Franklin D. Roosevelt	Barack Obama

By DR. LLOYD V. STOVER

I never met President Roosevelt. I voted for him once, and for a time I was a neighbor of his son, Elliott, in South Miami. Both of us had been World War II fliers and we frequently had occasions to discuss the ways of the world since the war.

One day Elliott told me about his last meeting with his father. The date was March 29, 1945, the day that the 33rd president departed for his last visit to Warm Springs, Ga., where he suffered a heart attack and died.

Elliott said his father was distressed by the rising number of confrontations that were occurring all over the world. He said, “Father talked to me about the shifts in power through the ages: the Chinese, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks Romans, Western Europeans, British and, finally, the United States emerged as world leaders.” I was reminded of Toynbee’s “A Study of History.”

Elliott went on, “Father emphasized, how long our country remains a leader depends on what we do in the last half of this century. Ours is probably the most difficult challenge of all. All other powers created their eras of leadership through conquest and domination of other nations. We must lead the world away from conquest toward the goal of peaceful solution of our mutual problems.”

I recall being told that the president emphasized that peace on earth through an end of armed conflict will elude us unless we can overcome some basic faults of humanity. First and foremost of these is the innate greed of the individual man. And there is the basic lack of understanding of each other by the haves and have-nots, compounded by differences in language and ethnic backgrounds.

While I was thinking about this, I heard. “To these basic obstacles must be added the problems of overpopulation, with the resulting starvation of millions, drainage of the earth’s natural resources, pollution of our air and water and, lastly, our failure to utilize the scientific research of all humanity to seek and find solutions to all these seemingly insoluble problems.

I agreed with everything I heard. Then I ventured to ask Elliott what he thought his father intended to do about this multitude of problems. Then he told me about his father’s dream.

Its seems that FDR was speculating about the speech he intended to make in San Francisco at the founding of the United Nations. According to Elliott, his father often woke up with clear ideas — after he had gone to bed — wrestling with a complex variety of issues.

FDR offered Elliott a preview of what he intended to say and hoped to accomplish at the U.N. conference. It went something like this:

“My fellow citizens of the world we are gathered here as your representatives for one purpose. We are faced with the fact that self-destruction may overcome us all. Since the last global conflict, which ended in 1945, we have created a body designated by its founders to mediate disputes among nations and bring equal dignity, liberty, and opportunity to all people.”

“Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relations -- the ability of all peoples, all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace.”

 “The work is for peace.  More than an end of war — Yes, and end to the beginning of all wars. Yes, an end forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of differences between governments by the mass killing of peoples.  Today, we must move against the terrible scourge of war and go forward toward the greatest contribution that any generation of human beings can make in the world -- the contribution of lasting peace.”

These powerful ideas, by perhaps our greatest U.S. president, were advanced nearly 70 years ago. Since then, nuclear fission as a weapon of mass destruction has come into being. The United States decided to keep this discovery to itself, and not turn control over to the United Nations, the international peace-keeping agency. Since then, the Soviet Union and a dozen other nations have developed the same capabilities.

During the last half-century, millions have been killed, and millions more have been made homeless. All over the world, corrupt governments and inept  leaders have brought on civil wars and conditions for terrorist groups  that have been disastrously costly in lives and well-being. Unfortunately, most major powers have contributed to this carnage.

At the same time, all the major industrial powers have competed with one another to achieve economic superiority. Unfortunately, a huge proportion of the world’s productive capacity has been spent in the creation of more and more armaments.

Today, the United Nations is an organization made up of many nations. Unfortunately, many nations are not represented by people concerned about the greatest good of all the people. It would appear that that the UN, founded with the noblest aims, has deteriorated into a debating society for self-serving blocks, each seeking to get a special benefit from the others.

During the Cold War the United States maintained a strategy of supremacy and freedom to maneuver across the globe. Since then, we continue efforts to prevent any rival from jeopardizing the availability of strategic resources, especially oil. To most of the world the latter half of the 20th century must have seemed to be a special form of world order to benefit the United States.

Now it appears that the international system constructed following World War II is undergoing a transition, which will be accelerated by the current economic crisis. At the same time the rise of emerging nations, a globalizing economy, population shifts, and effects on the global environment — mean that our present world will be almost unrecognizable by 2025. The glorious era of global growth is going to be stagnant for awhile. Historically economic turmoil has been accompanied by social unrest.

If FDR were alive today, he would find a disintegrating world order, brought on by economic and military competition and by irresponsible leadership extending throughout most of the nations of the world.
Seventy years after Franklin Roosevelt shared his views with his son, Elliott, it is essential that we begin to tackle the problems he enumerated, or our human civilization will likely face even more severe consequences worldwide.

Sometimes a crisis provides an opportunity. President-elect Barrack Obama has almost instantaneously become a global symbol as was Franklin Roosevelt, like none other I can recall in my lifetime. He appears to intend to establish an administration that will create a detailed understanding of condition of other countries and display an empathy for the aspirations of people around the world — this would change America’s reputation in lasting ways.

Like the end of World War II, this is a rare moment in  history. A more responsive America, better attuned to the rest of the world, could help create a new set of ideas and institutions — a blueprint of peace for the 21st century would contribute to stability, prosperity and dignity to the lives of billions of people.

 Ten years from now, the world will have moved on; the rising powers will insist on a new agenda with Washington, Brussels and Peking. But at this time and for our new president, there is a unique opportunity to revive Franklin Roosevelt’s dream to reshape the world to improve the quality of the overall human environment.
This is the moment. Let’s hope he is able to seize it.

 •
Dr. Lloyd V. Stover was a science adviser to Vice President Hubert Humphrey and participated in transition teams for president’s Carter and Clinton. He may be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it