is that he concludes that -- by demonstrating the parallel between kennedy's quest for peace and our generation's quest for sustainable development. and that is why it is so fitting that we are hosting an here today at the world bank. in his book, professor sachs shows how president kennedy's 1973 peace speech was up metal turning point in the cold war, but we should note that the time some critics dismissed it as rhetoric. but it showed that rhetoric mannered and could help us imaginative possible, help change counterproductive use such as the one at the time of his speech that the united states and the soviet union were on an inescapable path to war. the book makes a compelling case for the importance of translating rhetoric into action starting with your -- achievable

goals, by dividing your goal more clearly, making it more manageable, and we can help all people to see it, draw hope from it, and move irresistibly toward it. i think we see today's leaders following kennedy's lead in applying these lessons to be fatalistic view that poverty will always be with the spirit that is why president obama set a goal in his state of the union for the united states to join with our allies to eradicate extreme poverty in the next two decades. this -- building on this heat challenge to move to a concrete goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2013. and a target of promoting share prosperity. and that is why experts from around the world as professor sachs who played a leading role in developing the millennium development goals now designing the sustainable development goals. professor sachs has been a

powerful and consistent advocate on behalf of the world's poor and most tolerable. given his decades of experience and academia and the field, his views on inclusive and sustainable development are respected across the board from top policymakers to aspiring development practitioners. we may disagree from time to time on how or when, but never why or what. professor sachs is a director of the new york institute, sustainable development, and health policy and management. he is offering -- of the three new york times best-seller, the end of poverty, commonwealth, economics for crowded planet, and the price of civilization. with this most recent book i expect you will be adding a fourth. please join me in welcoming professor sachs to the world bank. thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you so much for that a really warm welcome.

ladies and gentlemen, as always a wonderful for me to be here. really thank you and admire you for the work you do. and as sara aviel just reminded us, the bank has taken on an even older timetable than in the past. we now have a countdown to 2030 to end the extreme poverty once and for all. and so all of our work is cut out for us, especially you in this institution that provides some much leadership. it is always gratifying to exchange views with you and to share some ideas. and so i am especially excited to do that today with a new book i hope, and our discussion, we will see some of the relevance from events 50 -- 50 years ago for our absolute most current challenges today. we are going to run of video, if

you'll tell me how to do it. it is -- especially since it is not a macintosh. i don't know what i'm doing anymore. >> what kind of a peace to i mean and what kind of a peace to we seek? not a pax americana. enforced on the world by american weapons of war, not the piece of the grave, or the security of the state. i am talking about genuine peace, the kind that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and build a better life for their children, not merely peas for americans, but peace for all men and women, not merely in our time but in all time. our problems are man-made therefore they can be solved by man and man can be as big as you

once, no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. man's reason the spirit, often solve the seemingly unsolvable. we believe they can do it again. no government or social system is so evil that is people must be considered as lacking in virtue. as americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant. and negation of personal freedom and dignity. we can still hale the russian people for their many achievements in science, space, economic and industrial growth, acts of courage. finally, my fellow americans, that as examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here home. equality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad.

we must show it in the dedication of our own lives. as many of you are graduating today will have an opportunity to buy serving without pay in the peace corps abroad or in the proposed national service corps here at home. wherever we are we must all in our daily lives live up to the age-old that peace and freedom watch together. to many of our cities today that peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete. so let us not be blind to our differences but let us also direct attention to our common interest in 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. [applause] >> that was a speech delivered 50 years ago this week down the block at american university. it was the american university commencement address june june 101963. it is, in my view, the most wondrous, wonderful, powerful speech of the modern presidency. these are just short excerpts of a. i do encourage everybody to listen to it. watch it on line. if you are like me it will be the first of 1,000 listings and more, and over the years i told

my family and insisted, you have to sit down and hear it again because it is magnificent. it is obviously beautiful and moving to listen to, and some of the phrases and ideas have, of course, lasted for decades. i found in revisiting this speech in ways that i had not really anticipated fully when i decided to look back at these events, this speech is notable not only for its eloquence and its vision, which i think is extraordinarily powerful, but for its remarkable historical role as well because i want to suggest, and the book tries to

explain this point of view, that this is a speech that truly move the world, that truly changed history, that truly made it is far more likely that we could be here today with the planet that survived what was the core of nuclear peril and that in the very times that kennedy, of course, live and in the moments that he gave that speech was up arrow that had two superpowers, each with thousands of nuclear warheads primed for instance attack pointed at each other and just one stupid accident away from annihilating the planet. and we came, of course, that close just a few months before this speech was given in october 1962 at the cuban

missile crisis when we know better now than even the participants knew then just how close to disaster we were. of course, and that showdown in october of '62 both sides knew of the dangers, but neither side fully knew of the dangers of commanders who had nuclear codes , of accidents, of ms. readings on radar, of nearly pulling the trigger, pilots going off course, of all of the shockingly mundane things that could have ended all of civilization. and this speech has to be understood as a remarkable moment that helps to pull the world back from that press this. and that by itself means that it

is one of the decisive moments and teachable moments of modern history. i did not know much about it, i have to admit. ten years ago -- in fact, i barely knew about the speech itself, but i did stumble upon it and listening to a tape of a compilation of kennedy's speeches and fell in love with the basic idea in this speech. the idea in his speech is that it was possible, even at the height of the cold war and just months after the cuban missile crisis to find a path to peace with the other side. and this was not a popular view of the time. indeed, among kennedy's advisers it was far and away a small

minority who felt that this was possible. this was a time in which the no way on both sides of the iron curtain felt that the only path was through strength, through escalation, indeed through targeted destabilization of the other side, and that we were almost inevitably aiming toward a path of -- that would lead to of final conflict, of you that was very widely shared. very, very few people believed that there was another way. i will relate that to our current crises in a moment. there was one very important, wonderful scholar of the day who absolutely understood that there was a different way.

