General Guderian And The Importance Of Moscow

Background
The expansion of NATO to the Ukraine would recreate the military situation in the Eastern Front after the first Battle of Kiev in 1941, a major victory for the Wehrmacht which would subsequently lead to the unsuccessful assault on Moscow. The ensuing “Winter War” and the Soviet counterattack in December bled dry and pushed back the German Army from Moscow’s outskirts. The following year Hitler, not daring another attempt on the Soviet capital, turned south in a bid to capture the oil fields of the Caucasus. That led to the 1942-1943 Battle of Stalingrad, the encirclement and destruction of the elite Sixth Army, and eventually, Germany’s defeat. NATO’s expansion to the Ukraine would avoid that type of defeat.

The Eastern Front, Summer of 1941
On August 23, 1941, after two full months of constant action, General Heinz Guderian, commander of Second Panzer Group (later Second Panzer Army), poised to attack Moscow, was summoned to attend a conference at Army Group Center’s Headquarters with Chief of the General Staff (OKH) Colonel-General Franz Halder and Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group Center. Halder had been informed that Hitler had decided to attack neither Leningrad nor Moscow but to capture Kiev, the Ukraine and the Crimea. He seemed deeply upset for he believed that would inevitably lead to a winter campaign, something for which the Wehrmacht was totally unprepared. Von Bock agreed, and the three decided that Halder and Guderian should fly to Hitler’s Headquarters in East Prussia (now part of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) in an attempt to change Hitler’s mind. They arrived at Lötzen airfield as it was getting dark. Guderian promptly reported to Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, who presently forbid him to mention the question of Moscow to Hitler.

The Importance of Moscow
What follows is Guderian’s account of the meeting with Hitler and his analysis of why capturing Moscow was the key to defeating the Soviet Union, excerpted from his memoirs, Panzer Leader.

“I went in to see Hitler. There were a great many people present, including Keitel, Jodl, Schmundt and others, but neither Brauchitsch nor Halder, nor, indeed, any representative of the OKH. I described the state of my Panzer Group, its present condition and that of the terrain. When I had finished Hitler asked: ‘In view of their past performance, do you consider that your troops are capable of making another great effort?’
I replied: ‘If the troops are given a major objective, the importance of which is apparent to every soldier, yes.’
Hitler then said: ‘You mean, of course, Moscow?’
I answered: ‘Yes. Since you have broached the subject, let me give you the reasons for my opinions.’

Hitler agreed and I therefore explained basically in detail all the points that favored a continuation of the advance on Moscow and that spoke against the Kiev operation. I maintained that, from a military point of view, the only question was that of finally defeating the enemy forces which has suffered so heavily in the recent battles. I described to him the geographical significance of Moscow, which was quite different from that of, say, Paris. Moscow was the great Russian road, rail and communications center: it was the political solar plexus; it was an important industrial area; and its capture would not only have an enormous psychological effect on the Russian people but on the rest of the world…”

Global Electricity Output May Drop Due To Climate Change

January 4, 2016

Climate change impacts on rivers and streams may substantially reduce electricity production capacity around the world. Particularly vulnerable are the United States, southern South America, southern Africa, central and southern Europe, Southeast Asia and southern Australia. A new study by the International Institute For Applied Systems Analysis in Austria calls for a greater focus on adaptation efforts in order to maintain future energy security.

COP21 And Nuclear War

January 3, 2016

The Doomsday Clock
Last year, on January 22, 2015 to be precise, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the Doomsday Clock to 3 minutes before midnight, a metaphor to indicate how close our species is to extinction. Among other things, the scientists are (correctly) concerned with climate change and the budding three-way nuclear arms race involving mainly, but not exclusively, the United States, Russia and China. The reasons for this antagonistic animosity are numerous and complex regarding how these nations value their core interests, particularly oil. We have already discussed the situation in the South China Sea, pitting China against some of its surrounding neighbors supported by the U.S. Now it’s time to focus on the Eastern or Southwestern Front, depending on one’s point of view.

