Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971-Present 0804748624, 9780804748629

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THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE BOMB, VOLUME THREE■

TOWARD NUCLEAR ABOLITION A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, I97I to the Present

- Stanford Nuclear Age Series .. • General Editor, Martin Sherwin ADVISORY BOARD

Barton J. Bernstein, David Holloway, and Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky

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THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE BOMB

TOWARD NUCLEAR ABOLITION A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, I97I to the Present LAWRENCE S.

WITTNER

Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2003

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wittner, Lawrence S. The struggle against the bomb I Lawrence S. Wittner. p. em.~ (Stanford nuclear age series) Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 3· Toward nuclear abolition: A history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, 1971 to the present ISBN o-8047-486I-6 (cloth : alk. paper)~ ISBN o-8047-4862-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) r. Nuclear disarmament~History. 2. Antinuclear movement~History. I. Title. II. Series. JX.I974·7W575 I993 327' .I'74'o9---dcw This book is printed on acid-free, archival-quality paper. Original printing 2003 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 12 n ro 09 o8 07 o6 05 04 03 Typeset in ro/12.5 Times

92-28026

To Benjamin and Elizabeth

Contents

Largely Forgotten: The Arms Race and the Movement, 1971-76 2

The Movement Begins to Revive, 1975-78

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3

Signs of Progress: Public Policy Shifts, 1977-78

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Escalating Activism, 1979-80

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Big Defeats, Small Victories, 1979-80

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The Rise of the Hawks, 1976-83

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Revolt ofthe Doves: The Movement in Northern Europe, 1981-85

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Revolt of the Doves: The Movement Elsewhere in Non-Communist Europe, 1981-85

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Revolt of the Doves: The Movement in the United States and Canada, 1981-85

169

Revolt of the Doves: The Movement in the Pacific, Asia, Africa, the Near and Middle East, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, 1981-85

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Revolt of the Doves: International Dimensions, 1981-85

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Governments Confront the Movement, 1981-85

253

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Public Policy Wavers, 1981-85

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U.S. Policy: The Hard Line Softens, 1981-85

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The Movement Continues, 1985-88

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Breakthrough for Nuclear Disarmament, 1985-88

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The Movement Tide Recedes, 1989-93

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Further Victories, 1989-93

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Waning Strength, Reviving Arms Race, 1993-2002

447

Conclusion: Reflections on the Past and the Future

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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pages ofphotographs follow page 288

Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle ... to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence .... He knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done ... by all who ... strive their utmost to be healers. Albert Camus, '947

The Stanford Nuclear Age Series

Conceived by scientists, delivered by the military, and adopted by policymakers, nuclear weapons emerged from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to dominate our time. The politics, diplomacy, economy, and culture of the Cold War nurtured the nuclear arms race and, in tum, have been altered by it. "We have had the bomb on our minds since 1945," E. L. Doctorow observes. "It was first our weaponry and then our diplomacy, and now it's our economy. How can we suppose that something so monstrously powerful would not, after forty years, compose our identity? The great golem we have made against our enemies is our culture, our bomb culture-its logic, its faith, its vision." The pervasive, trans formative potential of nuclear weapons was foreseen by their creators. When Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson assembled a committee in May 1945 to discuss postwar atomic energy planning, he spoke of the atomic bomb as a "revolutionary change in the relations of man to the universe." Believing that it could mean "the doom of civilization," he warned President Truman that this weapon "has placed a certain moral responsibility upon us which we cannot shirk without very serious responsibility for any disaster to civilization." In the decades since World War II that responsibility has weighed heavily on American civilization. Whether or not we have met it is a matter of heated debate. But that we must meet it, and, moreover, that we must also prepare the next generation of leaders to meet it as well, is beyond question. Today, over half a century into the nuclear age the pervasive impact of the nuclear arms race has stimulated a fundamental reevaluation of the role of nuclear armaments and strategic polices. But mainstream scholarly work in

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strategic studies has tended to focus on questions related to the development, the deployment, and the diplomacy of nuclear arsenals. Such an exclusively managerial focus cannot probe the universal revolutionary changes about which Stimson spoke, and the need to address these changes is urgent. If the academic community is to contribute imaginatively and helpfully to the increasingly complex problems of the nuclear age, then the base of scholarship and pedagogy in the national security-arms control field must be broadened. It is this goal that the Stanford Nuclear Age Series is intended to support, with paperback reissues of important out-of-print works and original publication of new scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Martin J Sherwin General Editor

Preface In all modesty, but with all the determination of our spirit as well, let us here and now pledge to conceive and assemble an ark of memory capable of withstanding the atomic deluge. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1987

For more than half a century, the world has teetered on the brink of collective suicide. With the development of nuclear weapons, that terrible fate has loomed consistently before us-not as a preferred choice, but as the logical outcome of the ancient practice of waging war. How we have avoided that disaster provides the focus of this book. In a number of ways, it is a heartening story, filled with examples of how concerned citizens around the world-through intelligence, courage, and determination-have altered the course of history. But it is also a cautionary tale for, although their achievement has been substantial, their success has been limited. Nuclear weapons still exist in the tens of thousands, ready to be employed in yet another of humanity's many murderous conflicts. Thus, even as we celebrate human achievement, we would do well to reflect upon our own responsibility to complete the important task that others have begun. I am well aware of the traditional explanation for nuclear restraint. Indeed, how could one avoid it? Again and again, government officials have told us how fortunate we have been to have benefited from their wise leadership, a leadership devoted to fostering national security through the amassing of overwhelming military power. Paradoxically, they argue, it has been their willingness to develop, deploy, and use nuclear weapons that has limited the nuclear arms race and averted nuclear war. In one of their favorite phrases, they have secured "peace through strength." Leaving aside the issue of peace-dubious enough in an era of constant wars that have consumed the lives of tens of millions of people-a careful examination of nuclear weapons policy shows that nuclear restraint was not their choice, at least for their own nations. Instead, as this study indicates, they

