writers in american history. i would argue without the carson city experience, the nevada territory experience, could never have been mark twain. >> more about samuel clemens as booktv and american history tv look at the history of literary life of carson city, nev.. and sunday at 5:00 on c-span2. >> up next, jeffrey sachs, director of the institute at columbia in a recipe recount president kennedy's pursuit of a reduction of nuclear arms and greater relationship with the soviet union following the cuban missile crisis. this program is 90 minutes. [applause] >> thank you so much that kind introduction and thank you for joining us today for this discussion with professor geoffrey sax on his important book "to move the world: jfk's

quest for peace". i just finished reading it and that recommend it wholeheartedly. this book of history and not of fiction i hope you don't mind if i give away the ending which is-jeffrey sachs concludes this powerful book by demonstrating the parallels between kennedy's quest for peace and our generation's quest for sustainable development and that is why it is fitting we are hosting him here today at the world bank. in his book jeffrey sachs shows president kennedy's 1963 peace speech was a spring.in the cold war. some critics dismissed it as lofty rhetoric but jeffrey sachs and kennedy show that rhetoric matters, can help us imagine a new possible, helped change counterproductive views that act as barriers to progress such as the view at the time of kennedy's speech that the united states and the soviet union were on an inescapable pass.

the book make a compelling case for the importance of translating rhetoric into action starting with clear, achievable goals. as kennedy says by defining our bowl more clearly and making it more manageable -- manageable we can help all people to see it and to move irresistibly towards it. i think we see today's leaders following kennedy's lead applying these lessons to the fatalistic view that property will always be with us. 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 poverty in the next two decades and building on this, challenge the world bank to move from dreaming of a world free of poverty to a concrete goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 23 in a target of promoting shared prosperity. that is why experts from around the world like jeffrey sachs who

player leading role are designing a the sustainable development goals. jeffrey sachs is a powerful and consistent advocate on behalf of the world's for and most vulnerable. given decades in academia in the field his views on inclusive and sustainable development our respect across the board from top policymakers to expiring development practitioners. we agree from time to time on the how and when but never the why or what. jeffrey sachs is a director of the earth institutes, professor of health policy management at columbia university. he has authored three new york times bestsellers, the end of poverty, commonwealth economic for a crowded planet, and the price of civilization. and the most recent book i expect he will be adding a fourth. please join me in welcoming jeffrey sachs to the world bank.

[applause] >> thank you so much for that really warm welcome. lisa gentlemen, always wonderful for me to be here. really thank you and admire you for the work you do with the world bank. as sarah reminded us the bank has taken on an even bolder timetable than in the past. we have a count down to 23 to end extreme poverty once and for all and all of w ok is cut out for us especially you in this institution that provide so much leadership and is gratifying to have aexchange views with you and share some ideas and especially excited to do that today with a new book and i hope in our ree 50 years ago see the

before our absolute most current challeng today and we are going to run a video if you me how to do it, especially since it is not a mack i don't know what i am doing any more. >> what kind of a peace do limey and what kind of a peace do we see? and forced on the world by american weapons of war, not the piece of the grave or the security of the slave, i am talking about genuine peace, the kind of piece that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and hope and build a better life for their children, not merely a piece for americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time that

peace in all time. our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man, and man can be as big as he wants, no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable and we believe they can do it again. no government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. as americans we find communism profoundly repugnant, negation of freedom and dignity. but we can still hailed the russian people for their many achievements in science and space and economic and industrial growth, in culture and acts of courage. finally, my fellow americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace freedom here at

home. the quality 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 who are graduating today will have an opportunity to do by serving without pay or in the proposed national service corps at home. wherever we are we must all in our daily lives and live up to the age old idea that peace and freedom walk together. in too many cities today the piece 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 interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. and if we cannot end 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 future 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 10th, 1963. it is in my view the most wondrous, wonderful, powerful speech of the modern presidency and these are just short excerpts of it. i do encourage everybody to listen to it,

the first of 1 thousand listenings or more and over the years i have pulled my family in and insisted you have got 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 lasted decades but i found in revisiting this speech, in ways the i had not really anticipated full the, when i decided to look back at the events this speech is notable not only for its eloquence and its vision which i think it's 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 moved the world, that truly changed history, truly made it far more likely that we indeed could be here today with the planet that survived what was the core nuclear peril land in the very times that kennedy of course lived and in the moments that he gave that speech was the perils that had two superpower is 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 that close just a few