he is here with us today. in my view america's great a sociologists, if you would to stand up for one moment because he wrote a book -- [applause] he wrote a book in 1962 called the hard way to peace, which is an absolutely remarkable volume, especially remarkable in the context of the time. he said that there was a way to peace and that it involved understanding the psychology and the human values on both sides of a conflict. interestingly he called it the hard way to peace. one might have thought the hard way to peace was a greater armament, technological breakthroughs, the decisive battle, but the professor knew that there really hard way to

peace was to envision the possibility of peace with an enemy, with the other side. that, indeed, was extraordinarily hard and is what president kennedy pulled off nearly miraculously in 1963. now, of course what is so striking about this episode in my view, which i will describe briefly, is how it reminds us ultimately how there is nothing certain in history and one should never trust on the the normal flow of events and the belief that somehow the deep trance get us through rather than through active and ultimately moral that gets us through our survival, one of the big mistakes in judging history.

and what is fascinating for me is that kennedy came into office knowing that, determined actually from the first day that he would find a way to peace with the soviet union. yet less than two years later he found himself almost at the edge of destroying the world. profoundly poignant and also eliminating for what happened and a powerful message for us today. if you go back to kennedy's arrival and power in january 20th, 1961, 1 of his most striking statements, it proved to be an important harbinger for his own administration, is a statement

let us never negotiate out of fear but let us never fear to negotiate. he came into office determined to negotiate with the soviet union. you believe that there was mutual gain to be had in finding a way to appear diminish what was the profound and day-to-day month-to-month and year to year tensions of the cold war. and then this he was following perhaps his historical mentor in one sense, winston churchill, who was, through the cold war and often despite our flawed memory or our memory of winston churchill mainly for his defense of britain against hitler and his introducing into the global

parlance, the phrase the iron curtain was an assistant from 1945 onward that there could be a way to pull back from the cold war. and churchill said repeatedly that it was better to read john john vento or more. and if we negotiate with the soviet union there would be a way to find a partner on the other side. and it was striking, however, how dangerous the world was and how increasingly dangerous it became for the 15 years from the end of world war ii until the arrival of president kennedy in power. of course it was dangerous for many reasons, which i need not review in detail of faugh. the first danger was stalin himself, of vicious and dangerous killer on a mass scale to depressed -- oppressed eastern europe broadly and in my view on

questionably instigated the cold war through the actions of the ferry brutal crackdown some of the soviet union on the occupied territories of central and eastern europe and the occupation zone of germany itself. the cold war persisted after stalin's death in 1953, and it persisted after khrushchev in his famous speech of the 20th party congress in 1956 had revealed to the soviet people the heinous crimes of stalin, which were not properly understood and certainly not a public understanding or party understanding very clearly until then. still, the cold war continued to unfold and with both sides

having nuclear weapons and arsenals that were growing became ever more unstable. those were the early days of game theory, of course. von neumann and the invention of the prisoner's dilemma as a concept. and it -- the understanding of the difficulties of cooperation. but there came to be an idea, partly through the game theorists that one could find a kind of stable balance of terror on both sides where the nuclear armaments would be a kind of deterrent that would force stall for. and this, i think, is often taken by has loosely has over of description of the time of the cold war itself. absolutely wrong because there

was no equilibrium. there is no balance in real life. there is no stability in anything in our societies or in a global change, inherently we live in the midst of change and especially in a technological age. whether it is the technology of war or other technologies, there is no such thing as proposed and balance. and the events of the 1950's proved that to be the case because the armaments kept building up on both sides. the u.s. during the massive conventional army of the soviet union in your will and ever more heavily on nuclear-weapons on the u.s. side. the eisenhower doctrine in those years was a massive retaliation meaning that a conventional attack by the soviet union would be matched by a massive nuclear

response by the u.s. side. from the soviet side in a way that an excellent political scientist of our time made clear , what was viewed as defense from the u.s. position was absolutely viewed as offense when viewed from the soviet side because they saw the growing nuclear arsenal, and they said that is the u.s. preparing for a first strike against the soviet union. and, of course, that ratcheted up the tensions and ratcheted up the arms race on the other side which led no small number of u.s. generals to say don't you think that with the growing soviet arsenal and early first strike might be just what we need before is too late? if we wait we lose the advantage. we have the nuclear vantage now. and so you can see, there was no

equilibrium. there was an array of increasingly dangerous use, tripwires, potential for not only accident but for ultimate disaster. toward the end of the 1950's eisenhower made it one more attempt to find some reconciliation with khrushchev who was now strongly in power. and khrushchev also believed and was trying to introduce the doctrine of peaceful coexistence and so there was what looked like a potential partnership. and yet the two sides could not make it come to pass. on the one side, eisenhower continued with and a clear philosophy, which looked terrified from the russian perspective.