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usually championed a nuclear buildup and an increased willingness to wage nuclear war. This is not because they were particularly evil people, but because they were locked into a traditional system of national defense in a world of competing nation-states. It took an especially far-sighted statesman-for example, Mikhail Gorbachev-to recognize how dangerous this traditional system was and to move beyond it. And even Gorbachev, as we shall see, drew much of his "new thinking" from the citizens' campaign for nuclear disarmament. As the alert reader already may have surmised, this is an unusual book. Along with the two volumes that have preceded it in this trilogy-One World or None and Resisting the Bomb-it examines a phenomenon not usually considered an appropriate part of the history of diplomacy or of national security policy. As academic fields of study are now defined, popular resistance to nuclear weapons doesn't quite "fit." But, as we shall see, it is impossible to explain the course of nuclear arms control and disarmament policy without it. As I suggested in Resisting the Bomb, recounting the history of nuclear arms control and disarmament without referring to the antinuclear movement is like telling the story of civil rights legislation without referring to the civil rights movement. This book is unusual in other respects, too. Although it draws upon a "Realist" analysis of the international system, it rejects the pessimistic assumption of many "Realist" scholars that the system cannot be altered. Instead, this book, like its predecessors, implicitly argues that the international system-often in the face of furious resistance by national security managers-has been changed in some important ways. Furthermore, although historians are supposed to describe and analyze the past, they do not usually wrestle with the future. But, while giving talks in a number of venues on the history of nuclear disarmament efforts, I have been struck by the fact that my listeners also have wanted some advice. After all, they seemed to be saying, you have studied the nuclear arms race for years. Don't you have anything to suggest that we can do about it? And, to be honest, I do have some suggestions. Accordingly, I have sketched them briefly in this book's "Conclusion." Readers who cannot bear these departures from standard scholarly practice are urged to skip the offending passages or to forgo reading this book, to which the guardians of propriety surely will assign a "U" (i.e. Unorthodox) rating, if they deign to notice it at all. Doing research for this book was challenging. In part, this reflected the difficulties inherent in writing a global history. Specifically, there are too many nations, actors, and languages for any individual to do complete justice to such a project. Furthermore, national security officials have built a wall between

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their decision-making process and the public that they do not want the researcher-or anyone-to breach. Thus, although there are plenty of government records dealing with nuclear issues, the vast bulk of them generated during the past three decades remain officially closed. Even so, thanks to the collapse of some governments and to loopholes in the classification policies of others, I have obtained access to a surprising array of government documents, many of which I never expected to see. These range from records of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to surveillance reports of the Stasi (the East German secret police), to summaries of White House telephone conversations of Ronald Reagan. I have supplemented them with well over a hundred interviews with former government officials and nuclear disarmament movement leaders, with the papers of numerous individuals and organizations, with government and organizational publications, with memoirs, and with scholarly works. But there remains considerable room for additional research, especially in government records. When most of the latter finally are declassified-if they ever are-they seem likely to reveal greater government responsiveness to antinuclear campaigns than government officials have admitted in their memoirs or in after-the-fact interviews. Securing adequate funding for this study also posed some difficulties. To judge from their cool response, a good number of foundations and institutions would have preferred a more conventional project. Ultimately, however, it attracted a grant from the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund of the Aspen Institute that facilitated the research and a senior fellowship from the U.S. Institute of Peace and a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that facilitated the writing. I am very grateful for this support, and I hope this book will justify it. Other kinds of support were vital, as well. Dana Frye, Heather Sheeley, and Carol Taylor served as my research assistants, and did an excellent job of it. Many individuals provided me with useful research suggestions or materials, including Graham Barker-Benfield, Donald Birn, Helen Caldicott, David Cortright, John Crist, Sanford Gottlieb, Walter Hooke, Glenn Inghram, Bruce Kent, Anne Kjelling, Robert Musil, Christopher Paine, David Patterson, Rob Prince, Natalia Romashkina, Mark Selden, Dhirendra Sharma, Martin Sherwin, Mark Solomon, Ralph Summy, Frank von Rippel, and Peter Zheutlin. Michael Bess, Randall Forsberg, Sheila Jones, Daryl Kimball, and Gunter Wernicke were particularly helpful in this regard. For assistance in translating materials from Dutch, German, Russian, Spanish, and Uighur, I am grateful to George Berger, Dana Frye, Linda McNeil, Natalia Romashkina, Corinna Ruth Unger, Kate Vanovitch, Andrea Walter, and Michael Weinberg. So many librarians aided me that it is impossible to list them all here, but Wendy

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Chmielewski and the staff of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection deserve special praise. Martin Sherwin, the editor of Stanford's Nuclear Age series, played a key role in this project from its inception. Muriel Bell and Carmen Borb6n-Wu of Stanford University Press did much to carry it through to completion. I am also thankful for the computer wizardry of my colleague, Gerry Zahavi, and for the untiring assistance of two staff members of my department, Debra Neuls and Harriet Temps. Colin Archer, Graham BarkerBenfield, John W. Chambers, Bruce Kent, Daryl Kimball, Robert Musil, David Patterson, and Ralph Summy read portions of the book manuscript and made many useful suggestions for revision. Deb Cavanaugh prepared the index. In addition, there is a broad network of peace researchers who, through their example, have contributed to this book. Gathered in such organizations as the Peace History Society and the International Peace Research Association, they have assisted and sustained me throughout the research and writing process. My deepest thanks go to my wife, Dorothy Tristman, who has not only encouraged the writing of this book, but the building of the kind of world that it envisions. L.S.W.