months before this speech was given in october 1962 with the cuban missile crisis when we know better now than even the participants knew then just how close to disaster we were. of course in 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, miss readings on radar, of nearly pulling the trigger, of pilots going off course, of all of the shockingly mundane things that could have ended all of civilization. this speech has to be understood as a remarkable leadership that helped pull the world back from that press of

this and that by itself means it is one of the hinge moments, decisive moment stands teachable moments of modern history. i didn't 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 in listening to a tape, compilation of kennedy's speeches and fell in love with the basic idea in this speech and the idea in this 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 at 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 knowing on both sides of the iron curtain fell that the only path was through strength, through escalation, through targeted destabilization of the other side and we were almost inevitably aiming towards a path that would lead to a final conflict, a view that was very widely shared. very few people believed that there was another way and 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 greatest sociologists if you would stand up for one moment, he wrote a book in -- [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 and he said that there was a way to peace and did involve understanding the psychology and the human values on both sides of the conflict and he called it the hard way to peace. one might have thought the hard way to peace was greater armaments, technological

breakthroughs, the decisive battle, but he knew the hard way to peace was to envision the possibility of peace with an enemy, with the other side and that was extraordinarily hard and it is what president kennedy pulled off nearly miraculously in 1963. 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 normal flow of events and the belief that some of the trends get us through rather than through active and ultimately immoral and leadership that gets us through

our survival is one of the big mistakes in judging history and what is fascinating for me is kennedy came into office knowing that, determined from the first day that he would find a way to peace with the soviet union and yet less than two years later found himself almost at the edge of destroying the world with his counterpart, nikita khrushchev. that i find also both profoundly poignant and also eliminating for what happened and a powerful message for us today. if you go back to kennedy's arrival in power in january 20, 1961, one of his most strikstat important harbinger for his own

administration, was his 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. he believed there was mutual gain to be had in finding a way to diminish what was profound day today, month to month, year to year tensions of the cold war and in this, he was following perhaps his historical mentor in one sense, winston churchill, who through the cold war period and often despite our flawed memory or our memory of winston churchill may be for his defense of britain against hitler and

his introducing into the global parlance the phrase the iron kurt and was consistent from 1945 onward that there could be a way to fullback from the cold war, and churchill said repeatedly it was better to john john than to war war 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 to the arrival of president kennedy in power. of course it was dangerous for many reasons which i need not review in any detail, the first danger was stalin himself who was a vicious and paranoid killer on a massive scale, who

addressed eastern europe brutally and in my view unquestionably instigated the cold war through the actions of the brutal crackdown is of the soviet union on the occupied territories of central and eastern europe and the occupation zone of germany itself but the cold war was more complex than that and it persisted after stalin's death in 1953 and persisted after nikita 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 public understanding or parery ndearly then.

still, the cold war contied to unfold, with both sides having that were growing, became ever more unstable. those were the early days of game theory, the invention of the prisoner's dilemma as a concept and of the understanding of the difficulties of cooperation. but there came to be an idea partly through the game first is that one could find a stable balance of terror on both sides where the nuclear armaments would be a deterrent that would forestall war. this i think is often taken by assiduously as a rough description of the time of the

cold war itself and 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 global >> reporter:. inherently we live in the midst of a change and especially in the technological age whether it is the technology of war or other technologies there is no such thing as repos 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. fearing the massive conventional army of the soviet union in europe relies ever more heavily on nuclear weapons on the u.s. side. the eisenhower doctrine in those years was massive retaliation meaning a conventional attack by

the soviet union would be matched by a massive nuclear response by the u.s. side and 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 viewed as offensive 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 tension and reginald the arms race on the other side which led no small number of u.s. generals to say don't you think with the growing soviet arsenal and early first strike might be just what we need before it is too late? if we wait, we lose the

advantage, we have the nuclear advantage now so you could see there was no equilibrium. there was an array of increasingly dangerous views, tripwires, potential for not only accident but ultimate disaster. towards the end of the 1915s, a eisenhower made one more attempt to find some reconciliation with nikita 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 come to pass. could not make it t one side eisenhower continued with the nuclear

philosophy which looked terrifying 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 twenty million people to german violence comes as the marbles threat to the survival of the country and eisenhower was rather casual in not understanding how u.s. actions were perceived as more dangers by the counterparts but another thing happened that i think is pertinent and poignant because it continues to happen and it continues to happen today until this very morning and that was another kind of blunder. eisenhower and khrushchev tried