even more terrifying because eisenhower rather casually floated the idea of what was called nuclear sharing at the time, with nato which included germany, which was viewed understandably by the soviet union having lost 20 million people to german violence as the mortal threat to the survival of the country. eisenhower was rather casual in not understanding how u.s. actions were perceived as mortal dangers by the counterparts. but another thing happened that i think is pertinent and poignant because it continued to happen and it continues to happen to this very morning. and that was another kind of blundered. eisenhower and khrushchev had tried to build some level of trust. the spirit of camp david when

khrushchev came to the united states in his visit. and this was to be followed by a summit in paris in 1960. and many have you will recall the outcome of that, but the antecedent of the summit immediately was a mr. richard bissell, a name that should be held in higher property and an american history, a senior cia official that did as much damage as just about any individual can do in our complicated system hatching one bizarre and destructive cia scheme after another whispered in eisenhower's year that you're going to the summit soon, mr. president, but just before that, how about one more spy mission over the soviet union with the cia's spy plane.

eisenhower thought that was a little bit provocative and dangerous and thought that maybe it would be a risk in view of the summit just weeks away. and bissell assured him, mr. president, they don't know what we're doing. a you to is a safe mission. besides, if it happens to be scrambled or shot down, it's designed to disintegrate. the pilot has a poison hypodermic needle to kill himself in the event that he might be captured. there is no way that anything can go wrong, says the cia until this morning. and i will come back to that. and eisenhower apparently reluctantly said, okay. we will have one more mission. you recall what happened. what he had not told eisenhower

was that the preceding plane had already been picked up on soviet radar and jets had been scrambled but could not reach the high altitude. the cia already knew that it was not a safe operation but did not mention that to the president. of course gary powers, the youtube pilot was detected on entering soviet airspace, shot down. something did not disintegrate in the plan. all of the wreckage was found. somehow mr. powers did not inject itself with the famous french. he was captured. all of this was on known to the as states, and the soviet union reported a spy mission had been shot down and demanded an immediate explanation. the weather plane from turkey

had gone off course. and mr. christopher said, excuse me, that can't be right. we had a spy mission. we know it. again, the u.s. this time with the president's lead said, no, there was no spy mission. this was a weather plane. don't make anything of it, at which point the television cameras came out and mr. powers was brought before the world stage with the wreckage right there for all the world to see. and it, of course, broke up the paris summit. khrushchev had been brazenly like to. the hopes that eisenhower deeply held but was unable to effectuate for finding some reconciliation was dashed. by the way, why were they-style

the way from 53 to 60? well, intel 58 there was no chance because eisenhower's own secretary of state, john foster dulles, was against any reconciliation. and so hard-liners' surrounded eisenhower. eisenhower operated on the basis of a group consensus more less. every earlier attempt at some kind of reconciliation was vetoed. a total of this because kennedy came into office soon after, said he wanted to negotiate with the soviet union. nothing like that happened. and this teaches us something. within a few weeks one mr. richard bissell came to whisper in john kennedy's year.

we have a great plan. we have a wonderful idea. for going to invade cuba. but, of course, it will be cuban exiles, not us. and we have strong reason to believe that as soon as they land on the beach at the bay of pigs there will be an uprising internally, maybe castro will even be dead by then had an assassin's hand and we will be able to retake cuba. it kennedy felt uneasy about it to say the least . in no way that eisenhower had before, but like eisenhower he went ahead with the cia plan. perhaps as a hallmark of his inexperience he wanted it all possible ways. we won't have any air cover. we won't give any overt military support.

this is a pure cia operation. and it was a disaster, to say the least. as soon as the ships landed at the bay of pigs, all of the exiles were shot, killed, were captured. what is standing in my mind is that that moment, khrushchev sent an urgent message to kennedy through a back channel. mr. president, your government is engaged in a tyrannical attack on cuba, completely outside of international norms. this must end immediately. kennedy wrote back, surely one of the stupidest things he ever wrote. he wrote back, this has nothing to do with this. this is -- this isn't an american thing. tech. this is cuban exiles. and christopher back immediately

, are you kidding? the planes to other ships, the weapons, the training, the funding. of course he had been lied to directly at least two times in a short amount of time by american presidents. and this was not so comfortable for him either because he had his hardliners who were telling him, your concept of peace will coexist. this is crazy. the american president seemed to be confirming this. things spun out of control. there was the summit that followed of vienna. it was from canada's point of view a debacle provide arco because he berated kennedy during this time and also warned kennedy, if we don't have a

settlement on germany by the end of this year we will take unilateral action to recognize east germany and the like the access of west berlin from the last. kennedy thought war was coming. khrushchev was as provocative as could be. the berlin wall went up a couple months later. in its way it actually tamped down one major source of instability, and that was the mass exodus of east berliners and east germans through to west berlin, but is still signaled another ratchet up of the war, and then, of course christopher has said -- has his idea. that was that he would put intermediate range nuclear weapons into cuba, do it

secretly, to it before americans to start -- discovered it, give them a taste of their own medicine because the u.s., both eisenhower and kennedy had put short range and intermediate range nuclear weapons right on the soviet border, notably in turkey and italy. and so khrushchev was going to even the score, stop an invasion of cuba by the united states, a return invasion, show what it means to have nuclear weapons right up against your borders. what is fascinating about this and also important for us to understand, when he said this to his foreign minister he said, are you crazy? you will make a war. and his answer, no, this is nothing about war. this is just a show. put it in the americans face. give them a taste of their own medicine. it was psychological. it was a prestige matter.

it was to equalize the balance. and he went out of his way to tell everybody, the politburo, this is not about war. no doubt that is correct from his point of view. he was not out for war. he was not out for u.s. for strike. it was, of course, impossible to consider given the real balance of armaments. he was out for a psychological victory. war was the last thing on his mind. he was sure you was going to pull a surprise that these missiles with comment. he would be after the u.s. midterm elections in 1962 and suddenly the score would be even to. of course, we know what happened. these missiles were detected. a little hard to understand what they're worth thinking because there were mass convoys of ships coming from the soviet union to cuba. the missiles were discovered. what ensued is also extraordinarily important.