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Largely Forgotten The Arms Race and the Movement, I9JI-76 The nuclear arms race ... continues unhampered. Competition for ever more destructive technologies is steadily accelerating. A frightening new momentum is spreading nuclear weapons capabilities to more and more countries. Alva Myrdal, 1976

During the early 1970s, nuclear weapons went largely unnoticed and, therefore, unresisted. In contrast to earlier upsurges of public concern and antinuclear activism-first, in the late 1940s and, subsequently, in the late 1950s and early 196os 1-there was relatively little popular protest against nuclear weapons in the early 1970s. This public complacency about nuclear dangers is particularly striking when set against the fact that, at the time, nuclear powers were expanding their nuclear arsenals while would-be nuclear powers were working to acquire them-all of them with the intention of better preparing themselves for nuclear war. Perceptions, though, do not always correspond to realities. And the contemporary perception-bolstered by Soviet-American detente and well-publicized arms control negotiations-was that the world was gradually taming the nuclear menace. In this context, the general public gave government officials a fairly easy time of it, at least when it came to integrating nuclear weapons into their ongoing international rivalries. Even most peace and disarmament groups, dwindling in size and obsessed with the Vietnam War, put up only a feeble resistance to the Bomb. Only in the South Pacific did they wage a lively antinuclear campaign. In hindsight, the result was predictable enough: a gradually escalating nuclear arms race.

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Largely Forgotten

The Fizzling of the Disarmament Decade, 1971-76

Ever since the nuclear arms control breakthroughs of the 196os-most notably the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968-there had been a widespread popular assumption that the nations of the world were acting to remove nuclear dangers. Based on this assumption, as well as on the promise made by the Soviet and U.S. governments in the nonproliferation treaty to take concrete action toward eliminating nuclear weapons, the United Nations had proclaimed the 1970s the "Disarmament Decade." Against this backdrop, during the early 1970s the two great powers held numerous rounds of nuclear arms control negotiations. These negotiations resulted in the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty-or SALT I, as it became known-which limited the deployment of intercontinental and sea-launched ballistic missiles and, also, the deployment of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. "With this step," declared U.S. President Richard Nixon, "we have begun to check the wasteful and dangerous spiral of nuclear arms which has dominated relations between our two countries." According to Henry Kissinger, his national security advisor, the SALT I agreements represented "a major contribution to strategic stability," as well as an important step toward further nuclear arms limitations. In fact, SALT II proved harder to negotiate, but an interim measure-the Vladivostok Accord, signed in November 1974----did set additional nuclear limits. 2 Furthermore, the two governments successfully negotiated agreements that called for averting the use of nuclear weapons. Meeting in May 1972 in Moscow, Nixon and Soviet party secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed an agreement, "Basic Principles of Relations," in which the U.S. and Soviet governments pledged to do "their utmost to avoid military confrontation and to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war." In this accord, they proclaimed "the recognition of the security interests" of both nations "based on the principle of equality and the renunciation of the use or threat of force." A little more than a year later, the two governments signed the Prevention of Nuclear War agreement, which bound them to "act in such a manner as to ... exclude the outbreak of nuclear war between them and between either of the Parties and other countries." Kissinger acclaimed this as "a significant step toward the prevention of nuclear war" and a potentially "significant landmark" in the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and in their relationships with "all other countries in the world." 3 Whatever the other virtues of these agreements, they did not foster nuclear disarmament. Indeed, the worldwide nuclear arms race proceeded

The Arms Race and the Movement, 1971-76

without serious interruption. SALT I did not control the replacement of old weapons by new ones and, also, placed no restrictions on the Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV), which enabled a missile to carry numerous nuclear warheads. In fact, on the very day the SALT I treaty was signed, U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced a major new plan for "modernization and improvement" of U.S. strategic forces, including the acceleration of the Trident nuclear submarine program. Moreover, the Vladivostok Accord set very high ceilings on missiles and placed no ceilings at all on nuclear warheads. As a result, between 1972 and 1977 the U.S. government increased the number of its strategic nuclear warheads and bombs from about 4,500 to about 9,ooo, while the Soviet Union increased its strategic arsenal from some 2,500 to 3,650. Meanwhile, the United States began developing a new class of strategic weapons--cruise missiles-and the Soviet Union commenced deploying more than three new models of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and assorted versions of a new submarine ballistic missile system. In addition, both Cold War camps possessed even larger numbers of tactical nuclear weapons. By the mid-197os, the United States alone was estimated to have some 22,ooo of these, dispersed for action around the globe. 4 Nor was the nuclear arms race limited to the two superpowers. The British, French, and Chinese governments had made the breakthrough to nuclear weapons status years before, and during the early 1970s devoted themselves to testing, upgrading, and increasing their nuclear arsenals. Having developed the Bomb in the late 196os, the Israeli government, though careful to maintain ambiguity about its nuclear status, also cultivated its weaponry. In 1974, the Indian government conducted what it called a "peaceful nuclear explosion," but few were fooled by the rhetorical sugarcoating. Denouncing this "fateful development," Pakistan's prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, spurred on his own country's program to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, an estimated ten nations stood in line for entry into the once-exclusive nuclear club. Despite their professed desire for nuclear disarmament, these lesser and would-be nuclear powers showed no more interest than the United States and the Soviet Union in taking this route or, indeed, accepting anything that would significantly limit their nuclear options. France rejected the partial test ban treaty and-along with China, Israel, India, and South Africa-refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. China would not even take part in nuclear arms control or disarmament negotiations.' Although the buildup of nuclear arsenals did not necessarily reflect an eagerness to use them, there was little doubt that the nuclear powers re-