to build some level of trust, the spirit of camp david when khrushchev came to the united states in his visit, this was to be followed by a summit in paris in 1960, many of you will recall the outcome of that but the antecedent of the summit he immediately was mr. richard bissell, a name that should be held in high opprobrium in american history, a senior cia official that did as much damage as any individual can do in our complicated system by hatching one bizarre and destructive cia scheme after another whispered in eisenhower's year you are 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 you 2 spy plane. eisenhower thought that was provocative and dangerous and fought it would be a risk in view of a summit just weeks away and kissel assured him, mr. president, they don't know what we are doing, the you 2 is a safe mission. besides if it happened to be scrambled or shot down it is designed to disintegrate. the pilot has of poison hypodermic needle to kill himself in the event 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. eisenhower apparently reluctantly said okay, we will have one more mission a you will

recall what happened. what whistle had not told eisenhower was the free seating plane that had already been picked up on soviet radar, jets had been scrambled but couldn't reach the high altitude but the cia already knew that the u-2 was not a safe operation but didn't mention that to the president. jerry powers, the u-2 pilot, was detected on entering soviet airspace, was shot down. something didn't disintegrate in the u-2 plane. all of the wreckage was found. somehow mr. powers and didn't inject himself with the famous sing range. he was captured. all of this was unknown to the united states and the soviet union reported a spy mission had been shot down and demanded an immediate explanation which the u.s. promptly gave by declaring

that a weather plane from turkey had gone off course. mr. khrushchev said excuse me, that can't be right. we have a spy mission, we knew it. the u.s. with the president's lead, said no, there was no spy mission, this was the weather plane and don't make anything of it at which point the television cameras came out. mr. powers was brought before the world stage with the you to wreckage right there for all the world to see. of course it broke up the paris summit and crews have had been brazenly lied to and the hopes that eisenhower deeply held by the way but was unable to effectuate for finding some

reconciliation were dashed. why were they dashed all the way from 53 to 60? until 58, there was no chance because eisenhower's own secretary of state, john foster dulles was against any reconciliation. hard-liners surrounding eisenhower and eisenhower operated on the basis of group consensus more or less. any earlier attempt at reconciliation was vetoed. i tell all of this because kennedy came into this soon after, said he wanted to negotiate with the soviet union but nothing like that happened. this teaches us something also. within a few weeks, mr. richard

bissell came to whisper in john kennedy's year, we have a great plan. we have a wonderful idea. we are going to invade cuba. ..

overt military support. this appears cia operation. and it was a disaster, to sell released. this in as the ships landed at the bay of pigs, all of the exiles were shot, killed, or captured. and what is stunning in my mind instead that moment khrushchev sent an urgent message to kennedy through back channels, mr. president, your government is engaged in a tyrannical attack on cuba, completely outside of international norms. this must end immediately. and kennedy wrote back, surely one of the stupidest thing she ever wrote because he broke back, this has nothing to do with us. this is not an american thing. this check. this is cuban exiles. and khrushchev wrote back

immediately, are you kidding? the planes, ships, weapons, training, funding. of course he had been lied to directly boulder least two times in as short timeframe by american presidents. and this was not so comfortable for him either because he has it -- he had his hardliners who were going, the mere concept of peaceful coexistence is crazy, and the american presidents seem to be confirming this. things spun out of control. there was the summit that followed of christian and kennedy in vienna. it was from of kennedy's point of view a debacle. a debacle because khrushchev rated kennedy during his term 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 into a blocked the access of west berlin. kennedy thought war was coming. and khrushchev was as provocative as to be. the berlin wall went up a couple months later. in its way, it actually tamp down one major source of instability, and that was the mass exodus of east berlin and germans through to west berlin, but it still signaled another wrenching above the war. and then, of course, khrushchev had his idea, the stupidest of all. that was that he would put intermediate range nuclear weapons into cuba, do it

secretly, to it before americans discovered it, give america a taste of its own medicine because the u.s., both eisenhower and kennedy, had put short-range and intermediate-range declare weapons right on the soviet border, notably in turkey and italy. so christian of restoring to equal the store -- equals four, stop and invasion talk-show what it means to have nuclear weapons right up against your borders. what is fascinating about this and important to understand, when khrushchev said this to his foreign minister he said, are you crazy? you will make a war. and katie's answer, no, this is nothing about war. this is just a show. put it in the americans face. given a taste of their own medicine. there were 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 tt 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, and possible to consider given the real balance of armament. he was out for a psychological victory. war was the last thing on his mind. he was sure he would pull a surprise. these missiles would come in after the u.s. midterm elections in 1962 and suddenly as core would be even. of course, we know what happens. 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. and what ensued is also

extraordinarily important. one last stop. and that is, kennedy convened his executive committee of security advisers. overwhelmingly, the military, the intelligence press, most of his foreign policy team outside of the oval office said, well, we have to go take them out. we need to launch an immediate attack. we need to shoot these out. they did not know, by the way, that these missiles were already in place and many on order to launch on attack or could have been launched an attack. kennedy's held back one of the things that he had imbibed and embodied from his teachers from light elkhart, a great theorist 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 a global 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 to a new gray 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 massive destruction. so kennedy was aware of that, and you know -- we know we are here today because he said, we find a way to delay.