Historical Facts
Hitler’s failed Operation Barbarossa, the main purpose of which was to conquer living space and natural resources –particularly oil- for Germany, left the Soviet Union in ruins. At its height in November 1942, the front stretched from Leningrad on the Baltic Sea to Rostov-on-the Don, about 943 miles (1517 km) as the crow flies. The Germans occupied, exploited and leveled all of Byelorussia, most of the Ukraine, and a small portion of western Russia proper, including the Crimea, which at that time was part of Russia, not the Ukraine. As for Soviet casualties, the numbers are truly eye popping: 11 millions soldiers (killed or missing) and somewhere between 7 million and 20 million civilians dead. In comparison, the United States lost 139,380 soldiers (killed and missing) fighting Germany, and virtually no civilians. In 1941, when they went to war against Germany, the populations of Russia and the U.S. were about the same, 130 million. The difference is that for every American soldier killed, the Russians lost eighty, all with primitive weapons by today’s standards. Even General Eisenhower was appalled at what he saw when he visited Russia after the war, and wrote:

“When we flew into Russia, in 1945, I did not see a house standing between the western borders of the country and the area around Moscow. Through this overrun region, Marshal Zhukov told me, so many numbers of women, children and old men had been killed that the Russian Government would never be able to estimate the total.”

Cold War 2
Practically every Russian family lost someone during the war, so it’s not difficult to understand why so many ordinary Russians and leaders reflexively view NATO’s possible expansion to the Ukraine as an existential threat. After all, they paid for their victory over Germany’s invasion with abundant Russian blood, and they’re not about to desecrate or squander that legacy.

Secondly, the distance from Shostka in northeast Ukraine –about 114 miles (184 km) west-northwest of Kursk, site of the biggest tank battle in history- to Moscow is about 317 miles (511 km). This is just a few minutes flight time for any number of short-range nuclear missiles, the equivalent of putting a loaded, cocked 12-gauge shotgun on a person’s head. As to how the Russian government would react should that happen, there’s a good historical example. In 1962 President Kennedy was willing to go to war because the Soviets had deployed antique (by today’s standards) medium range missiles in Cuba, 1,134 miles (1,826 km) from Washington D.C. –almost four times the distance from Shostka to Moscow.

As if to reinforce Secretary Hagel’s statement on the subject, the U.S. will spend as much as $1 trillion (it is a mystery where the money will come from) over the next thirty years modernizing America’s nuclear weapons. Under the circumstances, President Putin, who is also renovating and expanding his country’s armed forces, including the navy, for the first time explicitly named the U.S. a threat to Russia’s national security.

These are not esoteric or classified facts, therefore the ruling civilian and military elites are well aware of the high risk these policies entail. Which begs the question: what reward could possibly be big enough to justify taking a risk of that magnitude? Perhaps some believe that Russia, coerced and paralyzed by economic/financial pressures, would capitulate without a fight. In that case, they apparently hope, the subsequent internal turmoil would cause the entire Russian Federation to collapse, just like the Soviet Union did, and the surviving remnants –along with their oil and gas- would be absorbed as de facto vassals of the west. Further extrapolating, the ripple effect would spread to China: unable to access oil not controlled or owned outright by western energy multinationals, and hemmed in by a potential naval blockade, it would capitulate and accept western dominance as well.

The problem with this line of thinking is that both Russia and China might stand and fight, a terminal event for our species. All this over oil, which along with coal and gas are the main cause of anthropogenic climate change. Ironically then, it appears that for the foreseeable future the three powers will struggle to control carbon deposits they well know must be left in the ground -if we’re to survive. There’s too much money (and power) at stake.

Stopping The Madness
Already there have been numerous close calls over the years that could have resulted in all-out nuclear war. President Eisenhower, no stranger to the horrors of war, warned us in his Farewell Speech of the urgent need to disarm; the Treaty On The Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons requires nuclear armed signatory nations to ultimately eliminate them completely. Instead, the great powers are moving in the opposite direction.

The best way to put an end to the ominous antagonism is to replace fossil fuels with solar, hydrogen and gravity to generate the world’s electricity. They are free, constant, abundant and cannot be hoarded by anyone. Economy of scale from competitive mass production of hydrogen would eventually lower its price for mobile applications and make oil obsolete. All that’s required is a statement from China and India, the two most populous countries, to the effect that they would be willing to gradually convert their coal-fired plants to hydrogen and the whole world would scramble to meet their needs.

President Eisenhower On Disarmament

“Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight”…

COP21 And The Distribution Of Wealth

January 1, 2016

Background
COP21 is a pragmatic face-saving agreement for politicians, nothing more. Essentially, signatory nations have agreed only to commit individually and severally to maximum annual carbon emissions. Reporting the results is mandatory, but unlike global lending institutions that routinely force helpless quasi-bankrupt governments into painful austerity programs in exchange for new credit, COP21 lacks a comparable mechanism with biting consequences to force all nations to at the very least meet their own goals. Once again, economic considerations trump the need to stop using fossil fuels altogether. It’s not lack of technology; it exists. It’s the losses that multinational fossil fuel corporations and nations behaving as such fear they’ll suffer if that happens. As Bill McKibben accurately and convincingly explained back in 2012, the world’s proven reserves of fossil fuels are almost five times larger than the amount of carbon we could safely burn without increasing the world’s temperature more than two degrees centigrade. In other words, 80% of these deposits, valued at between $10 trillion and $20 trillion, would have to be left in the ground. For all intents and purposes they would become nonperforming assets.

