Beyond the Cold War: Lyndon Johnson and the New Global Challenges of the 1960s

On 10 June 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered the commencement address at the College of the Holy Cross. He began his speech by talking about the Cold War, committing his administration to the pursuit of peace and coexistence. Quickly, however, Johnson went a different direction, warning the students about a host of emerging international problems that had been largely ignored because of the focus on superpower relations. Even if the Cold War ended, he noted, Americans would find themselves “on a new battleground as filled with danger and as fraught with difficulty as any ever faced by man. For many of our most urgent problems do not spring from the cold war or even from the ambitions of our adversaries.” Instead, he warned of problems that “menace man's welfare and will threaten it even when armed destruction and war are things of the past. They are the problems of...