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mained ready and willing to wage nuclear war. NATO policy was to reply to a Warsaw Pact conventional attack upon Western Europe with the initiation of nuclear war against the Soviet Union and its allies. The Soviet government sometimes professed greater reluctance to initiate a nuclear war, but stated repeatedly that it stood ready to respond to Western "aggression" by fighting and winning a nuclear conflict. 6 The Kremlin apparently considered the signing of the Prevention of Nuclear War agreement an important event, but U.S. officials did not take it seriously. Kissinger referred to it contemptuously in his memoirs as "a bland set of principles that had been systematically stripped of all implications harmful to our interests." In both nations, insiders prepared themselves for a nuclear holocaust. A White House official recalled that "personal activities were designed according to the time it would take a nuclear missile to fly from Russia to the United States. The rule was: The President should never be more than two minutes from a telephone. Even the White House press corps designed its daily life around the possibility that the President might push the nuclear button at any moment." 7 Sometimes, in fact, that moment seemed perilously close. In April 1972, Nixon suggested to Kissinger that the time might have arrived in the Vietnam War to "use the nuclear bomb." When Kissinger responded coolly to the idea, Nixon remarked: "I just want you to think big."' The use of nuclear weapons came up again in late October 1973. In the midst of a war between Israel and Egypt that appeared to be spiraling out of control, the Soviet government sent a tough message to Washington suggesting jointor, if necessary, Soviet-military action to end the conflict. With Nixon reeling from the Watergate scandal and drunk in the White House, his top national security advisors (Kissinger and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger) responded by ordering a worldwide alert of U.S. military forces, including U.S. nuclear forces. Aghast at this sudden escalation of the dispute to the nuclear level by their American counterparts, Soviet Politburo members asked: "Are they crazy?" Fortunately, the Russians refused to rise to this military challenge, and the crisis was resolved without a nuclear war. Nevertheless, it was the most dangerous nuclear confrontation between the great powers since the Cuban missile crisis. Furthermore, this time it occurred during a period of Soviet-American detente. 9 This preparation for nuclear war reflected the centuries-old conflict among nations and their traditional solution to the resulting national security dilemma: military power. In retrospect, former Soviet officials conceded that their nuclear buildup of the time was foolish and provocative, but insisted that it was undertaken as a defensive measure. According to Ana-

The Arms Race and the Movement, 1971-76 toly Chernyaev, then an official in the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Soviet Union was not "planning to organize or begin a nuclear war. Among our elders, there was not a single person . . . seriously preparing for a nuclear war with the United States." And yet, their brains were infused with a "military-psychology setup," derived from World War II. Nikolai Detinov, an arms control expert in the Soviet Ministry of Defense, agreed that World War II provided the crucial ingredient in official thinking. Kremlin leaders "witnessed the defeat of the Soviet army because we didn't have enough arms, they saw the cities and towns burning, they saw our divisions marching toward the east in retreat. And so they sought . . . the promise of security" through military strength. Georgi Arbatov, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, recalled: "In the light of the bitter experience of the Soviet people, the preservation of peace was in no way a propagandistic slogan ... but a serious political motive .... More often than not the top people sincerely believed" that "the generous financing of military programs" served "the cause of peace." 10 This attachment to nuclear weapons was reinforced by the background and attitudes of Soviet party leader Leonid Brezhnev. Poorly educated and intellectually limited, Brezhnev was marked, according to Arbatov, by "his conservatism, his traditionalism, and his downright allergy to anything new." These traits were tempered by "an absence of any inclination toward extremist or adventurous decisions," which, in terms of foreign policy, meant "sincere support for the relaxing of international tensions" and cautious moves toward nuclear arms control. Furthermore, according to Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States, Brezhnev believed that "a nuclear war was utterly unacceptable." In 1971, addressing the twenty-fourth Soviet Party Congress, Brezhnev unveiled a peace program, featuring his first use of the word "detente." Even so, as Arbatov noted, "I often heard Brezhnev repeat the line 'Defense is sacrosanct,' explaining his generosity toward the military." As a result, the Soviet government was "not yet ready to discuss the issue of arms limitation in a businesslike manner, if only because no one had ever demanded that the Ministry of Defense or the defense industry care about disarmament. They were concerned with catching up with the Americans in arms, not with arms control." Indeed, "the military-industrial complex was a state within a state," with Brezhnev "accustomed to granting the generals and the military industrialists what they wanted. And the thing that they wanted most was no agreements tying their hands." 11 Furthermore, even with the best intentions on the part of Soviet arms

