We Must Talk to the Russians

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Warns
Against Rapid Rush to Nuclear War

July 26—Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in response to a question by Kynan Thistlethwaite, a member of the LaRouche youth movement, about the necessary role of the International Peace Coalition initiated by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, emphatically declared his support for resisting the rush to global nuclear war. He endorsed President Kennedy’s June 10, 1963 speech that called for a path to world peace as “one of the most important speeches given in American history.”

Kennedy was speaking to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of the World Values Network, as part of the Network’s presidential candidate series. The event was supposed to take place at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, but the venue was abruptly canceled under the pretext that the event was “inconsistent with [its] values.” The July 25th forum instead took place at the Glasshouse venue in Manhattan.

The public gathering allowed Kennedy to counteract charges of anti-Semitism that had been leveled against him during Congressional hearings on censorship a week earlier, notably by disgraced but still sitting Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Schultz had been the Democratic National Committee (DNC) “fixer” who manipulated the 2016 primary elections against Bernie Sanders. She was forced to resign as DNC chair after the WikiLeaks emails revealed her crimes.

More than 300 people attended, a mix of dedicated Kennedy supporters and members of the Jewish community in the area. Among the topics discussed were RFK, Jr.’s thoughts on the COVID-19 lockdowns, his comments on COVID as being misconstrued as anti-Semitic, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and other issues. There were some disruptions by members of the audience, who criticized RFK, Jr.’s pro-Israel position and his seeming lack of concern for human rights abuses against Palestinians. There were also anti-Zionist rabbis demonstrating outside the event, with signs and banners distinguishing criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism.

Kynan Thistlethwaite: Hello, Mr. Kennedy! My question is on the topic of nuclear war, which you have addressed very well in your campaign commencement address [in New Hampshire on June 20, 2023], which I think was one of the most important speeches given by a candidate. I am personally an organizer for an organization called the International Peace Coalition. We’ve been organizing peace organizations across the world to really unite against this threat of nuclear war. We have to bridge the gap, as you said, because it no longer matters what our ideologies may be, or what our particular beliefs are—humanity is on the brink of annihilation, and we need to unite on that matter no matter what—

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: We need a question—

Thistlethwaite: —I’m getting to it. John F. Kennedy, his American University Speech [of June 10, 1963], I think, is one of the most important speeches. We need a peace that’s not for the grave but a peace which all our families, which everyone can cherish, and I want you to talk about that and I really want you to endorse what we are doing with this peace coalition. Helga Zepp-LaRouche was the one who organized this.

Rabbi Shmuley: We need a question.

Thistlethwaite: She’s calling for a durable security architecture among all the nations in the world. So, I would like you to endorse that, and I would like you to talk about the American University Speech.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: First of all, I love what you said. Thank you for everything that you said. And thank you for advocating for that, because it’s so critical right now. We’re in a potentially existential battle with Russia. The U.S. is now effectively at war with Russia; it’s a nuclear power. They have thousands more nuclear weapons than we do, and nobody seems to be caring about this. So, I love what you said.

My uncle, in that speech, which I agree is one of the most important speeches given in American history. He [then] negotiated secretly a nuclear test ban treaty with Khrushchev. My uncle and Khrushchev had developed this extraordinary friendship with each other where they could talk to each other on a hotline. Their state departments, their intelligence apparatuses all wanted to go to war, but both of them had been to war. Khrushchev had been at Stalingrad, and the last thing he wanted was to go to war. He recognized that he was a partner with my uncle. They wrote each other 26 secret letters.

We had a Soviet spy who used to visit our house when I was a little boy. His name was Georgi Bolshakov, and we loved him. He would play with me and my ten brothers and sisters, do Cossack dancing, climb ropes with my dad and do push-up contests. It was cool for us because we knew he was a KGB spy and a GRU spy. This was at a time when all the James Bond movies were coming out, so it was cool to have a spy at our house.

Khrushchev knew he couldn’t trust the people in his military apparatus, and my uncle knew he couldn’t trust his. They began corresponding with each other, hiding their letters in [copies of] the New York Times when Georgi Bolshakov would fly back and forth from Moscow. They devised a plan to create the first nuclear weapons treaty of the nuclear age, which was the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And they negotiated it secretly. They kept the State Department and CIA out of it. And when they got the treaty, the U.S. sympathy for that treaty was 80 to 20 against it. The military was in rebellion against my uncle. The Senate, House and even the Democrats were all against it.

That speech [the June 10, 1963, American University speech] was the beginning of turning the tide. He said something extraordinary to the American people. We had all been raised with this idea that we had won the war. “It was America that beat Hitler!” We were watching shows like Combat on TV that showed the Americans beating the Nazis and winning the war.

And my uncle said, “No. It was the Russians who won the war.” One out of every seven Russians were killed in that war. Hitler leveled a third of the country. My uncle said, “Imagine if every city was reduced to rubble, every field burned, every forest burned between the East Coast and Chicago. That’s what happened to Russia.” And he said, “We need to put ourselves into their shoes. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of our adversaries.” And it was the first time Americans had heard that, and they started thinking differently about it.

Two months later, that treaty was passed. And I think it’s important for us to think about today, because nobody has talked to Putin for a year. We have no high-level relationship with Russia. We need to be talking to them. We need to do what my uncle said, which is to put ourselves in the shoes of our adversary.