What JFK and Eisenhower Can Tell Us About Great Foreign Policy Speeches

On the surface, both speeches seemed much the same.

One, delivered by a Cold War U.S. President, sought to take advantage of new developments to reach out to the Soviet Union and change the nature of the relationship. The other, delivered by his successor just over ten years later, had the same goal. Both were carefully conceived and beautifully written.

Perhaps most significantly, both were speeches about peace.

The first was President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Chance for Peace” speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953; the second, President John F. Kennedy’s “A Strategy of Peace” speech at American University’s commencement ceremony on June 10, 1963. But for all the similarities between the two peace speeches, only one — Kennedy’s — had any effect on international relations. Today, Kennedy’s peace speech remains the gold standard for impactful foreign policy speeches, while we remember Eisenhower’s mainly for its powerful rhetoric about the domestic costs of being on a war footing.

What was it that set the two peace speeches apart?

First, Kennedy’s peace speech was strategic.

Both Eisenhower and Kennedy personally took the initiative to make their peace speeches happen because they saw that new developments had created a rare moment of opportunity to engage the Soviet Union. For Eisenhower, it was the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953. For Kennedy, it was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, which dramatized the dangers of a nuclear confrontation for both Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

The difference was that Eisenhower’s peace speech was tactical — an immediate move to take advantage of events rather than part of a clear U.S. strategy. The overall mood in Eisenhower’s administration was apprehensive at best, hostile at worst toward engagement with the Soviet Union. The speech took few risks, instead framing the moment as a test of Soviet intentions. That made the speech sound more like a propaganda piece designed to draw contrasts between the United States and the Soviet Union rather than a bold outreach initiative.

Kennedy’s peace speech, on the other hand, was the culmination of Kennedy’s long-term thinking about U.S.-Soviet relations. When Kennedy met with Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961, he came away humiliated by an interaction that left him exposed to criticisms that he was weak and naïve — but more resolved than ever in the belief that it was necessary to de-escalate tensions with the Soviet Union. As Khrushchev would recall in his memoirs years later, “even though we came to no concrete agreement, I could tell that [Kennedy] was interested in finding a peaceful solution to world problems and avoiding conflict with the Soviet Union.”

In the next two years, Kennedy grew more savvy and quietly laid the groundwork for progress. As Robert Lehrman, former chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore and author of The Political Speechwriter’s Companion puts it:

[Kennedy] cultivated Khrushchev like the Russian Premier was a fence-sitting U.S. senator. Was Khrushchev beleaguered by his radical right-wingers? Give them no ammunition. Did Khrushchev doubt JFK’s word? Work with emissaries the Russians would trust to feel him out, including a peacenik magazine editor, Norman Cousins.

For Kennedy, the speech wasn’t a sudden spasm of outreach to the Soviets in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was one among the many tactics he used to advance his broader strategy for U.S.-Soviet relations.

But just because a foreign policy speech supports a strategy doesn’t mean it will succeed. Kennedy and Sorensen also understood that a strategic foreign policy speech also needs to accomplish two things to be effective as a tactic.

Most importantly, Kennedy’s speech advanced concrete “asks.”

Having started as a U.S. diplomat and become a speechwriter, I’ve taken a few lessons about what makes for an effective diplomatic message into my current role.

A former boss of mine, then-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel, often returned talking points with one note handwritten throughout the margins: “Great. But what’s the ask??” It was annoying, but he was right: in diplomacy, it doesn’t matter how eloquent or strategic the message is if there isn’t a concrete request your foreign counterpart can act on immediately at his or her level.

Successful foreign policy speeches have to offer a clear, feasible path for action. Eisenhower’s peace speech raised an impressively varied set of big ideas — from “international control of atomic energy” to “an honorable armistice in Korea” that would include “the holding of free elections in a united Korea.” But it failed to focus on the most achievable ideas and, as previously discussed, its framing as a test of the Soviets compromised much of its value as an outreach tool.[*]

A more recent example is President Barack Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech, which offered a sweeping vision and numerous big ideas on everything from counter-terrorism to Israel-Palestine peace. But it didn’t focus on anything the United States could immediately achieve with its partners in the Muslim world by harnessing the good atmosphere after the speech. Momentum stalled.

JFK’s peace speech didn’t offer a smorgasbord of policy ideas. Instead, it focused on one concrete ask that Kennedy and Khrushchev had already been discussing privately — a treaty banning tests of nuclear weapons. Kennedy also made a unilateral commitment to signal his good faith — a moratorium on atmospheric nuclear tests.