one last thought before the speech. and that is that kennedy convened his ex com executive committee of security visors and overwhelmingly the military, the intelligence brass, most of his foreign policy team outside of the oval office said, well, we have to go take them out. many to launch an immediate attack. we need to shoot these. they did not know that these missiles were already in place and many were on order to launch an attack or could have been launched an attack. kennedy held back one of the things that he had in buying and embodied from his teachers and from light l. hart, a great years of war. most wars start from impatience,

hot headed this, rash actions, failure to understand the other side. he had come to office believing firmly and knowing from world war one and from churchill's writings that world war one was such but low will scale disaster, the biggest in history up to that time, that had been caused by accident, essentially, by stupidity, even until today historians cannot really figure out how the war happened. we have two new great books just in the last couple of months unraveling the sequence that led to world war one. there were no issues basically. there were tensions, but no issues that led to that of massive destruction. so kennedy was aware of that. you know, and we know we're here today because he said, we find a way to delay. he chose a quarantine rather

than as surprise attack. and a quarantine to prevent new shipments of arms to cuba with a demand that the cuban missiles be withdrawn. and he faced a insubordination or almost insubordination by the top military brass, especially one absolutely threatening figure in our history, curtis lemay, who was the secretary of the air force at the time and spend most of the cuban missile crisis muttering about kennedy's cowardice and saying that kennedy was an a beazer and quarantines or useless. very, very dangerous man during for war, nuclear exchange. you will only lose 20 million. they will lose 100 million kind of thinking. and we know that kennedy resolve the crisis in two ways.

one publicly he agreed that the u.s. would never invade cuba if the missiles were returned. in response to the offer. there was also a call for the turkish missiles to be removed. kennedy unbeknownst to most of his advisers secretly agreed to that, but on the condition that it not be publicly revealed. and it was only 25 years later that many of those learned about the turkish missile deal. and it is a very fine point, but very interesting that khrushchev had already decided to withdraw the missiles on the basis of that no invasion pledge, even before learning of the agreement by kennedy to withdraw the turkish missiles. so many historians have reasoned that that extra concession was unnecessary and not key to the

defense. this is completely wrong. it's wrong because when kennedy made the concession of withdrawing the turkish missiles , khrushchev wrote to him afterwards saying, this is an extraordinarily magnanimous and important step to have taken, mr. president. you understand our position. you understand the mutuality of these risks and the confidence that was built by that in my opinion was crucial for what followed. now, the speech came because kennedy and khrushchev had experienced something that no human being in the history of the earth had ever experienced before, and that was that two of them had led the world to the brink of the end of humanity.

and they were the leaders of the time. and i am sure that kennedy was completely shocked and dismayed by this, not only the shock and the burden that it meant on him and the realization of posting sitcom, but also on shore the extra burden was he had come into the presidency exactly fearful of the setting of such an accidental war and yet he was almost the author of the. he came to understand that events one after another can spiral out of control. and he also came to understand, don't listen to the generals. don't listen to the cia. they know nothing about peace. then may know something about war, but they know nothing about

peace. it's not their job. the job of peace is the president's job. the job of war is the pentagon's job. let's understand the division of labor and thank god the pentagon works for the presidents. the job of scoring a business cia's job. [laughter] this country would have been better off if we had never had a cia and if we close today it would dramatically add to our security. it is a disastrous organization. [applause] said kennedy was resolved to move forward, and he started to plan an initiative. he knew that negotiations had come close, had fallen back, had been accidentally set off course so many times. you would find a way through and show that it would be possible

to make an agreement with the soviet union. and this is exactly the strategy, by the way. we discussed this who knows what was read in the white house. but the professor related out. make incremental steps. build confidence on both sides. a lot of the cold war is in our heads. it is psychological. it is not fundamental differences. it is something about confidence, about trust, and it has to be built step-by-step. kennedy enunciated an idea exactly. one part of that was that he would launch a public initiative on peace. june 10th 1963 was that speech it is unbelievably beautiful. it is the work of ted sorensen and john kennedy together. i think there were inseparable

in ideas and in drafting and words with thing. it is a joint work of two great men. it is also to my mind the most remarkable speech in foreign policy that i know of. because i'm like every other foreign policy speech it was not directed at our counterparts, or it was directed at our counterparts, but highly and directly. it was directed at americans. and that is an incredible and brave thing to do. kennedy said, some say that it is useless to speak of peace or world law or world disarmament and it will be useless until the leaders of the soviet union and 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 reexamine our own attitudes

as individuals and as a nation. for our attitude is as essential as there's. this is a language presidents don't use, calling on americans to reexamine our own attitudes. at the height of the cold war and with regard to what was viewed as the mortal enemy to the death over the future of the planet, the soviet union. first examine our attitude toward peace itself, he says. to many of us think it impossible. to many think it unreel, but that is a dangerous defeatist belief. it leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. you heard it. we need not accept that view. our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. kennedy goes on in essence with

one underlying motif. we are dealing with human beings on the other side. they are not crazy. they are not irrational. they are not laughing and virtue -- lacking in virtue. they are counterparts who are human beings that want to live their lives like we do. and he talks about, as you heard, that no social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. he praises the soviet union for their courage which for kennedy was the absolutely highest accolade. the author of the profiles of courage, it was courage that, for him, was the ultimate measure of the virtue of the people. and he has what i believe of the most beautiful lines of any speech and no about war and peace in history when he says,

