Vincent Mercator.
The Offensive of the Dove was a global peace initiative announced by Mexican President Vincent Mercator on 20 November 1962, five months after Kramer Associates detonated the world's first atomic bomb.
In announcing his initiative, Mercator called upon the world's nations to sign a non-aggression pact which would also guarantee the neutrality of those countries that had not been involved in the Global War. He also called for a world conference of the belligerent nations (all of whom were technically still at war with each other, since no formal armistice had ever been negotiated between any nations) to meet in Geneva the following summer to sign treaties ending the war. Mercator ended by vowing never to "start a war, and to destroy all offensive weapons after the treaties are signed."
Both the German Empire and Great Britain announced their refusal to attend the Geneva Conference, since no agenda had been agreed upon. In January 1963 German Chancellor Adolph Markstein dismissed the Offensive of the Dove as "a propaganda play and nothing more," and British Prime Minister Philip Halliwell said, "The President would not be so anxious to have us in Geneva had he a bomb in Mexico City."
Despite the lack of participation by the Germans and British, 113 nations attended the Geneva Conference (presumably including the Confederation of North America, though Sobel does not specifically say so), and signed the non-aggression pact. Sobel notes that the pact had no enforcement provisions, and was therefore meaningless. Since Germany and Britain technically remained at war with each other, and with any other nations they had fought in the war, Mercator was under no obligation to destroy Mexico's military weapons. Sobel notes that while the Offensive of the Dove was ongoing, the U.S.M. was also working to create its own atomic bomb under Secretary of War Diego Calvares.
Although Mercator's peace initiative accomplished nothing concrete, he was able to enjoy a year of favorable public opinion. Since the failure of the Geneva Conference, Mercator has continued to complain that his peace initiative would have succeeded had it not been sabotaged by the British and Germans.
Sobel's source for the Offensive of the Dove is Heinz Kerl's Mexico Under the Banner (London, 1966).
This was the Featured Article for the month of August 2019.