Richard Rhodes has written a one-act play, Reykjavik, which is an eighty-minute dialogue based upon the actual transcripts from the conversation between the two Presidents.  Mr. Rhodes, a renowned author has chronicled the nuclear age with numerous books and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb this is his first play.

Reykjavik, the play, will be performed at 7:00 p.m. on both Tuesday, May 8th and Wednesday, May 9th at the new Cemex Auditorium at The Knight School of Management on the Stanford University campus.  After the Tuesday performance a short question and answer session will be held with the audience . Mr. Rhodes and Phillip Taubman, N.Y. Times journalist, author, professor and nuclear expert, who covered the Reykjavik Summit in person for the N.Y. Times will be on stage.

On Wednesday, May 9th the performance will be followed by comments and a question and answer by Dr. Charles Ferguson, President of the Federation of American Scientists and Dr. Sidney Drell of the Hoover Institute’s Nuclear Security Project.

Reykjavik the play will have prior to each performance a pre-show viewing of Sonya Rapoport’s “The Nuclear Family in the Atomic Age”.  Her images will be shown before each performance of Reykjavik.  Also, being shown will be a five minute video by the Nuclear Literacy Project created by Dr. Sri Devabhaktuni.”

The Reykjavik Project will also unveil a new public opinion questionnaire that will be the work of Professor Jon Krasnick  of Stanford’s Department of Political Science.  This questionnaire will be offered to all event participants and will be used in future events and made available to other non-proliferation / disarmament initiatives.  It will be a survey assessing the hopes, fears and expectations of the general public for governmental policies that will lead to a world where the elimination of nuclear weapons is valued and activity pursued.

The overall objective of the Reykjavik Project is to spark awareness and a sense of empowerment to our audience that they can speak out and demand a world that exists without nuclear weapons.  President Reagan and President Gorbachev felt this in their hears as have many world leaders prior to Reykjavik and after.  Why can’t we get this done?  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and these steps must be taken by many not just the few.

Please join us for the reception held at Mills College on January 18, 2011, 6 pm – 8 pm. The exposition will last from January 18 to March 11, 2012. For more details, please see: http://mcam.mills.edu/events/

As quoted from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS): “Public-private partnerships are vital to building peace worldwide,” said Les DeWitt. “I feel privileged to join FAS’s exciting ISP project and help raise public awareness about the importance of energy and water security issues.”

The first ISP project involves American scientists assisting Yemenis engineers in helping to alleviate Yemen’s chronic water depletion. To learn more on this particular project, visit: www.water.org.

For more information visit the FAS website: www.fas.org

More updates to follow.

Sonya’s new art project is planned to be finished by winter 2012 and will tentatively be under the theme of Nuclear Family, which will combine family and nuclear concepts (including some Russian). The project is in the works, so follow this post for more updates in the near future.

We particularly recommend one of Sonya’s pieces on militarism: KABALLAH KABUL

To learn more about future Reykjavik productions, visit: http://www.richardrhodes.com/appearances.html

To listen to her interview log-in to an hour long interview for the last twenty minutes here: http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/71838

The lunch will be a private event to focus on the implications of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident for the U.S. and global nuclear industry as well as the next urgent steps needed to secure nuclear weapons and weapons-usable fissile material to prevent nuclear terrorism. In addition, the presenters will discuss the work that the Federation of American Scientists is performing to understand the science and technology underlying national and international security issues and to develop practical recommendations to improve security.

Attendees will receive a copy of my latest book Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press. This newly published book includes an analysis of the Fukushima Daiichi event.

The Federation of American Scientists is working to prevent the next Fukushima and Hiroshima. Les Dewitt, Martin Hellman, Sri Srikrishna, and Tom Tisch, the Event Host Committee, want the business community to add its voice to these important issues. Using research, analysis, and outreach on nuclear energy and nuclear security, FAS advances safe and secure nuclear power solutions that are resilient to natural disasters, accidents, and attacks. And we want a world free of nuclear explosions, especially from a terrorist’s use of nuclear weapons.