so let us not be blind to our differences but let us direct attention to our common interest and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. 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. khrushchev heard the speech, called gabriel harriman caught kennedy's convoy in moscow, said this is the finest addressed by an american president since fdr. let's clear away the obstacles to a treaty. and within seven weeks what had been terribly difficult problems on both sides and

misunderstandings and barriers and lack of trust were brushed aside and the partial nuclear test ban treaty was initialled in moscow on the 25th of july, 1963. kennedy -- and that think it is crucial -- was both the powering statesman in those days and a highly effective war politician at the same time. because from the first moment he needed 67 votes in the senate to make this real. and what looms over every president's mind is woodrow wilson's experience of negotiating the treaty of for cy only to have it crash in the u.s. senate. and kennedy went into this, by the way, feeling he could not get those votes. he was determined to try. and he pulled out every way that

he could do it and negotiated brilliantly. he respected the confidences and the courtesies and the parameters of the senate. he had to negotiate with his own military brass which put forward some safeguard measures for instance that will resume testing of the soviets to that kennedy laid out clearly to the senate and then the joint chiefs testified in support of the treaty. in the end the treaty passed by 80-19 at the height of the cold war. and kennedy spent the next and the remaining weeks of his life touring the country and finding that crowds everywhere and the conservative states were rising thrilled with the possibility

that there was a new direction ahead. he was taking. he toward the western states, not strongholds of the democratic party, not his natural base, the massive support for peace that was building in the united states. and, of course, weeks after that he was dead. the legacy of this, i you as world changing nonetheless. the treaty itself was important. there was actually a research study incidently that came out last month in the in the are which showed up with highly refined data and know the experience of the succeeding decade that nuclear fallout was even more dangerous than was thought because tiny traces of it had long-term debilitating consequences for children born

during that time. and so even that specific fear was born out and delayed by this treaty. but far more importantly, kennedy fundamentally dispelled the falsehood that a treaty could not be reached with the soviet union and ended once and for all the idea that it would be impossible to reach mutual accommodation. he himself said, this treaty will not end the cold war. it will not end conflict, but it can be a step. and he did not live to see the next step, but the most crucial next up was the non-proliferation treaty, which he had already envisioned back in 1961 and in 1963 would follow directly than nuclear test ban treaty. and the non-proliferation treaty, while hardly decisive in ending proliferation, we know that i have a dozen more

countries became nuclear powers after that , did break the momentum that looked as was leading to perhaps 30 or 40 nuclear powers by the 1980's. that is what kennedy feared most of all. he said the world will be completely unmanageable if that comes to pass. and this tree decisively changed that view as well. why did i think that this is so relevant for our time aside from low wondrous act of courage and? no focus groups here, ladies and gentlemen. no political advisers whispering , don't do that, mr. president. he was not listening to them. he was not taking counsel of his cia and is an essay and his military on finding a new way. was not taking a public opinion poll. he knew how dangerous the world was, and he knew he -- he came

to know in october 1962 that there was only one person, only one position that had even the possibility to change the direction, not the change of direction would be his alone, but that only he could make it happen. i feel that today we have lost these lessons. we have secret wars in dozens of countries where you work. i know it because as i go around the world of the drone missiles are falling, this secret engagements, the u.s. mercenary forces. when we at the world bank or i at the earth institute or from the u.n. go to somalia or molly or chad or yemen , i know absolutely especially after 35

years of development work that no matter how many drones are falling, not one of them is going to solve the problem of under, water shortage, not one of them will make a bore well. not one of them will solve a single problem and now. but we have all lack of vision about how to find a different way forward and i, for one, al alarmed to wake up today and read about obama's decision not only to arm the syrian rebels, but also to have the cia in charge. there is no less accountable, more reckless institution in american history. it does not belong. it has no more greuel than secret courts have in our country. i did not know because i was not paying attention that we had secret courts until last week's revelations.

shame on me that i was not aware of it, but the whole concept seems fundamentally unamerican to meet and fundamentally crazy to me. what is a secret court, a secret court is of rubber-stamp of the military out of control. it provides no constraint whatsoever, nor does our congress these days and all. they are ready to declare mr. snowden treasonous before they know anything about what is being done by our government to our freedoms. i don't know about you, but i don't find much of an offense that, well, it is all foreigners first of all, it is in to. second of all, i am a foreigner to 1902 other governments. i happen to spend most of my life in those other 192 countries. i don't absolutely love the idea that everything i am doing is

fair game for interception, spying, reading because i am a foreigner someplace else. what kind of world rebuilding? and it all comes from the point of view that there is no other way. it comes from the point of view that says mr. gasol of moscow rather than we must talk. and when you point and say regime changes your national policy two years ago and mainly not because we cared all about the sun but because we think that he is too close to ron there are 90,000 deaths in between. this is called policy. this is a shame. this is a lack of imagination. it is a lack of vision and a

lack of courage thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. professor jeffrey sachs has agreed to take some questions. if you would like to bring forth a question, please come to the microphone in the middle. thank you very much for that compelling and provocative talk. even as i said in my introduction, we don't necessarily agree on the individual policies. >> we don't have to. >> we shared a common vision and support the need for rigorous debate. i guess i will start off with a question, as others may be gathering their thoughts if you