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negotiators, arms control issues were tricky and difficult to resolve. Soviet leaders believed that their country was entitled to nuclear parity with the United States. But, in the quest for parity, how did one assess the significance of different types of weapons and their destructiveness? U.S. nuclear weapons were more accurate and more sophisticated. To offset this "performance edge," Soviet leaders built bigger missiles and warheads with a higher destructive yield. Furthermore, how did one evaluate differences in nuclear deployment? During the SALT negotiations, Soviet leaders were acutely conscious of the dangers their nation faced from U.S. "forwardbased systems": nuclear bombers close to Soviet borders, aircraft carrierbased planes that could hit Soviet territory, bases in Scotland and Spain where submarines were armed with nuclear missiles, and increasing numbers of British and French strategic nuclear weapons. Thus, to compensate for the U.S. superiority in nuclear forces stationed on the periphery of the Soviet Union, Soviet leaders thought they were entitled to an advantage in the number of land-based ballistic missiles. This was a reasonable approach, they felt, and they could not quite understand why the U.S. government proved so unyielding on the point of Soviet vulnerability to forward-based systems. Indeed, as two Soviet arms control negotiators recalled, although Soviet leaders had "a general conviction that the arms race had to be curbed," they feared that the U.S. government sought to gain a military advantage through arms treaties. "Behind the Soviet leadership's rather conservative steps towards arms limitation," they noted, "lay a worst-case scenario."12 The U.S. government, too, was trapped by its fear and suspicion of other nations, particularly the Soviet Union. To be sure, Nixon, his national security advisor (and, later, secretary of state) Henry Kissinger, and his successor as President, Gerald Ford, while not enthusiastic about reducing nuclear stockpiles, did publicly champion detente and nuclear arms controls. 13 In practice, however, both Nixon and Kissinger shared a hardboiled, "Realist" approach to foreign policy that made them deeply suspicious of other nations and practitioners of power politics. Although they lacked the ideologically inflamed anti-Communism that characterized so much of the Republican Party, they held the traditional view that, ultimately, securing U.S. interests depended upon military strength and the determination to use it. Indeed, Kissinger began his meteoric rise in national security circles through books that advocated a greater U.S. willingness to employ nuclear weapons in world affairs. 14 Thus, although Nixon, Ford, and Kissinger talked much of detente, especially from 1972 to 1975, and reluctantly accepted Soviet nuclear parity, they practiced a tough-minded policy of competition with and

The Arms Race and the Movement, 1971-76

7

containment of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, these American leaders had only a minimal interest in controlling nuclear weapons. From their standpoint, arms control treaties were valuable primarily for garnering domestic political support and for dampening Soviet challenges to the role of the United States in world affairs. 15 Not surprisingly, then, nuclear arms control treaties between the great powers remained within the comfort zone. During negotiations for SALT I, when the United States possessed MIRV technology and the Russians did not, Nixon and Kissinger successfully insisted upon leaving MIRV s out of the agreement. In tum, this concession to Washington effectively undermined the chances for securing a concession from Moscow that the U.S. government would have welcomed: reducing the Soviet arsenal of ICBMs. In this fashion, both nations ended up holding onto their security blankets; the Americans multiplied the nuclear warheads on their missiles and the Russians retained their land-based, heavy missile force. For the most part, Soviet-American treaties limited items that were not useful. Only when the U.S. Senate refused to fund a nationwide ABM deployment did Nixon and Kissinger agree to ban it through the ABM treaty. Similarly, Nixon accepted a bilateral Threshold Test Ban Treaty in 1974 principally because its 150-kiloton limit on underground testing accommodated the nuclear testing requirements of the United States. The low priority accorded by the administration to curbing the nuclear arms race was further exemplified when Nixon-shortly after his 1972 re-election-began a sweeping purge of the top ranks of his SALT delegation and of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. 16 Thereafter, in fact, nuclear arms controls and detente began to lose their appeal. During the mid-1970s, the SALT II negotiations became bogged down over conflicting American and Soviet demands. Furthermore, in 1976, pressed by a hawkish challenge within the Republican Party to Ford's renomination-led by California Governor Ronald Reagan-the President shelved the SALT negotiations. Taking up his opponent's rhetoric, Ford now began to champion a policy of "peace through strength." 17 Although, in principle, he supported the goal of a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, he did not conduct negotiations for it but, instead, sponsored a considerably more modest measure to limit nuclear testing: a Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty, which he and Brezhnev signed in 1976. The latter was designed to supplement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty by eliminating the possibility that "peaceful" explosions might be substituted for weapons tests exceeding the 15o-kiloton limit. Both, however, became dead letters when, with the approach of the Republican convention, Ford decided not to submit

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Largely Forgotten

them to the Senate for ratification. By the time of the 1976 election campaign, the President had even dropped the word "detente" from his speeches. 18 A Movement in the Doldrums, 1971-74

Another key reason for the nuclear buildup of the early 1970s lay in the enfeebled state of the nuclear disarmament movement. During the late 1950s and early 196os, the antinuclear movement and the public opinion it had mobilized in nations around the world had provided the motor force behind curbing the nuclear arms race and averting nuclear war. But, in the late 196os, the movement went into serious decline thanks to a combination of over-optimistic expectations about changes in government policies, exhaustion of activists after years of intense struggle, and the peace constituency's preoccupation with the Vietnam War. 19 The movement's condition further deteriorated in the years thereafter, as halting the murderous Vietnam conflict became an obsession, leaving little time or energy for anything else. In this context, nuclear disarmament organizations died, dwindled, or changed their focus, and their mass base melted away. Although the movement did not disappear entirely in the years from 1971 to 1974, it was certainly in the doldrums. Britain's once-powerful Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) survived during these years, but just barely. Once Britain's largest and most dynamic mass movement, with yearly Aldermaston marches that, at their zenith, drew over roo,ooo people, CND, in the early 1970s, had a relatively quiescent membership that barely topped two thousand. Despite a major publicity and organizational effort behind the 1974 Aldermaston march (including 65,000 leaflets, 7,ooo posters, and 12,ooo stickers), only about 200 people began the march and some 2,ooo attended the culminating rally. According to CND's own assessment, the organization was "'overtaken' by other campaigns-most notably the one to end the Vietnam war and ... the student and youth movement." 20 Nevertheless, CND continued to protest nuclear testing, organized Hiroshima Day events, and held small meetings of the antinuclear faithful around the country. 2 ' Scotland provided one of Britain's most supportive regions, and a Scottish CND demonstration in June 1974, led by Glasgow city officials, drew an assemblage of 1,200. It included a small march to the Holy Loch Polaris nuclear submarine base, where CND presented a "notice to quit" to the military guardians. Nevertheless, in the words of Zoe Fairbaims, a CND staffer, this was a "lean time

