Kennedy was a pacifist, even if he hid it well in his game to beat Nixon for the Presidency ─ accusing him, in effect of having done nothing to overthrow Castro as a Vice-President. At the time the National Security State was born, he was a young lieutenant recently returned from the Pacific with a severe back injury, the Navy and Marine Medal for “extremely heroic conduct”, and a deep distaste for modern warfare. Made hero by the press, he well understood the limits of the cult of the warrior hero, and noted in his diary: “War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today”. In 1945, he began a career as a journalist for the Chicago Herald-American covering the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco. This experience convinced him that the world of journalism was not for him: “you can’t make changes. There’s no impact. I’m going to go into politics and see if you can really do anything”, he confided to his friends Powers and O'Donnell. The political arena, “whether you really liked it or not, was the place where you personally could do the most to prevent another war”. In announcing his candidacy for Congress on April 22nd, 1946 in Boston, Kennedy declared: “The days which lie ahead are most difficult ones. Above all, day and night, with every ounce of ingenuity and industry we possess, we must work for peace. We must not have another war”.

For Kennedy, the nuclear weapon was the negation of all historical efforts to restrain war and spare civilians: this military abomination had to be eradicated. On the 25th of September 1961, after less than a year in power, he declared before the United Nations General Assembly: “Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. […] It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race— to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved”. The program he outlined in his speech did not stop at nuclear disarmament: “It would achieve under the eyes of an international disarmament organization, a steady reduction in force, both nuclear and conventional, until it has abolished all armies and all weapons except those needed for internal order and a new United Nations Peace Force”. It was the speech that would inspire Khrushchev's first private letter to Kennedy – a letter of 26 pages.

In 1963, Kennedy vigorously engaged his country in the direction of disarmament. May 6, he would address a directive (NSAM-239) entitled “U.S. Disarmament Proposals” to all government administrations, both military and civilian, inviting them to cooperate with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency created in 1961, making proposals towards the goal of “general and complete disarmament”. This phrase, which recurs as a leitmotif throughout the document, is included in his famous Peace Speech of June 10th, 1963, delivered at the American University of Washington before a crowd of students: “Our primary long-range interest 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”. Rejecting the goal of a “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war”, he invited citizensto deeply question the dangerous Manichean ideology that lay buried in anticommunism, and the paradigm shift toward a reality of nuclear war where “the dead would envy the living”. “Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world government — 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. […] Every graduate of this school,every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wished 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. Kennedy was addressing the deeper, spiritual cause of all wars, which was the dehumanization and demonization of the enemy: “No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. […] 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”. His words had the power to inspire American youth to a new ideal. But paradoxically, they received less coverage in the American press than in the Soviet Union, where Khrushchev translated and published the full speech in Pravda, and broadcast it on radio, calling it “the greatest speech by any American President since Roosevelt”.

In that speech, Kennedy publicly revealed his intention to establish a direct line with Khrushchev, hoping to avoid “dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of other’s actions which might occur at a time of crisis”, implicitly referring to the Cuban missiles crisis. He also made public his negotiations towards global disarmament, which would lead to the first treaty that limited nuclear testing: “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”.

To have his Test Ban Treaty accepted by a rather reluctant Congress, he spoke directly to the nation, leading an ambitious communication campaign and speaking on television on July 26th, 1963. The Treaty, which prohibited nuclear testing in the atmosphere and under water, was signed on the 5th of August 1963 by the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom. Six weeks later, on the 20thof September, Kennedy expressed his pride and hope to the United Nations: “Two years ago I told this body that the United States had proposed and was willing to sign, a limited test ban treaty. Today that treaty has been signed. It will not put an end to war. It will not remove basic conflicts. It will not secure freedom for all. But it can be a lever, and Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends: ‘Give me a place where I can stand – and I shall move the world.’ My fellow inhabitants of this planet, let us take our stand here in this Assembly of nations. And let us see if we, in our own time, can move the world to a just and lasting peace”. Again, he invited the USSR “to compete in a host of peaceful arenas, in ideas, in production and ultimately in service to all mankind… And in the contest for a better life all the world can be a winner”. In his last letter to Kennedy, delivered to the U.S. Ambassador Roy Kohler but never making its final destination, Khrushchev was clearly proud of this first historic treaty, which “[had] injected a fresh spirit into the international atmosphere”; he put forward other propositions and, in the words of Kennedy, believed that“their implementation would clear the road to general and complete disarmament, and, consequently, to the delivering of peoples from the threat of war”.

In the sixties, nuclear disarmament was an achievable goal, since only four countries had nuclear weapons. There was a historic opportunity, and Kennedy was determined not to let it pass. “I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we are successful, there may be ten nuclear powers instead of four, and by 1975, fifteen or twenty”, he said prophetically during his press conference on March 21st 1963. Following the USA and USSR, all NATO countries and the communist bloc were making a first step towards nuclear disarmament: all countries except one. By the early 1950s, David Ben-Gurion, who combined the functions of both Prime Minister and Defense Minister, urged Israel in the secret manufacture of atomic bombs, diverting from its pacific aim the cooperation program Atoms for Peace launched naively by Eisenhower. Informed by the CIA in 1960 of the Dimona complex military objective (revealingly placed under the control of the Ministry of Defense), Kennedy would do everything possible to force Israel’s hand in abandoning the project. He asked Ben-Gurion for regular inspections of Dimona, first verbally in New York in 1961 and later through more and more insistent letters. In the last letter dated June 15th 1963, Kennedy demanded an immediate initial visit followed by regular visits every six months, without which “This Government’s commitment to and support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized”. The result was unexpected: Ben-Gurion resigned June 16, thereby avoiding the reception of the letter. As soon as the new Prime Minister Levi Eshkol took office, Kennedy sent him a similar letter, dated 5 July 1963, to no avail.

Kennedy's death released the pressure on Israel, and Johnson chose to turn a blind eye. John McCone, CIA Director appointed by Kennedy, resigned in 1965 complaining about the lack of interest by Johnson on this subject. Under Johnson, military aid to Israel reached 92 million in 1966, more than the total of all previous years combined. Johnson even allowed the delivery of Phantom missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Israel developed its first bomb in 1967, without ever giving public acknowledgement. Nixon took no more interest than Johnson, and further, his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger privately expressed his satisfaction at the idea of Israel as a nuclear power ally. Nixon would play a double game: while publicly supporting the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 (which wasn’t an American initiative), to his cabinet he authored a contrary message, as part of a top-secret National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM-6), stating: “there should be no efforts by the United States government to pressure other nations […] to follow suit. The government, in its public posture, should reflect a tone of optimism that other countries will sign or ratify, while clearly disassociating itself from any plan to bring pressure on these countries to sign or ratify” (Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option, 1991).

Kennedy’s peace initiatives were a declaration of war against the arms industry – an industry eager to take advantage of the huge opportunity represented by nuclear development. “If Peace Does Come — What Happens to Business?” cynically headlined the U.S. News and World Report editorial on August 12th1963, just a week after the signing of the Test Ban Treaty. Their worries would be put to rest with Kennedy’s death, so too “disarmament” from American election agendas. According to 2011 SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) figures, world military expenditure stands at $1.738 trillion per year, or 4.7 billion per day, with the United States far out in front producing 41% of the world’s total arms. Nuclear weapons spending is estimated at $100 billion per year. Throughout the world there are now about 20,000 nuclear bombs with an average destructive power 30 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb, equivalent to 600 000 times its strength. Among these bombs, 1800 are ready to be launched in minutes.