Read complete books and articles on: Nuclear Freeze Movement

Disarmament, Nuclear - the reduction and limitation of the various nuclear weapons in the military forces of the world's nations. The atomic bombs dropped (1945) on Japan by the United States in World War II demonstrated the overwhelming destructive potential of nuclear weapons and the threat to humanity posed by the possibility of nuclear war and led to calls for controls on or elimination of

Public Pressure

Some of the scientists who helped make the bomb started the Union of Concerned Scientists, and since then many public groups have formed to campaign for disarmament, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the United Kingdom, SANE and the Nuclear Freeze in the United States, and the worldwide Physicians for Social Responsibility. In addition, many local antiwar, ecological, and women's groups have focused on nuclear issues. Disarmament advocates have used political campaigns, mass rallies, blockades of facilities where weapons are manufactured or stored, and even attacks on nuclear weapons themselves, called "ploughshare actions." Disarmament groups have long opposed nuclear testing, beginning with the protests leading up to the Moscow Agreement of 1963, a partial test ban. More recently, the international ecological group Greenpeace has tried to disrupt French nuclear testing in the Pacific, and there have been coordinated protest campaigns against testing in Kazakhstan and in Nevada.

International Agreements

Official efforts at arms control have made some progress, but only very slowly. The first resolution (1946) of the General Assembly of the United Nations set up an Atomic Energy Commission to make proposals for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. The commission concentrated debate on the Baruch Plan for an international agency to control atomic power and weapons and passed it, but the plan was vetoed by the USSR in the Security Council. As the cold war progressed, the commission reached an impasse (1948). With the proliferation of nuclear weapons, concern over the situation became more acute.

In 1952 a UN Disarmament Commission was formed under the Security Council. It became the repository for all disarmament proposals under UN auspices. In 1953 a commission subcommittee was set up, consisting of Canada, France, Great Britain, the United States, and the USSR. In this subcommittee, which met intermittently from 1954 to 1957, there was basic disagreement between East and West. The West held that an international control system and on-site inspection must be developed before disarmament could proceed; the USSR stated that the Western position would result in inspection without disarmament and proposed instead an immediate ban on nuclear weapons, without inspection but with possible later, but unspecified, controls. Conferences among the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union on the formulation of a treaty to ban nuclear testing began in Geneva in 1958. The same year these three powers agreed to suspend nuclear testing for one year. The voluntary moratorium continued until it was broken by the Soviet resumption of testing (1961).

The UN Disarmament Commission, expanded (1958) to include all members of the United Nations, was reduced in 1962 to 18 members. Soon afterward, France withdrew. In 1963 the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union reached the Moscow Agreement, which banned testing in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater. Other discussions were conducted simultaneously by the 18-member UN Disarmament Commission. No agreement was reached on arms limitation, although the Soviet Union and the United States moved closer together on the issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The two countries proposed (1968) to the commission a 25-year nonproliferation agreement that was later approved by the UN General Assembly and took effect in 1970; it was made permament in 1995. By the end of the century the treaty had been ratified by all nations save Cuba, Israel, Pakistan, and India. North Korea threatened to withdraw in the 1990s and did so in 2003. Pakistan and India have tested nuclear weapons, and Israel and North Korea are believed to have them. South Africa, Libya, Iran, and Brazil are known to have or are suspected of having attempted to develop nuclear weapons; South Africa actually produced a small nuclear arsenal. Both South Africa and Libya have abandoned their weapons programs.

A comprehensive test ban treaty was approved by the UN General Assembly and signed in 1996; over 170 nations have now signed. The treaty prohibits all nuclear testing, establishes a worldwide network of monitoring stations, and allows for inspections of suspicious sites. Conservative opposition to the treaty in the United States led the Senate to reject ratification in 1999; it was ratified by Russia in 2000.

The Soviet Union and the United States began Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in the late 1960s, and in 1972 agreed to limit antiballistic missiles (ABMs) and reached an interim accord limiting intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Another interim SALT agreement was reached in Nov., 1974, that limited ballistic missile launchers. SALT II, which banned new ICBMs and limited other delivery vehicles, was signed in 1979. It was never ratified, but both countries announced they would adhere to it.

In 1982 the United States and Soviet Union began a new set of negotiations, called START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). In 1987, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the INF treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces, and a START treaty, signed by President George H. W. Bush and Gorbachev in 1991, called for additional reductions in U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals and on-site inspections. In response to increasing Soviet political instability, Bush announced (1991) the elimination of most U.S. tactical nuclear arms, took strategic bombers off alert status, and called for further reductions in ballistic missiles.

With the USSR's disintegration, its nuclear arms passed to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. The republics pledged to abide by existing treaties and remove outlying weapons to Russia for destruction. In 1993, Bush and Russian president Yeltsin signed a START II treaty that called for cutting nuclear warheads by two thirds by 2003 and eliminating those weapons most likely to be used in a first strike. Ukraine, fearing Russian domination, did not ratify START and the 1970 nonproliferation treaty until 1994, but by 1996 the nuclear arsenals of Belarus, Kazakstan, and Ukraine had been dismantled. In 1997, Yeltsin and U.S. president Bill Clinton set a goal of further reducing the number of each nation's warheads to 2,500 or less, less than half that permitted under START II. President George W. Bush, regarding earlier arms agreements and the need for them as cold war relics, in 2001 agreed with Russian president Putin to reduce the number of warheads over the next decade to roughly two thirds that called for in START II, while at the same time essentially abandoning that agreement (which was still unratified by the United States) and its restrictions on the types of weapons permitted. This agreement was formalized in the May, 2002, Moscow Treaty. However, under the treaty, both nations are allowed to store the weapons that they remove from deployment, and the accord has been criticized for its lack of a mechanism to verify compliance. Following the U.S. abandonment of the ABM treaty (see below), Russia announced that it would no longer be bound by START II.