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for CND." When telling strangers whom she worked for, she would add: "Yes, it is still going. " 22 In France, the situation was no better. The Socialist and Communist parties agreed in 1972 on a Common Program that, among other things, repudiated nuclear weapons. But, thereafter, given the expectation that a Left government would abolish France's nuclear arms, the force de frappe, a sense of complacency demobilized antinuclear activists. To be sure, in 1973 small groups of protesters, including several Catholic priests and a French general, did sail into the South Pacific in an attempt to disrupt French nuclear testing. Moreover, in 1974, French pacifists-hoping to link nonviolent action to antimilitarism and social justice-formed the Movement for a Nonviolent Alternative (Mouvement pour une Alternative non-violente ). But these were very small ventures, and failed to jolt the French public out of its overall complacency about French nuclear testing and nuclear weapons.23 Elsewhere in Western Europe, the movement also persisted, but without much energy or a mass base. In the Netherlands, an Interchurch Peace Council (Interkerkelijk Vredesberaad, IKV), formed in 1966 by the powerful Protestant and Catholic churches, had considerable potential. But, as late as 1974, its activities were quite restrained, involving little more than organizing an annual Peace Week. 24 In neighboring Belgium, peace activists divided between the French-speaking (Walloon) and the Dutch-speaking (Flemish) communities. During the early 1970s, a National Action Committee for Peace and Development (Comite National d' Action pour la Paix et le Developpement, CNAPD) did emerge as a coordinating body for French-speaking youth organizations, peace groups, and Third World campaigns, but no comparable body developed among Dutch-speaking groups. Furthermore, the priorities of groups on both sides of the linguistic divide remained diverse, without an emphasis upon nuclear weapons. 25 In Scandinavia, too, the once-powerful antinuclear movement had dissipated. The venerable Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (Svenska Freds- och Skiljedoms Foreningen) continued its operations but, by 1974, its membership was down to about 4,ooo and nuclear weapons did not rank among its major concerns. In Norway, a leading antinuclear campaigner recalled, "the movement fell asleep." 26 In the United States, where the peace and disarmament community focused on the Vietnam War, nuclear issues were marginalized. Pacifist groups like the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), the War Resisters League (WRL), and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) threw

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themselves into the antiwar struggle. According to Ron Young, the director of the Peace Education Division of the AFSC, "Vietnam sort of took over." In 1974, a poll at the biennial WILPF meeting indicated 30 items on which members wanted to work, but none of them dealt with nuclear weapons or disarmament. 27 Even among the larger, non-pacifist groups that had led the mass movement against nuclear weapons during the late 1950s and early 196os, such as the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) and Women Strike for Peace (WSP), the Vietnam War had a profound impact. According to Sandy Gottlieb, SANE's executive director, his organization was "consumed" by the war. Ethel Taylor of WSP recalled: "We were sidetracked by the war in Vietnam. Even though we knew that ... the nuclear arms race would continue, we had to make a choice on what issue we would deal with immediately. There was no question" that it would be the war, "because this was so urgent." Ironically, however, despite their adaptation to the demands of the era, the era was not kind to them. Membership and participation plummeted. "About '73 or '74," recalled David Cortright, a leading antiwar activist among American soldiers, "you could hardly find the peace movement. " 28 Nevertheless, despite the distraction of the war and their weakness, U.S. peace and disarmament groups did, on occasion, assail aspects of the arms race. The WRL attacked nuclear testing, SANE criticized the "overkill capacity" of the great powers, and WSP launched an International Demand Disarmament Day. 29 In late 1973, the AFSC-anxious to challenge the military-industrial complex-hired a young antiwar activist, Terry Provance, to head up a program to stop the B-1 bomber, a proposed $5o billion Pentagon weapons system with both nuclear and conventional capabilities. Working closely with the non-pacifist Clergy and Laity Concerned, which agreed to co-sponsor the project, Provance developed a nationwide Stop the B-1 Bomber campaign during the following year, with 75 local groups. 30 Another peace movement project with antinuclear implications began at Rocky Flats, Colorado, sixteen miles northwest of Denver. Here local peace and environmental activists started to investigate plutonium contamination in the vicinity of the U.S. nuclear weapons plant. In 1974, taking up the issue, AFSC staff members Pam Solo and Judy Danielson organized the Rocky Flats Action Group, a coalition of local peace, environmental, religious, and community organizations that demanded the plant's closure. 31 Nor were these the only signs of life in the movement. Long the mainstay of scientific opposition to the nuclear arms race, the Federation of American Scientists was down to about a thousand members and an annual budget of $7,000 by 1969, when it decided to hire Jeremy Stone as its di-