Through advice and investment, the business community must play a role to ensure safe and secure nuclear power and to prevent nuclear terrorism.

This event will focus on the implications of the Fukushima Daiichi accident for the nuclear industry and the next steps needed to secure nuclear weapons and the fissile material to make these weapons.

The event organizing committee includes Les DeWitt, Devabhaktuni Srikrishna, Martin Hellman, and Tom Tisch.

By Whitney Graham and Elena I. Nicklasson
SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 26, 2011 (IPS) – On this day 25 years ago, a massive explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine released clouds of radioactive particles into the atmosphere across Russia and Europe. The catastrophe had lasting effects on people’s health, particularly on women and their unborn children. On this sober anniversary, we look back at Chernobyl and the lessons learned to ensure the health of Japanese women as the Fukushima disaster unfolds.

Although slow to address the crisis, the Japanese government recently raised the alert level of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants from a 5 to a 7, the highest rating possible and on par with the only nuclear disaster of this magnitude: Chernobyl. By raising the level to 7, the government acknowledged the grave situation before Japan. What it hasn’t done, however, is delineate clear protocols for how people should protect themselves against radiation, particularly the most vulnerable: pregnant women and their unborn foetuses.

Women of reproductive age are at significant risk from the effects of radiation on their bodies and reproductive systems. Studies show women’s exposure to radiation may harm her future ability to bear children and can cause premature aging. The U.S. Center for Disease Control warns pregnant women that, in the event of exposure to radiation, even at low doses, the health consequences for unborn foetuses “can include stunted growth, deformities, abnormal brain function, or cancer that may develop sometime later in life.”

No one understands the implications of radiation on women’s health better than the Russian women who survived the Chernobyl nuclear holocaust. The amount of radiation levels released into the atmosphere was comparable to 500 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

In the two decades after Chernobyl, approximately 200,000 people died. Women living in highly contaminated areas in Ukraine and Belarus were affected by chromosome disorders, leukaemia, psychological trauma, depression, and multiple birth defects in their children. Among women who lived in the affected area, medical studies detected high levels of thyroid and breast cancer. Unfortunately, the former Soviet Union failed to provide timely and continuous information about the effects of radiation on human health.

In light of the unique risk to women’s health caused by exposure to radiation, the Japanese government and international agencies must take immediate action. Yet neither the World Health Organisation nor the International Atomic Energy Association – the two international bodies that monitor health and nuclear security respectively – have provided any information about the effect of radiation exposure to women’s bodies. Even a simple google search on the impact of radiation on women does not yield much, nor are there steps that women can take to mitigate the impact on her health and her children.

Although the transition to safer energy sources is a long road, what can and must be immediately done is the proactive outreach to women. The Japanese government must address the gender-specific health risks posed by its nuclear crisis by encouraging women to have medical evaluations and providing them with available resources on the implications of nuclear radiation on their health and strategies to reduce their exposure.

Our recommendations for women affected by the unfolding nuclear crisis are: first get a medical evaluation, and avoid foods produced locally, including lettuce, milk, berries and mushrooms. Pregnant women, specifically those in their first or second trimesters, must be especially vigilant about what they consume, as radiation passes through the umbilical cord to the unborn fetus.

Most importantly, women in Japan should reach out to the local authorities, contact their representatives, and send inquiries to the state-level medical authorities requesting informational materials about measures to protect women’s health and how the Japanese government is ensuring women’s health rights are protected. They should speak out if they feel misinformed, if their health concerns are dismissed (including continuous fatigue or psychological trauma), or if they are discriminated at a work place or hospital as it relates to them being affected by the nuclear crisis. The right to health and the wellbeing of future generations should be of paramount importance and vigilantly protected.

“It wouldn’t have been so annoying for us to die had we known our death would help to avoid more ‘fatal mistakes’,” Chernobyl survivor and Ukrainian poet Lyubov Sirota wrote about the Chernobyl disaster. Unfortunately, Japan has not learned the “fatal mistakes” of Chernobyl, and the ones who will pay the heavy price are women and future generations.