The focus on the test ban treaty was in keeping with Kennedy’s pragmatic vision of “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.” Kennedy knew that the test ban treaty was within reach — and a speech could help.

Eloquence, strategy, concrete asks — Kennedy’s speech had all the ingredients of a powerful foreign policy message. But it still might have failed if it hadn’t come at just the right moment to influence just the right people.

That’s why JFK’s peace speech was timed to have the most impact on Soviet decision-making.

Former career diplomat Tom Countryman — one of the most impressive negotiators I’ve ever met — rightly characterized the “essence” of diplomacy as “getting inside the decision cycle of other countries.” Diplomats want to make their country’s interests a factor to the people in the other country holding the levers of power — bureaucrats, politicians, business leaders. That’s one reason diplomats so rarely think about speeches as a tool they can use — because speeches don’t often influence decision-makers directly.

But in my experience, diplomacy isn’t a form of direct persuasion. Leaders and diplomats believe they understand what their country’s interests are. What foreign policy messages can do is to change the situation those interests apply to by transforming the public atmosphere surrounding a policy, articulating a new policy direction, or signaling a country’s seriousness about its position by committing to it in public — at the right time to have the desired impact on the other country’s foreign policy.

Eisenhower, to his credit, certainly had timing in mind when he delivered his speech two months after Stalin’s death. But in retrospect, his speech may have come too early; the political situation in the Soviet Union was fluid in the aftermath of Stalin’s death, and the contenders for power probably didn’t feel secure enough to take risks on relations with the United States. It didn’t help that Eisenhower’s message didn’t project much good faith.

Kennedy had better luck. He recognized the dilemma Khrushchev faced: Khrushchev genuinely believed in the need to de-escalate U.S.-Soviet tensions, but his power base in the Kremlin was precarious and deeply vulnerable to Soviet hardliners. “The president and I had each been advised in separate conversations with Norman Cousins, the innovative Saturday Review editor and peace activist, that the Soviet leadership was ready for a breakthrough if Kennedy could make the first move,” Ted Sorensen recalls, “Cousins believed that Khrushchev faced a critical choice at the next Soviet Central Committee meeting later in June.” Kennedy’s June 10 speech was timed perfectly to give Khrushchev leverage heading into the all-important meeting.

It worked. “The Soviets were favorably surprised by the tenor of President Kennedy’s 10 June speech because it reflected a broad progressive approach toward solving current problems,” a CIA report indicated on June 11, “the atmosphere created by this speech is now such that the possibilities of agreeing on a test ban treaty are very good . . . President Kennedy’s speech has gone a long way toward assuaging Soviet doubts about United States sincerity.”[†]

Buoyed by the change in atmosphere after Kennedy’s speech, test ban negotiations moved forward. Two months after the speech, the United States, Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which today has 126 state parties.

Kennedy had gotten inside the Soviet decision cycle.

Khrushchev would later tell Averell Harriman that Kennedy’s peace speech was “the greatest speech by any American president since Roosevelt.” He was probably right.

What’s more: no presidential foreign policy speech in the 55 years since JFK’s peace speech has been as influential. What Kennedy’s speech taught us was that a good foreign policy speech starts as part of a good strategy — and then influences the decision-making process in another country in just the right way and at just the right time to advance one or more concrete, feasible asks.

There’s another, more personal reason why I love the JFK peace speech: I’m a graduate of American University, where Kennedy delivered the speech.

The irony is that it wasn’t Kennedy’s American University speech, but rather one by Eisenhower, that had the most impact on my life; it was Eisenhower who encouraged American University to start an international affairs program, and he spoke at the 1957 groundbreaking for the American University School of International Service.

Without the School of International Service that Eisenhower championed, I wouldn’t have the knowledge or the experience necessary to look critically at how speeches can influence foreign policy. And without Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative in 1953, I probably wouldn’t have the insight on influencing foreign partners that came from participating in civil nuclear trade negotiations with Korea at the State Department.

All this to say: initiatives by presidents can make a big difference to people, here and around the world, for a long, long time. Speeches are some of our best vehicles for taking such initiatives. It’s time we looked critically at the foreign policy speeches of the past and developed a theory for how to make the most use of speeches in international relations. Let’s start with Kennedy and Eisenhower.

[*] To be fair to Eisenhower, he had a mixed record. We mostly remember “A Chance for Peace,” as well as Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, for their sentiments instead of their influence. But you could make a case that his December 8, 1953 UN General Assembly address on “Atoms for Peace” had a concrete ask that changed the future of nuclear power and international security.

[†] By contrast, a CIA report after Eisenhower’s peace speech noted that Moscow “rejected President Eisenhower’s program for the relaxation of East-West tensions.”