would like to join and. one of the things that you laid out in your talk and i was so compelling in the book was this an entry on both sides and the fact that kennedy could put himself in the other's shoes. they both faced the same dynamic, the hard-liners, the politics on their own side. and i think one of the notable differences in many of the issues we face today is the definitive lack of symmetry, whether you think of terrorism or climate change our property, the lack of symmetry is of very defining characteristic of these challenges. i wonder whether you could just comment on how that changes our ability to do what kennedy did so well which is to bridge those gaps like putting him cells in the other's shoes. >> i think there is an instrumental and amoral aspects of this. the instrumental aspect is that

you have to view the world from your adversaries point of view to understand the situation in iran. and one of the things that you do when you do that, for example, is you understand the prisoner's dilemma and the logic of escalation, even though there is no logic at all in terms of the outcomes. so instrumental the the art of learning to see things from the others perspective is central to a good analysis. but i would say, there is a moral point of view as well. that i would call and the. the capacity to empathize with the other side, to understand not only analytically what they may be thinking, not only the capacity to try to gain the mindset, but to understand the humanity and to feel the humanity, i think, is absolutely

crucial. .. >> that for example, after the cuba missile crisis cover were you afraid?

he said you crazy? i was terrified. how could you imagine? think of all the deaths. you have to be a human not to be terrified and it is an extremely humid response by a very human person. in its odd way a person that i met down to earth so it is not that we need literal symmetry but we need the capacity to empathize and we don't have that right now. we have a view that if i were giving a talk about poverty or four in eight you have heard me like a broken record how can we leave so many people to die and not care about our immediate concern? we will not take poor people

into our hearts because we feel we need to close that window so often that the same is true politically we are what and willing to countenance the idea that our counterparts have the it idea or a concern or a heart we are told they are irrational, a crazy, and headed straight for have been in suicide attacks and there is no point it is wise because it is real politics this is not just about suicide of politics but we are not allowed in this country to discuss those politics at all. if you give any credence to the politics at all you review the worst possible way. this is the opposite of how we will get something done? many people say some of our

counterparts, many who have been on the cia payroll who not exactly arms length, we create so many people we end up killing of after words but many of the counterparts are governments i ran, north korea or palestine which i find as frustrating in dangerous as any place. how moss. they won the election we major to squeeze the whole lot of them so they could not function. not for one moment to say there was an election that we called for. so there are counterparts we

just want to talk to the. -- them. >> good afternoon. thank you for your wonderful exposition about kennedy someone i have been trying to understand for a long time. walking fort peace said shared prosperity i have been to the jfk library trying to get to know more about him to allow it to get people like me to more want

negative to know more about him. loan before certain ability long before the war became. >> debrief. you have people waiting. >> there is a man named jfk who laid out a framework for progressive prosperous that would benefit all of humanity.

but before our generation with the global community to fill his vision for our common good and for the generations yet unborn. >> is there a question? >> thank you very much. thank you. we will really have to. thank you very much. civic i amir from the world bank. >> barack obama is a much more thoughtful president's with the nobel peace prize in the beginning of his presidency. is that having an impact on his policies regarding peace

anwr? thank-you. >> what we learn from history forces of disorganization and very powerful i took a the lesson of this period dire recounted the book to be the idea that things will sort themselves out normally if not right and the idea of groupthink with the eisenhower years will provide the leadership but their ideal obama gives eloquent speeches he doesn't have the follow through that is vital. he also hinted at something that i found very discouraging he was imploring the young people

in jerusalem to call for peace which is fine but he also had a line that is extraordinary that jfk would never have bettered. he said, unable in paraphrasing, don't expect an elected official like me to do this unless we're pushed to do it from people like you. that is the modern political view. politics has become tremendously professionalized and package. among the most damaging people on the civilian side are political advisers i dislike the profession. there many nice people but the profession is terrible because leadership does not focus groups it is not the polls or refined followership to track is a you know, increasing tom decoders you will get off

but that is what politics are right now. i have seen it close up and nobody takes risks and if you are not courageous the world will run you down and i am afraid we're not seeing the courage that is needed. so i don't know the discussions that are taking place but i know the policy of syria is disastrous and predictably so not an accident. the date u.s. car renounced without any means, right, or any legal basis was the day you knew how to the tens of thousands of syrians would die because of that state alone.

so i don't find the clarity of leadership for the follow-through to make peace that is so vital and what i do believe unfortunately that the world is awfully chaotic and without the strong effort guided by moral principles not because i have a moralist with those of the only principles that can't find residents all sides without those we are trapped in and we are trapped right now in spreading violence. >> i would like you to comment on president kennedy's attempt to move away from the word defeatist

he is non combative but then he goes to berlin to say we didn't have to put up all wall whet them come to berlin which is more aggressive could you contrast those to? >> in historical terms kennedy tried to read by the historical lessons of world war i and a world war ii. but if it is in a sentence that disaster can happen by accident and road work to is that a chief mckee and lead to disaster so to be strong enough to resist aggression and at the same time not having your actions trigger the very disasters that you try to avoid an contrasting

lessons and kennedy suffered -- suffer that contrast not only did he not want to be called the piecer -- a piecer also leading up to 1939 in munich and there had not been sufficient strength but on the other hand,, he knew that building for strength was the provocation by accident that leads to war and he tried to find that balance but there is a basic principle about cooperation that i find it very compelling and that is the strategy is a robust way for word so the theory says

start out cooperative lee because maybe then the and there side will cooperate in you can build on that. kennedy did not start cooperative lee because the early months of the administration was the arms buildup placing intermediate range nuclear weapons in turkey and the bay of pigs. he did not mean it that way by the way. there is no sense in his thinking any of the day to day descriptions or the memoirs he wanted to come out swinging back from the soviet side he did in a way in the bay of pigs was a horrible blunder and lying to chris jeff was an added blunder and he had back provocative as kennedy had

