Here is the video and my transcript (after jump) of Barack Obama’s speech in Prague, before about 20,000 people, calling for a world without nuclear weapons. Via Steve Benen.
For anyone who remembers, it’s difficult to listen to Obama, here, and not think of John F. Kennedy’s American University speech on June 10, 1963.
Now one of those issues that I’ll focus on today is fundamental to the security of our nations and the peace of the world. That’s the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague, that existed for centuries, that embodied the beauty and the talent of so much of humanity, would have ceased to exist.
Today, the Cold War has disappeared — but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons; testing has continued; black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build, or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a global nonproliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold.
Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city, be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague, could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be — our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked, that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary. For if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.
Now, just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st century [applause and cheers for several moments. I think that’s why he stumbled a little in the next sentence. He had to stop speaking for a few seconds, and he lost his momentum.] And as nuclear power– as, as, a nuclear power — as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it. We can start it.
So today, I state clearly and with conviction: America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons [sustained applause for about 10 seconds]. I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist: Yes, we can. [Loud cheers, and the video ends there.]
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