US National Security Strategy

In pursuit of our goals, our first imperative is to clarify what we stand for: the United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. Fathers and mothers in all societies want their children to be educated and to live free from poverty and violence. No people on earth yearn to be oppressed, aspire to servitude, or eagerly await the midnight knock of the secret police.

America must stand firmly for the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property.

Not short on ambition, especially in those 'nonnegotiable demands of human dignity'. Kennedy was little less specific. I haven't read all the document, but those lines stood out.

For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Maybe it comes down to the same thing. It is hard to imagine how Kennedy's dreams of peace (for that was the concern of the speech that quote comes from) could be realised without those demand being met.