Address at American University in Washington proposing, in effect, an end to the Cold War. Rejecting the goal of “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” Kennedy asks Americans to reexamine their attitudes toward war, especially in relation to the people of the Soviet Union, who suffered incomparable losses in World War II. Now nuclear war would be far worse: “All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours.” He announces his unilateral suspension of further nuclear tests in the atmosphere, so as to promote “our primary long-range
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