he chose a quarantine rather than a surprise attack. a quarantine to prevent new shipments of arms to cuba with a demand that the cuban vessels be withdrawn. and he faced a essentially 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 spent most of the cuban missile crisis mongering about kennedy's cowardice and saying that kennedy was an abuser and quarantines were useless. very, very dangerous man. geared for war, nuclear exchange, we will only lose 20 million. they will lose a hundred 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 from khrushchev. khrushchev also called for the turkish missiles to be removed. kennedy even 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. 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. many historians have reasons that that extra concession was

unnecessary and not keep to the events. this is completely wrong. it's wrong because when kennedy made a concession of withdrawing the turkish missiles, khrushchev wrote to him afterwards saying, this has been extraordinarily magnanimous an important. 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 beings in the history of the earth had ever experienced before. that was that the two of them had led the world to the brink

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

peace. it is 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. thank god that the pentagon works for the president. the job of screwing up is the cia. at this country would have been better off if we had never had a cia and if we close it today it would dramatically add to our security. it is a disastrous organization. [applause] so kennedy was resolved to move forward. he started to plan an initiative . he knew that negotiations had come close, fallen back, been accidentally set off course so many times that you would find a way through and show that it

would be possible to make an agreement with the soviet union. this is exactly the strategy, by the way. we discuss this. who knows will was read in the white house, but the professor laid it out, made 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's something about confidence, trust, and it has to be built step-by-step. kennedy enunciated that idea exactly. one part of the out was that he would launch a public initiative on peace. and it june 10th 1963 was that speech. it is unbelievably beautiful. it is the work of ted sorensen

and john kennedy to get the. i think they were inseparable and ideas and in drafting and in the words nothing but. it is a joint work of two great man. it's also, to my mind, the most remarkable speech in foreign policy that i know. because on like every other foreign policy speech it was not directed at our counterparts. it was erected at our counterparts, but highly indirectly. it was directed at americans. that is an incredible and brave thing to do. kennedy said, some say that it is useless to speak of peace or wall world disarmament and that it will be useless until the leaders of the soviet union adopt a more enlightened attitude. i hope to do. i believe we can help them to do with, but i also believe that we

must reexamine our own attitudes as individuals and the nation. for our attitude is as essential as there's. this is a language presidents to 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 of 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 on real, but that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. it leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, mankind is doomed and we are gripped by forces we cannot control. re man-made,accept that view. 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're not lacking in virtue. there are our counterparts there are human beings the want to live their lives like we do . he talks about, as you heard, that the social system so evil that is people must be considered as lacking energy. he praises the soviet union for the courage which for kennedy was the absolutely highest accolade. the author of the profiles of courage. it was charisma for him was the ultimate measure of the virtue of the people. and he has sort of believe what the most pitiful lines of any speech are know 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 cannot cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal . khrushchev heard the speech, called kennedy's on war in moscow to and said, this is the finest addressed by an american president since fdr, let's clear away the obstacles to the treaty . within seven weeks what had been terribly difficult problems on

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

he pulled out every way that he could do it and initiated brilliantly. he respected the confidences and courtesies and poor relatives 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 that the joint chiefs testified in support of the treaty. in the end the treaty passed by a 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 in the conservative states or rising

thrilled with the possibility that there was under direction. he was taken as he toward the western states, not strongholds of the democratic party, not his natural base, the mass of support for peace that was building in the united states. of course weeks after that he was dead. the legacy of this, i've you, as world changing the mullis. the treaty itself was imported to. there was actually a research study incidently that came out last month and the npr which showed with highly refined data and now the experience of the succeeding decades that nuclear fallout was even more dangerous than was thought becauyse traces of it had long term debilitating consequences for

childr born during that time. and so even that specific fear was born out and was delayed by this treaty. far more importantly, kennedy fundamentally dispelled the falsehood that a treaty could not be reached with the soviet union. he 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 in conflict, but it can be as tough. and he did not live to see the next up, but the most crucial next up was the nonproliferation treaty which she had already envisioned back in 1961 and then in 1963 would follow directly the nuclear test ban treaty and the non-proliferation treaty, while hardly decisive in ending proliferation, we know that a

half dozen more countries became a clear 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 treaty decisively changed that view as well. why i think that this is so relevant for our time, aside from faw wonders act of courage and? no focus groups here, there is sentiment. no political advisers your whispering don't do that. he was not listening to them. he was not taking counsel of his cia and is in a say in his military on finding a new way. it was not taking a public opinion poll.