hit and they got started on a path then kennedy as they think i have explained at length, finally said we have to get a grip on this. there is something called a tit-for-tat with forgiveness that if you get to the point where both sides are cheating and escalating you went to get and stock the solute offer another all live period so that is what kennedy did with far more resolve in not having the blunders be provoked. said that was important. the berlin speech is fascinating because it is one of the most memorable speeches where he says to

this massive crowd of the berlin wall that it is a hardline speech as you'' he says at 1.those who think we can work with the communist let them come to berlin to see this is impossible. there are two things going on. one is extemporaneously certain extent and he got carried away in the euphoria of the moment. but another part that is absolutely calculated, a kennedy had a mission in berlin that he absolutely needed the german people to support him in the peace initiative amt faced a very difficult leader there was a

pain in the neck. of the old lee and. and he was a hankering for nuclear weapons. and after kennedy pulled back from eisenhower of course, another complete paid in this side rushed to the side in german to say the franco-german alliance and we could get you the nukes basically is the message that the goal was giving and kennedy put a stop to that to deal with the politicians in germany to save germany will not be nuclearized he felt almost immediately in those weeks i remember exactly when but

was pushed with the west to save the the german leadership to except non-nuclear nations so there was a part of this to win the hearts and minds of the german people they did not the right to hear such praise i would think in some sense. this was 18 years after the nazis in the country that had nearly destroyed the world and kennedy told them there on the front lines of freedom and their generation would be remembered as germany is united a director is united as it will be and on that day history will record you were on the front lines for the fight for freedom. it was great and served a historic purpose to give kennedy the political space

to sign the treaty a few weeks later because adenauer absolutely did not want to fall between the soviets because he wanted more richer manpower in the nuclear power. that is the subtext of this speech. >> we're almost at a time so we will take these three questions in a row all together. >> i work out the population council. thank you for being here. my question pertains to the culture in the u.s. in the intractability there is no other option. what you think it would take in a meaningful way to engender the shift to introduce the idea that poverty reduction in

development is not mutually exclusive for global and u.s. security? it is in a general sense but it does not seem to impact the decision making of the political culture. >> my impression a lot of the things you said is on the premise having a rational predictable actor is to be the most predictable and then you mentioned iran. however, lot of the problems we have when it comes to achieving the millennium goals are under the premise of sailing or failed states. we don't agree for very long how could we achieve

anything under the circumstances? >> great question. >> i am a young american as a consultant here at the world bank and i pate considered not joining the peace corps i'm interested on hearing your thoughts and maybe how jfk would have used the peace corps for his political objective. >> i think regarding the u.s., what would it take i believe good leadership would be sufficient to bring a strong majority of the american people along a far more fruitful policy direction. i had the experience i remembered by ising

president bush in the first weeks of the administration on the need to fight aids and tbn malaria the briefing condoleezza rice in the white house and it was interesting for me because i laid out what i thought was greeted with the $3 billion plan and one of my former students led me out of the west wing door to said that was a nice talk you don't stand a chia's it will not have been. it for a variety of reasons mostly because of the constituency in the republican party president bush ended up adopting the major global health initiative more than obama did with policies and when president bush left office and he is one of my least

favorite presidents by the way. do not think this is praised other than these actions because he made a lot of disastrous steps for the united states when he left office, he recounted how those policies were among his proudest legacies and he writes about with them today with great passion and the american people strongly supported him. who would have thought? who would have known? but these policies make sense to people the problem in america is not the american people. it isn't. the american people are often poorly informed, ready to go along with things but they are not obstacles to strong will directed lot leadership but ioc away

around the leadership we have a particular type of government if it was a parliamentary system might give a very different type of talk we have a presidential system but we don't have a government in this country we have a separate branches in there is no single government so our system requires presidential leadership and that could be sufficient for many of these things it is not a hard sell to explain why hummingbird destabilizes in the places we are fighting right now from mali to central african republic to somalia and yemen are unstable because they are dry because of climate change and extreme poverty. we don't want to say those things. the god of our way to say we're not nation-building

readjust sending drones we promise not to nation build this is absurd and just ignorance i am afraid and of course, i'll look least of all for guidance from the military i do not look to the general for the hearts and minds i assume they know more about how to kill people but they don't know how to do economic development or what people want and need it is a wrong classification so we need someone that tells the truth in the american people will not be an obstacle to it. failing states is a core business of this institution you never know what will fail that if you leave something fragile loan then the odds of ruin our high. once in awhile a fragile

place by itself finds its way out but more often than not wear a fragile place will fall into chaos so if we just fecit and say what do you do we don't have those disappointments repeatedly i was asked by the president in 2005 to come cnn and i spent time with him it around the country and i was horrified. this place is dry and hungry and has ecological ruin and impoverished and i came back to washington and i said we've got to do something. deal think anybody listen at all? i can guarantee nobody gave a.

