RFK Jr. Calls For DIPLOMACY With Russia Instead of “Forever War” in Speech

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for diplomacy and de-escalation with Russia instead of a “forever war” in a speech mirroring that of his uncle’s, former President John F. Kennedy.

The environmental lawyer told audience members at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire on June 21 that the U.S. can be restored “to the awesome vitality of the original Kennedy era” through de-escalation and trust-building.

“As in my uncle’s time, nuclear tensions are at an extreme and dangerous level,” RFK Jr. said. “As in his time [too], we have a unique opportunity not only to diffuse those tensions, but to take a radically different path – a path toward peace.”

“We have been immersed in a foreign policy discourse that is all about adversaries, threats, allies and enemies and domination. We’ve become addicted to comic book good versus evil narratives that erase complexity and blind us to the legitimate motives and the legitimate cultural, economic and security concerns of other peoples and nations.”

The Democratic candidate for president emphasized the need for America to work toward peace by eschewing distrust in favor of fostering trust and stopping the spread of hostilities.

“Today, America has broken off practically all diplomatic contact with Russia. So, that communication has indeed become little more than ‘an exchange of threats and insults,'” he said, quoting his uncle.

RFK Jr. recounted how several former U.S. presidents met with Soviet leaders in the past:

• Franklin Roosevelt met with Joseph Stalin
• JFK met with Nikita Khrushchev
• Richard Nixon met with Leonid Brezhnev
• Ronald Reagan with Mikhail Gorbachev

“Can’t Biden meet with Putin? Or can’t we at least begin a conversation?” the presidential hopeful remarked. “Peace comes from a changed attitude. I, therefore, call on our present leadership to adopt President Kennedy’s maxims and to start de-escalating right now.”

RFK Jr. earlier demanded that Biden apologize for “proxy war”

After his uncle gave the Peace Speech at American University in Washington, D.C., in June 1963, RFK Jr. presented a 30-minute speech 60 years later. The older Kennedy advised Americans living in the midst of Cold War-era tensions with Soviet Russia to recognize areas of connection with people behind the Iron Curtain before he was slain in November of that year.

In the present, the younger Kennedy criticized the so-called “Forever War” and the growing militarization of the United States. He asserts that America is currently confronted by “the unspeakable horror of nuclear Armageddon” and that any statements to the contrary are “dangerous lies.”

While RFK Jr. said he “abhors Russia’s brutal and bloody” military operation in Ukraine, he remarked that Washington “has also contributed to its circumstances through repeated, deliberate provocations of Russia going back to the 1990s.” He cited the U.S. government’s violation of an agreement with Moscow not to expand North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) territory toward Russia. Since then, NATO forces have “surrounded Russia with missiles and military bases, something that we would never tolerate if the Russians did that to us.”

During the same speech, he dubbed Ukraine “a pawn in a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.” RFK Jr. remarked that Washington is engaged in an all-out bid to topple Putin, unnecessarily sparking a perilous escalation of nuclear tensions.

A day before delivering the speech, the Democratic presidential candidate called on Biden to apologize to both the U.S. and Ukraine for pushing for the said “proxy war.”

“I call upon President Biden to issue two apologies. First, to the American people for misleading them into supporting an ugly proxy war on false pretenses. Second, and more importantly, to the Ukrainian people for maneuvering them into this war and ruining their country – all for the sake of U.S. (imagined) geopolitical interests,” he tweeted on June 20.

“War was the plan all along, [and] the pattern here is clear. Not only is the Biden administration deceiving the American people about the motives for this costly and tragic war, but by continually escalating it, they put the whole world at risk of nuclear conflagration.”