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rector. Beginning work in mid-1970 as the organization's first full-time staffer in 22 years, Stone set about rejuvenating it. By 1974, the FAS had significantly raised its profile, established permanent headquarters in Washington, recruited a substantial crop ofNobel Prize winners, and increased its membership by 450 percent. Meanwhile, the FAS went to work attacking the arms race, especially the ABM system and the first use of nuclear weapons. It also began a campaign to defend Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet Union's best-known advocate of nuclear disarmament, from government harassment.32 Another sign that the movement had not died was the growth of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a group initiated by students and faculty at MIT in 1969. At first, UCS focused on opposing ABM and MIRV, but in the early 1970s it began a devastating critique of nuclear reactor safety. 33 Probably the inost unusual of the new peace groups was the Center for Defense Information (CDI), founded in 1972 by Admiral Gene LaRocque. Working as a U.S. government nuclear war planner since 1957, LaRocque ultimately concluded that "planning, training, arming, and practicing for nuclear war ... bordered on insanity." Consequently, upon his retirement from active duty in March 1972, he established the CDI as a means of providing the information crucial to fostering nuclear arms controls and, thereby, averting nuclear war. Staffed largely by former U.S. military officers and drawing upon a prestigious board of directors that disarmamentoriented businessman Harold Willens brought in from a group that he had organized previously-Business Executives Move for a Vietnam Peacethe CDI constituted an unusually credible peace organization. Even so, like its U.S. counterparts, it did not have a mass base.' 4 The nuclear disarmament movement also lacked a powerful presence in Asia. India had never mustered a substantial antinuclear movement and, consequently, it was hardly surprising that the government's "peaceful nuclear explosion" of May 1974 failed to provoke widespread resistance. Indeed, initially it seemed to provide a significant political boost for Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Overcome by nationalist fervor, even the opposition sang her praises and most of the Indian press greeted the event ecstatically. "Indian Genius Triumphs," read one headline. Another proclaimed: "Thrilled Nation Lauds Feat." As things turned out, her triumph was short-lived. That fall, the misery of the Indian lower classes, combined with growing economic difficulties, sank her standing in the polls to an alltime low. This discontent, however, was not accompanied by a significant nuclear disarmament campaign. 35 Even in Japan, where a far larger and better-organized antinuclear

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Largely Forgotten

movement existed, it remained at low tide. Ever since the mid-196os, it had been divided into two feuding groups with quite different approaches: the Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs (Gensuikin, controlled by the Socialist Party and its close trade union ally, Sohyo) and the Japan Council Against A- and H-Bombs (Gensuikyo, controlled by the Communist Party). Gensuikin opposed all nuclear weapons, as well as all nuclear power. Gensuikyo, on the other hand, as befit its leadership, drew a distinction between the nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants in Communist and nonCommunist nations. This organizational rivalry not only kept the Japanese antinuclear movement divided, but dissuaded many ordinary, non-political people from becoming involved in what they considered a sectarian campaign. Determined to avoid recreating this situation, peace activists organized a new organization, Beheiren, to oppose the Vietnam War. Thus, although both groups sustained an array of activities in the early 197osincluding resistance to the war, demonstrations against the entry of nucleararmed U.S. warships, and rival world conferences for activists-the Japanese antinuclear movement lacked strength and influence. 36 The world's liveliest antinuclear protest occurred in the South Pacific, largely thanks to persistent French atmospheric nuclear testing. Spuming the partial test ban treaty of 1963, the French government, between 1966 and 1974, conducted 41 nuclear tests in the atmosphere over Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia. From this site, radioactive clouds drifted across small Pacific island nations to New Zealand and Australia, depositing their deadly nuclear fallout. During 1972, New Zealand activists, as part of a Peace Media project, defied the French government by sailing small vessels into the test danger zone. With New Zealand's conservative government waffling on the French testing issue, the opposition Labour Party took a more principled stand, which contributed to its election victory that November. By 1973, New Zealand's movement was flourishing. Growing crowds of supporters dispatched protest ships with songs and cheers, while the New Zealand Federation of Labour pledged a strict ban on French goods. 37 In Australia, thousands of people, outraged by plans for a new round of French tests in 1972, joined marches held in Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney; scientists wrote editorials and issued statements demanding an end to the tests; readers filled whole pages of newspapers with angry letters; and consumers boycotted French products. Australian unions played a leading role, with their members refusing to load French ships, service French planes, or carry French mail. Polls found that up to 90 percent of the Australian public opposed French nuclear testing. 38 Coupled with opposition to other regional ventures by the nuclear pow-

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ers, French nuclear testing also spurred resistance in the small island nations of the Pacific. In May 1970, after some 6oo people in Suva, Fiji turned out for a public meeting on nuclear tests, an Against Testing on Moruroa (ATOM) organization was established. Drawing together representatives from the Fiji Council of Churches, the YWCA, and the University of the South Pacific Students Association, ATOM focused on publicizing the growing resistance within French Polynesia to nuclear testing, building an antinuclear alliance among churches, unions, and the government, and linking up with antinuclear groups elsewhere in the Pacific. It also sought to influence the South Pacific Forum, a regional body bringing together representatives of govemments. 39 Meanwhile, other antinuclear efforts developed elsewhere in the Pacific. On Tinian, an island in Micronesia where the U.S. government sought to eject the entire native population to make way for an expanded U.S. Air Force base housing nuclear weapons, vigorous opposition emerged, including public meetings, anti-military demonstrations, and official protests to the United Nations. On Tahiti, an island in Polynesia, a 1973 antinuclear rally of over 5,ooo people issued an appeal to all French men and women "to join with us in doing everything they can to stop this crazy nuclear testing." Aware of the rising tide of protest and determined to halt the "Pacific colonialism" of the nuclear powers, ATOM began planning in 1974 for a Nuclear-Free Pacific movement, to be launched by an international conference of activists the following year. By November, the conference had secured the sponsorship not only of a broad range of groups in Fiji, but of the Pacific Conference of Churches, the University of the South Pacific Students Association, and antinuclear groups in Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States!0 For the most part, however, the movement was far more subdued in the early 1970s. In Canada, the Voice of Women (VOW), which had been founded in 1960 to protest against the nuclear arms race, almost totally dropped the subject from its agenda, focusing instead on a variety of international issues, especially ending the Vietnam War. 41 In the Soviet Union, antimilitary ideas and themes appeared here and there among elements of the artistic and scientific intelligentsia. Numerous Soviet scientists shared Sakharov's antinuclear views, and many others kept up with arms control and disarmament issues through America's Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and through the international Pugwash conferences. An antimilitary movement of Soviet "hippies" also commenced, especially in big cities. On June r, 1971, nearly 150 of these countercultural demonstrators gathered in Moscow under the banner "Make Love Not War." But these activities did not get very far. In Moscow, the planned protest march was broken up by wait-