yemen? are you crazy? who cares about yemen? and eventually that just means we need a military base. we will not nation build. for five years the president of mollie beattie beattie, jeffrey, help me get support. there is instability, hunker, lack of development. look at a map it is right in the desert it is hard probably the hardest p.m. place in the whole world you can grow crops no power new infrastructure is not called timbuktu in our language for nothing of course, it has

been called that for the last thousand years but we know it as the end of the world because it doesn't get harder for development so the president had a plan for mostly in the north sea it is my job i tried every where no one gave a. not here, two blocks down three blocks down, one block up this is five important blocks nobody gave a damn. who cares about molly? then sitting under the stars when evening jay during last year with the prime minister in to a governor who said it is bad. it is so dry but their

trampoline the crops there is violence every day premium more wells so i went back to the when i accomplished zero and a few weeks later the coup in their own people are on the bow on the river from the armed rebels this is predictable ladies and gentlemen, if you don't think so then come with me on a trip i will predict the next failures but if we just sit there like a spectator sport the new field of fragile states are a natural phenomenon but this is kennedy's point. we used to take challenges. we went to the moon. you could drill 10 wells and when kennedy said be going to the moon they did not

know how. so we ask why the go to the moon? he gave the most famous dancer because it is hard. because it will organize the best in us. who talks like that now? we don't even take on challenges with the president of united states said it is our cause to end poverty and we need it then to give a speech in never say it again? but actually mean it with resources a commitment and leadership that would galvanize young people around the country like that. people are hungry for meaning but we don't have it. nobody believes in a. so the answer is of the peace corps it does a wonderful thing as a broad

but more reportedly in the minds of american people since the 1961 you find decent americans with this institution more often than not i was in the peace corps is to transform their lives and give them the gift of empathy to help them to see and that is a remarkable contribution. thank you very much every betty. [applause] and. ♪ ♪

>> joining us the escape regarding the apple price fixing it was declared against five publishers with the cost of the book can you give the background of what this means for apple? >> in april 2012 the department of justice sued five publishers penguin, and macmillan, and schuster schuster, harpercollins for conspiring with apple to raise the book prices to set up the agency model to get the book into the bookstore in over a flurry of legal documents it a three week trial is that the department of justice try to prove that

apple was the ringleader of the conspiracy in the meetings with these five publishers over the sixth week period that day all conspired to raise a that he book prices. now the five publishers' settled with the department of justice before can. now just before the trial happened but they chose to side with the doj in ruled that they indeed conspired to fix prices so it seems she is trying to mitigate against her initial viewpoint but in the end the ruling was handed out because the trial ended on

june 20th and the ruling came july 20th so was the permanent view that apple was guilty. >> you mentioned that agency model we have talked about this in the past but those are just learning casey give us a brief understanding what that means? >> the way that's the book prices were handled under the wholesale model retailers would agree to set the price and the reason they were upset is in a gaunt -- jim is on wis discounting at the civic discount so they thought that model was not working and cutting into the business it would affect profit margins and the like but the agency model the publisher says the price the

retailer tech takes a cut apple likes to take 30% that is what they did with the i bookstore so retailers cannot change the price but they can sell it to act as agent for the agency model may have given revenue to boost the profits and they felt apple or independent bookstores they gave them extra skin in the games actually went into of happening because prices for uniform across the board were in 2009 a -- 2,009 look-alike and designed would dominate. >> going back to the ruling talk about the five

publishers grapple decided to hold out following this base and reintroduce the i books in 2010 gave customers much more choice to break the grip on the publishing industry and goes on to say we have done nothing wrong we will appeal the decision to think they will have a chance for an appeal? >> you'll be interesting to see if they do. the judge was very clever that she made it very clear all she was ruling on what transpired between late 2009 and 2010 observers were worried this could be it a broader ruling in the ability to do business or use as a most-favored-nation clause that came up in a great way during the trial because that was one of the

key tenets. they said if we do the agency model we want to make sure if another retailer decided to change the price that we will have the first dibs to match as well. there was some worry that that could be in play at least it seems like her opinion so will go to appeal but it does seem that she set herself up with an airtight case so it seems as if there may not be as much latitude. however i am not a lawyer the have not seen what apple

will file and in sure there'll make interesting arguments why should be thrown out amazon has always called it a big win. what happened that he did just a day on thursday we reported that tanks and finally adjusted their e-books prices so it seems as if prices have gone down with discounting but it is important to note is that this has not thrown them but agency model away it is just the deal with these publishers and random house with their merger with penguin, but it has made

them to renegotiate deals with a different spin. we call it agency light but they still have latitude so is of the agency in the wholesale model. >> so the agency model is not good to publishers think the current price of evokes is sustainable? >> $9 a denied since was a metaphor. marijuana prices that were higher than that. many of the brandt new titles that kept coming up during the trial was under the dome because it at the

time simon & schuster is very threatened that amazon was discounting the book that was over 1,000 pages long that was $35 but selling in such a low-cost but that is where they went to the window. it doesn't seem likely that will come back especially since the publishers had settled there are other things that concern them and the ceo has resigned so publishers have paid out the many entirely or they settled and set it aside to pale later. >> are the publishers were keying on a new model? >> i have no knowledge what

they're working on but working together there will probably be even more lawyers present then there were already how the consumers noticed a real difference? >> what is interesting 2.0 with the publishing industry that if apple loses the ruling and hit with hundreds of millions of dollars if it was 166 million apple would be on the book several times over that with hundreds of millions of dollars given now in the settlement this would be across the state not just the department of justice itself it is not

based on values so then that each book consumers it's your credit so if they each got $2 for every veto that was questionable leadership is a fair amount of money money, who will benefit? the publishers it may act as the effective stimulus package for the publishing industry but i am sure that is not what the department justice intended. >> you can follow -- all over our twitter and visit publishers marketplace web site joining us on sky from york.

thank you. >> thank you for having me.

>> we are going to begin. we're delighted you are all here and ladies and gentlemen,, good afternoon and welcome to our bookie bench. william that it new book "is college worth it?." here it is we hope you will buy a copy if you have not already from the friendly book sellers. i'm the resident fellow it will be my pleasure to