In the midst of increasing global stresses, this may be the right time for overdue changes in American policies to bring the world closer to peace and to facilitate wider acceptance of a more enlightened leadership role for the country. Firstly, the USA should make significant and sincere efforts to improve its relationship with Russia and China, even if only for the sake of world peace.

These relationships have seen better, safer times and despite all the hostility, it is still possible for diplomacy to repair and improve these relationships before the hostility spirals out of control and causes unacceptable harm to the involved countries as also to the prospects of world peace and safety. Secondly, within the wider framework of commitment to these peaceful relationships, a quick unconditional ceasefire should be achieved in Ukraine, while more contentious issues are left to be resolved by negotiations.

This should be followed up quickly by a large-scale reconstruction and rehabilitation effort. In fact, if these three countries can cooperate sincerely, with the help of local partners, to bring peace to some highly troubled parts of Africa (with the efforts centered in Sudan and Somalia but including some neighboring countries as well), this will be a noble and much needed effort, because the region is increasingly affected by catastrophic hunger and famine-like conditions and relief cannot reach the needy in conditions of widespread violence and civil strife. This should be accompanied by raising an additional sum of at least about $10 billion for food and other relief efforts in Africa, to which all leading countries can contribute.

These efforts will contribute greatly to reducing distress immediately as well as help the cause of peace in the short-term as well as longerterm. These should be followed by a number of other efforts to restore the world’s confidence in the ability of the USA to provide a leadership role for creating a world based on peace, environment protection and justice. Scientists have given ample warning of the seriousness of climate change as well as of the short time humanity has to check its impacts.

This unprecedented environmental challenge can be effectively faced by humanity only in conditions of international cooperation. America can still play the most important role in ensuring that this unprecedented, huge challenge is accepted and effectively tackled by the world community to save our planet. This environmental crisis constitutes one part of the two-dimensional survival crisis the world faces in the 21st century, a crisis that without doubt has the capacity to inflict grave harm on the basic life-nurturing conditions of our planet. The other part of this crisis consists of accumulation of weapons of mass destruction.

Here, too, America can make the most important contribution of reducing the grave dangers for the entire world. The first step for this would be to renew, revive and strengthen some of the earlier arms control treaties, but the work has to go much further and this would be possible only in the context of wider peace and confidence building efforts involving the USA, China and Russia as well as other leading countries. Such efforts when they succeed in improving peace prospects can help to release a lot of resources for reducing internal problems relating to distress of the weakest sections, health and education needs. In fact the world needs more resources for reducing hunger and deprivation, and more broadly for achieving sustainable development goals. All nations will have to contribute the best they can to achieve this, but from its position of strength, America can clearly contribute the most.

At the same time, the prospects for such significant gains for the entire world reduce significantly when America is found to be giving its attention to avoidable wars. America’s quest for an enlightened leadership role was best articulated by President John F. Kennedy in his famous ‘World Peace’ speech delivered on 10 June 1963 just a few months before his tragic assassination. A short while earlier he along with Nikita Khrushchev had contributed greatly to bring the world back from the edge of a possible nuclear war at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

This crisis could be resolved only in a spirit of give and take and understanding the concerns of each other (the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its nuclear missiles from Cuba while the USA agreed to withdraw its nuclear missiles from Turkey). Drawing on the moral strength from this initiative, President Kennedy had appealed to his fellow Americans to rise above all narrow considerations to integrate domestic peace (with justice) to world peace and to play a great role in creating a safer and more peaceful world, with special emphasis on reducing the threat from nuclear weapons.

So great has been the enduring value of this speech that recently when its 60th anniversary was observed, its great utility for resolving present-day issues was also emphasised, most importantly its value for resolving the Ukraine conflict. At a wider level, this speech can still provide the guidelines for the USA to give up its wars and move rapidly towards an enlightened leadership role for establishing world peace. Can America do this?

(The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children and A Day in 2071.)