he knew how dangerous the world was, and he knew -- 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 that 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, draw missiles are falling, the secret engagement, 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. hunter, water shortage, not one of them is going to make up for well. now one of them will solve a single problem right now. but we have a lack of vision about how to find a different way forward. and i, for one, am alarmed to wake up today and read about obama's decision, not only to harm 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 morals and secret courts have in our country. i did not even know because i was not paying attention that we have secret courts until last week.

last week's revelations. shame on me that i was not aware of it, but the whole concept since fundamentally on american to me and fundamentally crazy to me. what is a secret court? a secret court is a rubber-stamp of the military out of control. it provides no constraint whatsoever, nor does our congress these days and all. they're 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 a defense that, well, it is all foreigners. first of all, it isn't. second of all, i'm a foreigner to 192 other governments, and i happen to spend most of m le and those other countries. i don't absolutely love the idea

that everything and doing is fair game for interception, spying, reading because i am a foreigner someplace else. what kind of world are we building? and it all comes from the point of view that there is no way. it comes from the point of view this as a slot must go rather than we must talk. and when you point and say regime changes your national policy and million not as sweet carrot all. there aren't 90 dozen deaths in between. this is called policy. this is a shame. this is and the lack of imagination.

it is a lack of vision and it is a lack of courage. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. professor jeffrey sachs asked me to take some questions. if you would like to bring for the question, please come to the microphone in the middle. thank you for that compelling and provocative talk. as i said, you know we don't necessarily agree on the individual policies. sphere -- and will start off wie

question as others gather their thoughts if you would like to join in. one of the things you laid out in your talk that was so compelling in the book is dissymmetry on both sides and the fact that kennedy could put himself in the shoes of khrushchev and vice versa. both face the same dynamics. the face the hard liners in politics,. i think one of the notable differences in many of the issues we face today is the definitive lack of symmetry call the think of terrorism or climate change of poverty. the lack of symmetry is a very defining characteristic of these challenges. i wonder whether you would just comment on whether the changes of our ability to do what kennedy did so well which is to bridge those gaps but putting himself in the other issues. >> i think there is an instrumental and of moral aspect of this.

the instrumental aspect is that you have to view the world from your adversaries point of view to understand the situation the chair and. one of the things that you do when you do that, for example, is you understand the prisoner's dilemma and you understand the logic of escalation, even though it is no logic and all in terms of the outcomes. so instrumental the the heart of learning to see things from the others perspective is central to psychoanalysis. i would say there is a moral point of view as well. that i would call into 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 i understand the humanity and to feel the humanity, i think, is absolutely

crucial. i would say, by the way, that khrushchev had it also. in my mind in my understanding and thinking about this comes off rather well. so did jfk for that matter. they both possible and blundered . there were both extraordinarily conscious of their responsibilities. there were not violent man. on the contrary, there were really man of peace, even as they almost led the world to the all to no more. you feel that about khrushchev, that he is as, for example, after the cuban missile crisis, were you afraid. he system are you crazy?

our was terrified. how could you imagine, think about all the deaths of would have come. you have to be inhuman not to be terrified. it is an extremely human response. very human person. a very humane and in this odd way as well. it's not that when the liberal symmetry, when the the capacity to empathize. we don't have a right now. we have of view which i, of course, you know if i were giving a talk about poverty or about foreign aid or something else, you heard me like a broken record, how can we leave so many people to die? how can we not care about that as our immediate concern. basically we will not take people into our hearts because we dare not.

we close the windows so often, but the same is true politically. we are unwilling to countenance the idea that our counterparts should have -- have a point or have a concern or are. constantly told bay are irrational, crazy, just heading straight for heaven. suicide attacks. there's no point to it. its allies because there are of real politics a stake. this is not just about suicide. this is also about politics. we are not allowed in this country to discuss the politics of all. if you give any credence to the politics of all, you are viewed in the the worst possible way. this is the opposite of how we're going to get something done here. the truth is also many people say, you know, some of our counterparts, so-called --

alterra said so on to lavinia from have been on cia payroll, like mr. banon. so it is not exactly that it is at arm's length. we create so many of the people that we end up killing afterwards. we create in the first place, but many of our counterparts are governments just like normal. enron, north korea or in palestine which i find frustrating and dangerous. hamas won the election. what did we do? we squeeze sell them so that they could not function. we never said one moment that there had been an election which we call for. so there are counterparts. we just don't want to talk to them.

