Ask the Scholar

Reading copy of President John F. Kennedy's radio and television address to the nation regarding the Soviet Union's military presence in Cuba. In his speech the President reports the establishment of missile sites presumably intended to launch a nuclear offensive against Western nations. He characterizes the transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base as an explicit threat to American security, and explains seven components to his proposed course of action: quarantine all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba, increase degree of surveillance, regard possible attack launched from Cuba as Soviet attack, reinforce Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, call for a meeting of the Organ of Consultation, call for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, and demand that Premier Nikita Khrushchev cease his current course of action. In his speech the President famously states, "Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right- not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this Hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world."