(LifeSiteNews) — Rising star Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has earned significant favorability against incumbent Joe Biden since he launched his left-field candidacy in April, argued for peace and de-escalation amid rising tensions with Russia in a speech heavily referencing the policies advanced by his uncle, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

During a 30-minute address at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire on Tuesday, author, environmental lawyer, and well-known vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy told his audience that, together, “we can restore America to the awesome vitality of the original Kennedy era” through de-escalation and trust-building.

“As in my uncle’s time, nuclear tensions are at an extreme and dangerous level,” Kennedy said, harkening back to JFK’s “Peace Speech” given at  American University in Washington, D.C. in June 1963. 

In the speech, the former president (who was assassinated just months later in November 1963), urged Americans living amid Cold War era tensions with Soviet Russia to recognize areas of commonality with the Russians — despite seeing communism as “profoundly repugnant” — in order to avoid holding a “distorted and desperate view of the other side.” 

Sixty years later, Kennedy Jr. urged Americans to adopt a similar attitude as Russia’s conflict with Ukraine persists.

“As in [JFK’s] time, we have a unique opportunity not only to diffuse those tensions but to take a radically different path,” he said. “A path towards peace.”

Blasting the so-called “Forever War” and the increasing build-up of the U.S. military, which he argued has fulfilled American founders’ anxieties about the likelihood for imperialism abroad to result in a weakened economy and increased surveillance at home, he said America is now facing “the unspeakable horror of nuclear Armageddon.”

According to Kennedy, it’s “a dangerous lie” that nuclear conflict could result in anything but devastation.

“We have been immersed in a foreign policy discourse that is all about adversaries, and threats, and allies, and enemies, and domination,” he said. “We’ve become addicted to comic book good versus evil narratives that erase complexity and blind us to the legitimate motives and the legitimate cultural [and] economic concerns, and the legitimate security concerns, of other peoples and other nations.”

“I abhor Russia’s brutal and bloody invasion of that nation,” Kennedy stated. “But we must understand that our government has also contributed to its circumstances through repeated, deliberate provocations of Russia going back to the 1990s.”

He said the U.S. violated its agreement not to expand NATO territory toward Russia and has subsequently “surrounded Russia with missiles and military bases, something that we would never tolerate if the Russians did that to us.”

Calling Ukraine “a pawn in a proxy war between the United States and Russia,” Kennedy said that the U.S. is engaging in an all-out bid to topple Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regime, unnecessarily sparking a perilous escalation of nuclear tensions.

RELATED: RFK Jr. demands Biden apologize to America, Ukraine for pushing ‘ugly proxy war’

According to Kennedy, America needs to work toward peace by replacing suspicion with trust-building and by reversing escalation.

“Today, America has broken off practically all diplomatic contact with Russia. So, that communication has indeed become little ‘more than an exchange of threats’ and insults,” he said, quoting from JFK’s “Peace Speech.”

“FDR met with Stalin,” he said. “JFK met with Khrushchev. Nixon met with Brezhnev. Reagan met with Gorbachev. Can’t Biden meet with Putin? Or can’t we at least begin a conversation?”

“Peace comes from a changed attitude,” Kennedy Jr. said, quoting his uncle as having said that “the primary job of an American president is to keep the country out of war.”

“I, therefore, call on our present leadership to adopt President Kennedy’s maxims and to start de-escalating right now,” he said, going on to urge “every American to join in a new peace movement. To make your voices heard to reject the insanity of escalation and to celebrate no longer the ‘wartime president,’ but a president who keeps the peace.”

A lifelong Democrat, Kennedy has drawn considerable recognition among conservatives in recent years for his skepticism of big government and hardline stance opposing vaccines, particularly the experimental and oft-mandated COVID-19 jabs.

He is the founder and chief legal counsel of nonprofit organization Children’s Health Defense, which has taken a central role in combating the prevailing narrative surrounding COVID-19, particularly with regard to vaccines.

Though Kennedy has found common ground with conservatives over issues pertaining to medical freedom, throughout his public career he has primarily supported left-wing figures and agendas.

A strong believer in climate change, Kennedy Jr. also supported Barack Obama for president and backed the nationwide redefinition of marriage to include homosexual unions.

On the issue of abortion, Kennedy’s stated priority is to reduce government involvement in the issue rather than pursue more robust protections for the lives of unborn babies, LifeSiteNews previously reported.

READ: RFK Jr. declares he would ‘keep government away’ from banning abortion as president

In a statement to Newsweek published May 15, a spokesperson for Kennedy said the presidential hopeful  “believes strongly in the principle of bodily autonomy, whether the issue is abortion or medical mandates.”

“He will keep government away from women’s childbearing choices,” the spokesperson said. “The moral issues are best left to the woman, her family, and her religious community.”