please. >> good afternoon. thank you for a wonderful exposition about kennedy, someone i have been trying to understand for a long, long time. one of the few leaders who worked for peace, progress, and shared prosperity. i have been in america for about four years now. i've been to the jfk library in boston about three times now trying to get to know more about i believe this book is one of the historical, you know, compilations that will enable people like me to get to know more about. the question to gasol, global

peace, prosperity, progress. long before there was development, long before, long before certain ability and development became the end came, long before the world became -- >> you have to be brief. sorry. you have people waiting. >> there was a wonderful for cited, john f. kennedy, who laid out a framework for a better, peaceful, progressive, and prosperous world which would benefit of humanity, born and yet unborn.

the talk before our generation and our global community is to do our utmost best to fulfill his vision for all common good and for the good of generations on board, including -- >> is there a question? >> i know. thank you. we are really going to have said -- thank you very much. thank you. >> question in the back. >> yes. the world bank. my question has to do with barack obama. it seems to me that he is a much more thoughtful president of we have had the past. he get the nobel peace prize in the beginning of his presidency. and just for you to reflect on that. he seems to be much more open-minded about the world that past presidents. you think that this had an impact on his policies peace and war? thanks.

>> i think what we learned from history is that forces of disorganization are very powerful. i took a lesson of this time that i recount in the book to be that the idea that things will sort themselves out normally is not right, and the idea that kind of groupthink as in the eisenhower years will suffice. once -- one needs leaders. their i feel that while president obama is giving elegant suites to the speeches, we have not seen the follow through that is vital. and he also a bold bid into the something which i found very discouraging in his speech in jerusalem a few weeks ago. he actually was imploring young people in jerusalem to call for peace which was fine, but he

also has a line there which is extraordinary. jfk would never have uttered it. he said that -- and amelie paraphrasing. don't expect an elected official like me to do this unless we are pushed to do it by people like you. that is the modern political view. politics has become tremendously professionalized and packaged. i think among the most damaging people in the civilian side our political advisers. i dislike the profession. they're many nice people in it, but the profession is terrible because it is not focus groups. it is not honing to the polls. it is not refined followership and then tracking it so that you know in a precinct how many voters you will get on one side or the next.

i have seen it close up, up too often at this point. nobody takes risks. if you're not courageous the world will absolutely run you down. i'm afraid we are not seeing the courage that is needed to follow through. so i don't actually know, you know, the most in their discussions of a taking place. i know that the policy vis-a-vis syria is disastrous and predictably so, by the way, not accidentally so, predictably so. the data the u.s. government announced without any means, any right, any legal basis, he must go, was the day that you knew how many tens of thousands of syrians are going to die because of that statement alone. and so i don't find either the clarity of leaders or the

follow-through in making peace that is so vital. what i really believe unfortunately is that the world is of the chaotic. and without the strong effort guided by moral principles, by the way -- and not because i am a moralist, but because those of the only kind of principles that confined residents on both sides without those we are trapped. and we are trapped right now and spreading violence. >> to put questions about the speech. i'd like you to comment on president kennedy's attempt to move away from his father's reputation, his use of the word defeatist and then also he is a very -- he is noncombatant in

the speech. a couple weeks later he goes to berlin and said, we never had to put up all wall to keep our people and to rid of them come to berlin, which was a little more aggressive. maybe you can contrast those two approaches. >> in historical terms kennedy tried to up three the historical lessons of world war one in world war ii which is complicated. by the way, this is not a simple matter, but world war one, if you put it and -- if you encapsulate it in a sentence, it was disaster can happen by accident. and world war ii, if you wanted to put it in a sentence, appeasement can lead to disaster . and so the balance of being strong enough to resist aggression and at the same time, not having your actions triggered the very disasters that you are trying to avoid are contrasting the lessons.