Let’s put this in perspective. The Great Recession of 2008 saw the Federal Reserve embark in a program of “quantitave easing” –a euphemism for creating over $4 trillion from thin air (so far) to keep the economy afloat. In contrast, the loss of fossil-fuel related wealth could well top $20 trillion, depending on the price of fuel, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Banks, insurance companies and institutional investors, among others, invest in fossil fuels. As a result, the sudden loss of so much wealth would likely send the global economy into an unstoppable dive. That’s why COP21 could not possibly require nations to stop using fossil fuels, and it didn’t. And yet, either we do precisely that or humankind will likely be swept away along with the great mass-extinction of species currently under way. We’re running out of time.

Roots
Anthropogenic climate change is a byproduct of capitalism. The latter fueled and nurtured the Industrial Revolution, a culture of consumption that requires hoarding –not sharing- of natural resources wherever they may be based on the erroneous belief that perpetual growth of throughput is possible in a finite world. Worse, it allows and encourages the unlimited accumulation of wealth by a small elite –the net worth of Marcus Licinius Crasssus is said to have been equal to the total annual budget of the Roman treasury- who use the power of money to influence the electoral process and control the government. Compare that with conditions in the U.S. today.

It is undeniable that the widening gap in the distribution of wealth is a clear and present danger to the U.S. and the world. Like magma, it seems to have the relentless, unstoppable ability to go where and when it will. While it is true that some distinguished institutions and economists have proposed concrete steps to reduce it, they seem to suggest that new laws and regulations -both reversible- will suffice. Here’s the question: if anthropogenic climate change and the yawning gap in the distribution of wealth are byproducts of capitalism, doesn’t that suggest it’s the latter that needs fundamental structural changes?

Choices
Humanity is at a crossroads. One fork –unrestrained growth of carbon emissions exacerbated by low prices and population growth- leads to certain extinction. The other is an economically feasible, self-sustaining, multi-prong, all-out effort to simultaneously halt (and eventually reverse) global warming and the widening gap in the distribution of wealth. It envisions gradually replacing fossil fuels with solar, gravity and hydrogen to generate electricity and manufacture a drought-proof new source of unpolluted water anywhere (sorely needed to irrigate the world’s great deserts, plant vegetation and sequester the carbon already in the atmosphere), compensate for melting glaciers (for example, France and the Andes), replenish dwindling aquifers, and avoid increasingly severe droughts –and the wars they’ll potentially ignite. It can be done. It should be done.

John Hylan, Mayor of New York

March 26, 1922
“The warning of Theodore Roosevelt has much timeliness today, for the real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation… It seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection… To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interest and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States Government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business…These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and magazines in this country.”

Making COP21 Work

December 15, 2015

President Obama and Secretary Kerry have made the case that developing nations account for 65% of carbon emissions, and that consequently even if industrialized countries were to stop using fossil fuels instantly, now, that would not bring global warming under control.

Statistically they are correct, but that’s not the whole story. For example, the reason that China is now the number one polluter is because the U.S. and Europe have essentially outsourced to it much of their pollution. Were they to repatriate the factories (and the well-paying middle class jobs) to their respective countries to pre-1970 levels, their pollution would likely far surpass China. Accordingly, the argument that each country must rely on its own resources to reduce emissions significantly does not recognize our complicity and responsibility, as consumers, to help those who make the products we use stop using fossil fuels.

The most effective way to reduce emissions to zero is to usher in the age of hydrogen, the only energy carrier that produces water as a byproduct. However, not all countries have the necessary natural attributes to produce a surplus, and countries with larger populations, particularly India and China, need as much hydrogen as they can get from potential natural exporters, at least for the foreseeable future. Conversely, the U.S., Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean islands, South America, all the Mediterranean countries, New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia, Iceland and Hawaii, to name a few, are potential natural exporters of hydrogen as outlined in Plan A. It’s not a question of lack of technology or investment capital (there are trillions of dollars searching for worthwhile investment opportunities). The real problem is fear that the switch would kill the petrodollar, with all its consequences, and that mountains of wealth that would be redistributed. But it can be done in an orderly fashion. And there’s no choice.

