Kennedy's message to Moscow and his fellow Americans:

"If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity."

As George Beebe writes in his essay, "It's a Big World: The Importance of Diversity in American Foreign Policy," in the July National Interest, Kennedy later elaborated:

"We must recognize that we cannot remake the world simply by our own command. … Every nation has its own traditions, its own values, its own aspirations. … We cannot remake them in our own image."

To Kennedy, a student of history, acceptance of the reality of a world of diverse political systems, many of them unfree, was a precondition of peace on earth and avoidance of a new world war.