kennedy suffered that contrast. not only did he not want to be called an appraiser, as father had been called, but the lesson that he took, in part, from why england slept in the lead up to september 1, 1939 and, of course, munich was the there had not been sufficient strength. on the other hand, he knew that building for strength can be the provocations by accident that leads to war. he tried to find that balance. they're is a basic principle about cooperation that i find very compelling. that is that tit-for-tat strategy as a robust way forward in a prisoner's dilemma. if you take your game theory, it

says start out corporately because then maybe the other side will cooperate. then you can cooperate, they can cooperate, and you can build on that. kennedy did not start cooperative lee because the early months of the administration was an arms buildup, placing intermediate range nuclear weapons and turkey, and it was the pay of takes. he did not mean it that way, by the way. there is no sense in his thinking, and any of the day-to-day descriptions, at any of the memoirs that he wanted to come out slugging. but from the soviet side he did. and the bay of pigs was really a horrible blunder. and the lying to khrushchev was an added blunder. and khrushchev then hit back just provocatively, as kennedy had hit, and they get started on this path.

then kennedy, i think, as i have explained it at length -- may be too much land, finally said, we have to get a grip on this you know, there's something called tit-for-tat with forgiveness which is if you get into a so-called defection felt where both sides are cheating on the other and escalating, you want to get unstuck from that as well. so the optimum or robust strategy is, you all for another olive branch which is what kennedy did in 1963. he was far more resolve and skillful and determined and not willing to let the blunders be provoked by his own side in it. so that was important. the berlin speech is fascinating because it is one of the most memorable speeches where he says to this massive crowd at the

foot of the berlin wall, a quite hardline speech. as you rightly ," he says of one point, those who think we can work with the communists, but then come to berlin to see that this is impossible. there are two things going on in a speech. one is, it was extemporaneous to let certain extent. he got carried away in the euphoria of the moment, but there is another part to it that i think is absolutely calculated kennedy had a mission in berlin that he absolutely need the german people to support him in the peace initiative. he faced a very difficult leaded there, and howard, who was a pain in the neck by and. the old man.

hankering for a nuclear-weapons. on the u.s. started to say -- when kennedy pulled back from eisenhower's loose talk about nuclear sharing with germany, of course another complete pain in the side, he rushed to berlin to say we need a franco-german alliance. and we can give you the nukes basically is the message that the goal was giving to an hour. kennedy put a stop to that and dealt with the politicians in germany her to say germany will not be a clear rise to. he fell almost immediately after that -- those weeks. i don't remember exactly the day puss in a way also with the

u.s. saying we need german leaders that accept non nuclear reservation. and so there was a part of this that was winning the hearts and minds of the german people. it was a performance. the german people did not have the rights to hear such praise, i would say, some sense. this was 18 years after nazism. this was a country that had nearly destroyed the world. kennedy told them that there were on the front lines of freedom and a third-generation would be remembered. when germany is united and europe as united and they said, as it will be. and on that day history will record that you were on the front lines of the fight for freedom. it's wonderful. it was great, and it served a historic purpose, not only binding the alliance, but gave kennedy the political space to of sign the treaty a few weeks

later because he absolutely did not what a fall with the soviet union between the u.s. and the soviets because you wanted more german power. he wanted the nuclear power. so that's the subtext of the speech. >> were almost out of time. that. you can respond to what you guys want. >> i work of the population council. thank you for being here. my question pertains to some of your general comments about the political culture in the u.s. and given kind of the intractability of, there is no other option to the way we do things now. what do you think that and we take ted, in a meaningful way, engendered a shift in the political culture? what would it take to introduce the idea that poverty reduction and development beyond being just a human imperative is not

mutually exclusive but essential to global and u.s. security. it has not seemed to really impact decision making. >> i have the impression that a lot of the things you said were actually working under the premise of having a rational, predictable actor on the other side to talk to. with the example of russia, the soviet union would be the most predictable actor. in you also mentioned north korea. however, lot of the problems we have now when it comes to achieving millennium goals, security, terrorism, actually and the premise of failing states of failed states. we don't really have activism. not very predictable. how could we achieve anything under the circumstances? >> great. thank you.

great question. >> hi. my name is shirley. i'm a young american currently working as a consultant here at the world bank. i am someone who considered but ultimately decided against joining the peace corps. i'm kind of interested in hearing your thoughts, your evaluation on the peace corps from now until today and maybe have jfk would have viewed the peace corps. >> take you very much. i think regarding the u.s., what would it take, i believe that could leaders would be sufficient to bring in a strong majority of the american people a lot of far more fruitful foreign policy direction. have had the experience. i remember advising president bush in the first weeks of the administration on the need to

