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D.3.b. Comparative and General Studies
Well-documented examination of the role of transnational civil movements in contributing to arms control and the ending of the Cold War. Includes assessment of the Pugwash Conference which brought together scientists from East and West, and also the wider anti-war movement.
The authors reinterpret the Cold War as an ‘imaginary war’, a conflict that had visions of nuclear devastation as one of its main battlegrounds, and provide and cultural representations of nuclear war. There are chapters and case studies on Western Europe, the USSR, Japan and the USA. Drawing on various strands of intellectual debate and from different media, such as documentary film and debates among physicians, the contributors demonstrate the difficulties in making the unthinkable and unimaginable - nuclear apocalypse - imaginable. The aim is to make nuclear culture relevant to an understanding of the period from 1945 to 1990.
Essays arising out of May 1984 conference at the Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel, on peace movements in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, West Germany, France, Italy, Britain and the US. Focus is on the anti-nuclear movements of the 1980s, though some contributors sketch the earlier history of movements in their countries.
Generally critical contributions on the peace movements of the 1980s in various European countries and their impact on the Western alliance. Includes chapter on the US peace movement of the 1980s.
Discusses cultural and social bases of protest against nuclear weapons, role of nationalism in the movements, and importance of British types of activism for German protest in light of experience in World War Two and the cold war. See also: , Demonstrating for “Peace” in the Cold War: The British and West German Easter Marches 1958-64 In Reiss, Matthias , The Street as Stage: Protest Marches and Public Rallies since the Nineteenth Century Oxford, Oxford University Press, , 2007 , chap. 15; Nehring, Holger , National Internationalists: British and West German Protests Against Nuclear Weapons, the Politics of Transnational Communication and the Social Hisotry of the Cold War 1957-1964 Contemporary European History, 2005, pp. 559-582 .
This brief history of opposition to nuclear weapons has a global focus, though from a US perspective, and covers the evolution of the movement up to 1991. It starts in 1944 with the opposition of nuclear scientists. The author argues that the movement included an array of tactics, from radical dissent to public protest to opposition within the government, and succeeded in constraining the arms race and helping to make the use of nuclear weapons politically unacceptable.
Wide-ranging analysis of West European anti-missile/nuclear disarmament campaigns 1979-1986, incorporating discussion of social movement theory and the wider political context. Focuses particularly on Britain, the Netherlands, West Germany and France. It includes great deal of information on organizations, campaigns and types of action, as well as many useful sources and references.
The thesis starts from the political context of the late 1970s when, despite detente, the US was developing its nuclear weapons arsenal, and apartheid South Africa emerged as a nuclear weapons state. Black campaigners against nuclear weapons emerged in both countries, and both suffered from racial discrimination, but the very different political contexts made organized opposition to nuclear policies very much harder in South Africa. However, in both cases nuclear weapon developments were closely linked to an international context, and both movements also relied heavily on international allies.
Covers responses to the Bomb from 1945-1953, including by scientists and churches, but with emphasis on the Soviet-initiated protests under the World Peace Council.
Extensive and thoroughly researched history of campaigns and governments responses, which includes quite a lot of material on nonviolent direct action.
Traces the development of the movement in the 1970s, the rise of a new activism in the 1980s, the ‘breakthrough’ of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Agreement of 1987, and the end of the Cold War. While noting later more worrying trends, Wittner concludes that ‘This study – like its predecessors – indicates that the nuclear arms control and disarmament measures of the modern era have resulted primarily from the efforts of a worldwide citizens’ campaign, the biggest mass movement in modern history’.
A greatly condensed version of his three volume history (listed individually).