by Patrick J. Buchanan
LewRockwell.com
Seven months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy, at American University, laid out his view on how the East-West struggle should be conducted to avoid a catastrophic war that could destroy us both.
Kennedy’s message to Moscow and his fellow Americans:
“If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity.”
As George Beebe writes in his essay, “It’s a Big World: The Importance of Diversity in American Foreign Policy,” in the July National Interest, Kennedy later elaborated:
“We must recognize that we cannot remake the world simply by our own command. … Every nation has its own traditions, its own values, its own aspirations. … We cannot remake them in our own image.”