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@ Beneath The Ink
2025-02-14 17:34:05
“IN THIS SPRING of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples,” Dwight D. Eisenhower’s throat went dry and he swallowed to alleviate the burn. Eight years had passed since the end of world war 2 but still the beaches of the Marshall Islands lay charred, Hiroshima and Nagasaki dosed in radiation and ruin, and countless ghost towns still littered Europe’s mangled face.
Dwight peered through his glasses at his speech on the podium, then raised his gaze back at the small crowd gathered in front of him in the conference room at the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. Everyone was on the edge of their seats.
The President spoke of peace, but the United States faced a great enemy in the Soviet Union. How would he continue?
“To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.”
The heads among the spectators raised in hope, as if the enthusiasm in the President’s voice could be enough to wipe away any prospect of future war against the Soviet threat.
“In that spring of victory the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument-an age of just peace. All these war-weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.”
“This common purpose lasted an instant and perished. The nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads.”
“The United States and our valued friends, the other free nations, chose one road.”
“The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.”
“The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.”
**What came next in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s speech “The Chance for Peace” is the answer to preventing wars between countries**
“First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the **common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.**
Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in **effective cooperation** with fellow nations.
Third: **Any nation's right to a form of government and an economic system** of its own choosing **is inalienable**.
Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government **is indefensible**.
And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon **just relations and honest understanding** with all other nations.”
**I. First Point**
When you minimize any nation or country to its most granular piece, the human family, you realize every nation or country is the same. It is a larger body of human families looking to establish peace out of chaos against nature, fellowship with their neighbor to make that peace possible, and justice against affronts to the foundations of the formerly stated peace and fellowship. Without this, what you have is not a nation but rather wilderness.
**II. Second Point**
When we enter the world stage and look at the community of nations it is important we understand that no nation can truly expect to uphold Eisenhower’s first point without the ability to cooperate with other nations. There can be a natural disaster that strikes an entire nation and without exterior help, it may be impossible to overcome.
Understand, Eisenhower’s second point only serves as an extension of the first point. Humankind's struggle with nature will always exist, but in cooperation with other communities we can overcome hardship against nature and live in better harmony.
**III. Third Point**
It cannot be argued that humans, after millenia of having dispersed across the planet, have collected into pockets of communities of which grew and developed with experiences based on the place in the world where they’ve resided.
This has birthed cultures, religions, and moral codes that serve as the foundation of different branches of philosophy that have borne the fruit of governance. Ultimately, no two communities shares the exact same moral code and thus do not share, and will never share, the exact same understanding of what governance should take place. In this respect, it is an inalienable right of the very people within a community to choose how they govern themselves.
**IV. Fourth Point**
In trying to impeded on this third point, we come to Eisenhower’s fourth point which is that no other community has the right to dictate how other nations govern themselves.
**V. Final Point**
Lastly, war will never lead to peace. Only common understanding of the first four points will ever lead to true peace. A race in armaments, as the cold war proved, only leads to further distrust and the breakdown of all other points among the community of nations on the world stage.
All that can be done to expect peace is to take your neighbor as they are. St. Augustine has a famous quote, “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”
This is meant to drive home the point of faith in the unbelievable. It is how a religious person can believe in a god that they can not prove exists.
Some might say there will never be a world without war. I say we already have the recipe for it. We’ve been given this recipe by many leaders throughout our history. Leader’s who’ve witnessed the darkest depths of human evil and wanted to steer humanity away from it.
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