Paris FCCC 2015 Final Agreement

December 12, 2015

The Paris conference is over, and member nations have unanimously adopted a resolution to keep global mean temperature within 1.5°C of that which existed before the industrial era and to help needy nations cope with the effects of global warming.

Pundits are already criticizing it due to its vague clauses and lack of legally binding mechanisms forcing nations to perform in a specific manner. The criticism is a serious analytical mistake. They should keep in mind that it is primarily a political framework among sovereign nations to cooperate against a deadly common enemy. As such, each nation must contend with internal political forces that may or may not seek to derail the agreement, with potentially catastrophic ramifications. Foremost among them is the United States, the world’s 2nd. biggest polluter, where some Republican candidates and members of Congress refuse to even accept that anthropogenic global warming is indeed real. In fact the current Congress would likely not ratify a treaty, and it still may well become become a political football in the upcoming elections. Under the circumstances, given the (still) enormous American footprint in the world’s political stage, this agreement is pragmatic, defensible and achievable.

In economic terms, which will define each nation’s speed and methods to cope with its share of the burden, the treaty is actually an even bigger victory. As the only effective way to limit carbon emissions is to quit using fossil fuels, the treaty’s purposeful vagueness will encourage competition among the more enlightened to find a way to export renewable energy to the biggest consumers, China, the U.S. (and eventually) India. Enter hydrogen, the only energy carrier with a matchless ability to produce pure water as a byproduct. In addition to enormous energy needs, all three markets urgently need a new, permanent source of water. All it will take is any one nation to start producing as per Plan A; as the profits mount, and everyone else will want a piece of the pie.

Making Paris 2015 Successful

December 11, 2015

As at Copenhagen, the sticking point in Paris is money –who is going to pay how much so the entire world won’t look like Beijing during a red-alert smog storm. The real issue is not money per se but that the world’s powers are reluctant to simply walk away from oil and coal and the fabulous wealth and power they represent. If they truly are as committed as they say they are to do what it takes to save us humans from becoming extinct, all the U.S. and China have to do is switch to hydrogen as outlined in Plan A; at first for generating electricity and later for mobile applications. This is not complicated. Hydrogen is clean, renewable (and thus inexhaustible), and its precious byproduct, water, can transform the driest desert into a dense forest. No fuel can do that (hydrogen is an energy carrier, nature’s battery, not a fuel).

Everyone knows there is an intractable, stubborn Republican opposition to treaties or agreements that would threaten the wealth of their constituents, and that some among them are more than eager to ensure the President fails to achieve anything, particularly a legacy-defining project. But nothing prevents the government from partnering with other nations as a form of foreign aid, for example, to outsource the production of hydrogen. Competition is a basic, powerful element of free enterprise. Used correctly it should encourage others to do the same.

Source of the U.S. dollar

December 2, 2015

The U.S. has had a debt-based banking system since 1864. As a result, it is currently impossible to extinguish government debt without simultaneously extinguishing our money supply. The Federal Reserve, established in 1913, is a for-profit corporation owned by private member banks. It has no reserves to back up the Federal Reserve notes that constitute our common currency.

Here are the thoughts of some of history’s most illustrious minds on the subject.

President Thomas Jefferson

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”

Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte
“The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency: their sole object is gain.”

President James Madison
“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”

President Abraham Lincoln
“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government’s greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles … the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.”

Prince Otto von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia, Chancellor of Germany
“The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world.

The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots… I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America, and use it systematically to corrupt modern civilization. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos in order that the earth should become their inheritance.”

President Andrew Jackson
“It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our Government. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners… Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country?… Controlling our currency, receiving our public moneys, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence… would be more formidable and dangerous than a military power of the enemy. If government would confine itself to equal protection, and as Heaven does its rains, shower its favor alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.”

President James Garfield
“Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

Thomas A. Edison
“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, where as the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.”

President William McKinley

Debt-free currency issued by the Government, not a private bank
“…There is another duty resting upon the national government – “to coin money and regulate the value thereof.” This duty requires that our government shall regulate the value of its money by the highest standards of commercial honesty and national honor. The money of the United States is and must forever be unquestioned and unassailable. If doubts remain, they must be removed. If weak places are discovered, they must be strengthened…”

President Theodore Roosevelt
“These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

John Hylan, Mayor of New York, March 26, 1922
“The warning of Theodore Roosevelt has much timeliness today, for the real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation… It seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection… To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interest and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States Government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business…These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and magazines in this country.”

President Woodrow Wilson
“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled governments in the civilized world –no longer a government by… a vote of the majority, but a government of the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

President Dwight Eisenhower

…we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad…

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight”…

President John F. Kennedy
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment…”

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