By James Goodby and Les DeWitt

History is made by individuals, and once in a while events come along to remind us of that.

An example is New START, a strategic arms reduction treaty that is critical to the future of humankind and now is before the U.S. Senate. It is a relatively modest treaty in terms of the reductions in strategic nuclear weapons it will require Russia and the United States to make. But it will reinstate a monitoring process in both countries that lapsed when a strategic arms reduction treaty negotiated during the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush expired a year ago.

And here we come to that conjunction of events that ties an abstract idea to human action.

George Shultz, the former secretary of state, secretary of the Treasury and secretary of labor, turned 90 Monday. He continues to work for causes he believes in, and he enjoys considerable success in doing so.

Probably closest to his heart is the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. His advocacy of this goal, added to Reagan’s own vision, nearly led to an agreement with the Soviet Union’s last president, Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1986 in Reykjavik, Iceland. Then, the idea was attacked. Now, it is seen as a highly desirable goal around the world.

What a wonderful conjunction of events it would be if the Senate were to ratify New START this week, tying this indispensable next step in bringing nuclear weapons under control to the secretary’s momentous birthday.

Russian and American stockpiles of nuclear weapons constitute about 90 percent of all the nuclear weapons in the world today. Without cooperation between the two countries in shrinking those numbers, there is little chance that others will follow suit. In fact, there is every reason to believe that more and more nations will build, buy or steal nuclear weapons.

The threat we face is no longer Russia, of course, but nuclear-armed terrorism and rogue states. Without the New START treaty, the barriers built to block the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries will erode. Loss of control of these deadly weapons or the materials from which they are made will certainly ensue.

A nuclear bomb sent by a terrorist will have no return address inscribed upon it, nor will it care if the Democrats or Republicans voted for or against policies based upon particular partisan concerns. This is a real threat, and it cannot be removed short of drying up the reservoir of weapons and materials to which terrorists or rogue states may gain access.

Shultz, at 90, is still working hard to prevent a nuclear catastrophe by advocating ratification of this treaty. As he frequently says, democracy is not a spectator sport. Join him in this critically important endeavor: E-mail your voice of support for Senate ratification of the New START treaty this week to Democratic Sen. John Kerry and Republican Sen. Richard Lugar. Both support ratification, and knowing that you support the treaty will strengthen their position.

Controlling nuclear proliferation is a long, hard diplomatic climb to a mountaintop that has never been scaled before. That climb must be supported and led by our country. Ratification of the New START treaty by our Senate is vital to this cause.

JAMES GOODBY is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution (www.hoover.org). LES DeWITT is the founder of the Fund for Peace Initiatives (www.ffpi.org). They wrote this article for the Mercury News newspaper.

From: http://www.jfklibrary.org/

President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst’s enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and the conduct of the public’s business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation’s thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.

“There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university,” wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities–and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was “a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.”

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived–yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles–which can only destroy and never create–is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war–and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament–and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude–as individuals and as a Nation–for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward–by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. 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.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade–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.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace– based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions–on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace–no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process–a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor–it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims–such as the allegation that “American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars.”

Truly, as it was written long ago: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements–to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning–a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

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 as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements–in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland–a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again–no matter how–our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many nations, including this Nation’s closest allies–our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours–and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So, let us not be blind to our differences–but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to 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.

Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.

We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists’ interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America’s weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people–but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system–a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.

At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others–by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and in Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge

Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope– and the purpose of allied policies–to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.

This will require a new effort to achieve world law–a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other’s actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also been talking in Geneva about the other first-step measures of arms control designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament– designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920’s. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort–to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.

The one major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security–it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.

First: Chairman khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history–but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.

Second: To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one.  Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and 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 a unique opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.

But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because the freedom is incomplete.

It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government–local, State, and National–to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever that authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.

All this is not unrelated to world peace. “When a man’s ways please the Lord,” the Scriptures tell us, “he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights–the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation–the right to breathe air as nature provided it–the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can–if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers–offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough–more than enough–of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on–not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.