fight aids, td, and malaria. not hit personally, but briefing secretary rice and the white house. it was interesting for me because i laid out what i thought was needed to buy $3 billion plan to fight aids, for example. one of my former students let me out of the west wing door and said, that was a really nice talk, but you don't stand a chance. it's not going to happen. for a variety of reasons, mainly because of the religious constituency in the republic and party president bush ended up adopting p.m. eye and the major global health initiative, far more than clinton or obama did in terms of innovative policies. and when president bush left office -- and he is one of my least favorite presidents, by the way. ra for take this as

because he made a lot of disastrous steps for the united states. but when he left office he recoun how those policies were his progress legacy or among his proudest legacies. and he writes about them today with great passion. the american people strongly supported the. who would've thought -- who would've known. these policies make sense to people. the problem in america is actually not the american people . it isn't. the american people are often poorly informed. they are often ready to go along with things, but they are not obstacles to strong, while directed to. i don't see a way in our system around the. we have a very particular kind of government.

if we had a parliamentary system it would be different. i would be giving a very different kind of talk. but we have a presidential system, an executive presidential power, and we don't have a government in this country. we have separate branches, and there is no single government. our system requires presidential leaders. that, i think, actually could be sufficient for many of these things. these are not held -- ourselves to explain to people why hundred stabilizes, why the places where we are fighting right now, somalia, human, unstable because they are dry and drying because of climate change and extreme poverty and many stresses. we don't want to say those things, actually. we go out of our way to say, we are not nation-building. we are sending drones. don't misunderstand.

we promise not to nation building. this is absurd. this is just ignorance, i'm afraid, on the part of our political leaders. i looked least of all for guidance from the military. it is not their job. i do not look to a general for hearts and minds. i'll send in a more of. we don't know more about added to economic development or will people want and need. it's all wrong classification. and so we need somebody that tells the truth. and the american people will not be the obstacle to a. failing states is a very obviously core business of this institution. you never know what is galling to fail, except if you leave something fragile alone. the odds of ruin our high. once in awhile a fragile place by itself finds its way out of fragility, but more often than

not it is just a process of events, a fragile place that will fall into chaos. so if we just there dumbly at fragile places or fecit and watch them fall into chaos in and say, well, what could you do , we won't have the kind of disappointment repeatedly. i was asked by the president of yemen in 2005 to come. i spend time with him and spend time around the country. i was horrified. this place is dry. this place is hungry. this place has ecological ruin. this place is impoverished. i came back to washington and said, we have to do something. to you think anybody listen that all? i can guarantee nobody gave a damn. demint? are you crazy?

who cares about human? and then of course eventually civil war, al qaeda. but that just means we need a new military base so that we can overflight, drones, whenever. we're not going to nation build. for five years president -- the mali president back me, jeffrey, help me get support for these impoverished. there is instability. there is hunger, lack of development. look at a map. in spite of the desert, it is hard. it's just about the hardest place in the whole world by objective standards. there is no water. you cannot grow crops. no roads, no power, no infrastructure. it is not called in our language timbuktu for nothing. of course it has been called timbuktu for the last thousand years, but we noticed pulp and of the world because it is the

band of the niger river where it does not get harder for development. so the president had a plan for 166 communes, mostly in the north, to develop. i tried everywhere. let's have meetings, bring foreign ministers. no one given them. not here, not two blocks down, three blocks down, one block down, one block. this is five important blocks. nobody give a damn. who cares about molly, after all . and then i was sitting under the stars one evening in january last year with the prime minister and the governor of cebu. the governor said to me, it is bad. you know, it is so dry that the herdsmen are coming, trampling the crops. there's violence every day.

people are shooting. i went back to new york, the u.n. i accomplished zero. and then a few weeks later the military coup, and our own people or on a boat on the rivers escaping from the armed rebels. this stuff is predictable, ladies and gentlemen. if you don't feel so, come with me on the trip and i will predict the next failure. but if we just sit there and watch like a spectator sport, then you feel that fragile states are, you know, a natural phenomenon. but we use -- this is kennedy's point. we used to take challenges. god, we went to the moon. and when kennedy said, we're going to the moon, they did not know how there are going to the moon.

and so we asked, why go to the moon? he gave the most famous answer which cribs and still today. because it is hard. because it will organize the best and gas. who talks like that now? but you know, we don't even take on challenges. what if the president of the united states said, it is our costa and poverty and we meet, not to give a speech and then never say it again, but actually mean it with money behind it, with resources, commitment, that would galvanize young people around this country in a minute flat, just like that people are hungry for meaning. but we don't have it. nobody believes in it. and so the answer on the peace corps is it does wonderful things abroad, but even more importantly, it does wonderful things in the minds of american young people. and it has since 1961.

.. >> thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] >> for more information visit the