In 1983, President Reagan proposed the development of a U.S. space-based defensive system to act as a shield against a missile attack. The Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars" as it was popularly known, was ultimately abandoned by the United States, but a more limited missile-defense system using ground-based missiles to provide protection against an accidental launching of a ballistic missile or against a missile attack from a "rogue" nation was proposed in 1991 by President G. H. W. Bush. Such a system would contravene the 1972 ABM treaty and was objected to by Russia, but development and testing proceeded during the 1990s. In 2001, President George W. Bush proposed accelerating and expanding the development and deployment of the system and called for the ABM treaty to be replaced by a new "framework" that would permit such defenses. The United States announced that it would withdraw from the ABM treaty in Dec., 2001, and officially withdrew in June, 2002.

Bibliography

See W. Epstein and B. Feld, New Directions in Disarmament (1981); J. Schell, The Abolition (1986); M. Thee, Arms and Disarmament (1987).

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9 of the Best Books and Articles on: Nuclear Freeze Movement

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Coalitions & Political Movements: The Lessons of the Nuclear Freeze » Read Now
by Thomas R. Rochon. 261 pgs.

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2.

Organizing for Peace: Neutrality, the Test Ban, and the Freeze (Chap. 6 "The Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign") » Read Now
by Robert Kleidman. 266 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Organizing for Peace skillfully compares and analyzes the three major campaigns of the peace movement in the United States since World War I - the Emergency Peace Campaign (1936-1937), the Atomic Test Ban Campaign (1957-1963), and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign (1979-1986). Kleidman shows how...
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Organizing for Peace skillfully compares and analyzes the three major campaigns of the peace movement in the United States since World War I - the Emergency Peace Campaign (1936-1937), the Atomic Test Ban Campaign (1957-1963), and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign (1979-1986). Kleidman shows how the campaigns organizational dynamics shaped their rise, course, fall, and impact both on public policy and on the peace movement itself. But as Kleidman points out, the three groups failed despite widespread mobilization and intense activism. Combining careful historical research with insights from contemporary social movement theory, this book sheds new light on the campaigns and the peace movement, as well as on key aspects of social movement organizations, cycles, and trends. Particularly valuable for policy and analysis is Kleidman's framework of organizational tensions. Social scientists and historians, particularly students and scholars of social movements and peace movements, will value the policy implications and analytical rigor of this book.
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3.

Congress and the Nuclear Freeze: An Inside Look at the Politics of a Mass Movement » Read Now
by Douglas C. Waller. 346 pgs.

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...Representatives. The rise of the nuclear freeze movement displays a fundamental...halted the arms race, but the nuclear freeze movement brought us a step closer...arms...
4.

Peace Works: The Citizen's Role in Ending the Cold War (Chap. 2 "The Nuclear Freeze") » Read Now
by David A. Cortright. 288 pgs.

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...active participant in the nuclear freeze movement, the stop MX campaign...activist pressures from the nuclear freeze movement. Yet certain causal relationships...examine...
5.

Peace Protest and Policy: Explaining the Rise and Decline of Antinuclear Movements in Postwar America, in Policy Studies Journal » Read Now
by David S. Meyer. 20 pgs.

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...and declining in 1984 (the nuclear freeze movement). Both coincided roughly...clearly an impetus for the nuclear freeze movement in the 1980s, just as Reagans...anti-ABM...
6.

Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State (Chap. 9. "Limits to Transnationalism: The 1980s Freeze Campaign") » Read Now
by Jackie Smith, Charles Chatfield, Ron Pagnucco. 314 pgs.

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7.

Return to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1981-1999 ("The Nuclear Freeze" begins on p. 18) » Read Now
by Ronald E. Powaski. 294 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

When the Cold War ended, the world let out a collective sigh of relief as the fear of nuclear confrontation between superpowers appeared to vanish overnight. As we approach the new millennium, however, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to ever more belligerent countries and factions raises...
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When the Cold War ended, the world let out a collective sigh of relief as the fear of nuclear confrontation between superpowers appeared to vanish overnight. As we approach the new millennium, however, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to ever more belligerent countries and factions raises alarming new concerns about the threat of nuclear war. In Return to Armageddon, Ronald Powaski assesses the dangers that beset us as we enter an increasingly unstable political world. With the START I and II treaties, completed by George Bush in 1991 and 1993 respectively, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, it seemed as if the nuclear clock had been successfully turned back to a safer hour. But Powaski shows that there is much less reason for optimism than we may like to think. Continued U.S.-Russian cooperation can no longer be assured. To make matters worse, Russia has not ratified the START II Treaty and the U.S. Senate has failed to approve the CTBT. Perhaps even more ominously, the effort to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nonweapon states is threatened by nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan. The nuclear club is growing and its most recent members are increasingly hostile. Indeed, it is becoming ever more difficult to keep track of the expertise and material needed to build nuclear weapons, which almost certainly will find their way into terrorist hands. Accessible, authoritative, and provocative, Return to Armageddon provides both a comprehensive account of the arms control process and a startling reappraisal of the nuclear threat that refuses to go away.
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8.

The Perils of a Nuclear Freeze, in World Affairs » Read Now
by Joshua Muravchik. 5 pgs.

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...possessed both the will and the capability to deter it. Today, that capability is in jeopardy. And the rise of the nuclear freeze movement means that the will, too, is in...
9.

Confining the Military to Defense as a Route to Disarmament, in World Policy Journal » Read Now
by Randall Forsberg. 34 pgs.

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...helping to found the nuclear freeze movement in 1980. only way...interventions. The nuclear freeze movement has challenged the...But the popular freeze movement has had...