Kennedy contrasts two possible approaches to international conflict: preparing primarily for destruction, or deliberately building conditions that reduce the likelihood of war. By describing peace as a ‘strategy’, he presents it not as passive hope but as something requiring planning, negotiation, restraint and sustained political effort.

In the context of his American University address, the statement reflects Kennedy’s attempt to move Cold War policy away from permanent confrontation and towards practical measures that could lower nuclear risks. The phrase does not reject military preparedness altogether, but argues that security should ultimately serve the prevention of catastrophe rather than make annihilation the organising principle of policy. The quotation therefore expresses a shift from thinking mainly in terms of defeating an adversary to considering how rival powers might manage their differences without destroying one another.