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Largely Forgotten

ing militiamen, who seized the demonstrators. Furthermore, with Soviet party conservatives waging a fierce counterattack against the libertarian and antimilitary trends unleashed in the late 1950s and early r96os, Sakharov and other reformers found themselves preoccupied with defending human rights. 42 Thanks to decades of pacifist and antinuclear agitation in many nations, by the early 1970s there also existed a number of international organizations that addressed nuclear issues. Among pacifist groups these included the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), which brought together religious pacifists; the War Resisters' International (WRI), which appealed to secular pacifists; and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which, for the most part, mobilized female pacifists. However, although they maintained sections in dozens of nations, they did not have a mass base. Furthermore, their critique of nuclear weapons was diluted by their multiplicity of concerns. To focus on the arms race, many pacifists joined other antinuclear groups, like Britain's CND and America's SANE, which also drew upon peace-oriented non-pacifists. These more diverse groups, plus some of the pacifist organizations, often were affiliated with the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace (ICDP), founded in 1963, when the antinuclear campaign was in full bloom. By the early 1970s, however, the ICDP was in dire straits-undermined by the disintegration of the antinuclear movement and desperately short of money and staff. Moreover, like most of its constituent groups, it was obsessed with the struggle against the Vietnam War and, therefore, unable to do very much for the cause of nuclear disarmament. 43 Other peace-oriented internationals existed for specific religions (e.g. Pax Christi, for Catholics) and for interfaith groups (e.g. the World Conference on Religion and Peace), but none was flourishing. 44 Even the Pugwash movement, which had mobilized scientists in East and West against the arms race since its founding in 1957, was languishing; furthermore, during these years it branched out to other issues, such as economic development and the Vietnam War. 45 Perhaps because of this scant attention to the nuclear danger, a new antinuclear international began to arise at the grassroots level. In 1971, Jim Bohlen and Irving Stowe, two antiwar Americans who had moved with their families to Vancouver, Canada, to ensure that their sons would not be drafted for the Vietnam War, were promoting local opposition to U.S. government plans to explode nuclear weapons on Amchitka Island, off Alaska. After a few frustrating meetings on the issue, Bohlen's wife, Marie, suggested that "somebody sail a boat up there and park right next to the bomb." The idea caught on, and in September, six antinuclear activists, three jour-

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nalists, and a cameraman-whose presence was viewed as a possible deterrent to the sinking of the vessel by the U.S. Navy-set off on a rusting fishing trawler, the Phyllis Cormack, for Alaska. During the journey, one of the journalists read a collection of the legends of North American Indians. They included a Cree grandmother's 2oo-year-old prophecy that, because of white people's greed, there would come a time when the birds would fall from the skies, the fish would die in their streams, and the seas would be destroyed. Ultimately, however, all the races of the world would unite as Rainbow Warriors, going forth to end the destruction of the earth. The crew discussed this legend and, given its commitment to the preservation of life, found it deeply moving. Indeed, across the vessel, it had already hoisted a sail, adorned with peace and ecology symbols, and proclaiming: "Greenpeace."46 Within a short time, this small effort touched off an international movement. Although the U.S. coast guard arrested the crew of the Phyllis Cormack as it approached the nuclear test site, thousands of supporters cheered the crew members upon their return to Vancouver. Furthermore, Bohlen and Stowe found another ship to continue the voyage, and when they asked for volunteers for the crew, 400 people signed up. This second Greenpeace vessel failed to reach Amchitka before the U.S. government exploded its nuclear bomb-240 times as powerful as the one it had used to destroy Hiroshima. But the movement against nuclear tests was spreading. In New Zealand, a former Canadian businessman, David McTaggart, convinced Canada's Greenpeace group that he should sail his yacht, Vega, across several thousand miles of the Pacific Ocean into the France's unilaterally proclaimed roo,ooo square mile nuclear testing zone around Moruroa. Accompanied by two crew members, from Britain and Australia, McTaggart arrived there in June 1972, dropping anchor in international waters. At the orders of the French government, a French minesweeper rammed and crippled the Vega that July, but this did not stop McTaggart. A year later, he returned to the test site in his repaired ship, with a new crew. 47 These antinuclear efforts were reinforced by the establishment of Greenpeace groups in Australia and New Zealand. In 1973 and 1974, they campaigned against French nuclear testing and dispatched yet another yacht, the Fri, into the test zone and on a "Peace Odyssey" throughout the Pacific.'8 These freewheeling attitudes and activities-based on a disdain for all nuclear weapons--contrasted with the assumptions and operations of another kind of international peace movement, the World Peace Council (WPC). Launched in 1950, the WPC brought together more than a hundred national peace organizations that were controlled by local Communist par-

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ties. Like most of the world Communist movement, the WPC was dominated by the Soviet Communist Party, which, operating through its agent, the Soviet Peace Committee, paid nearly all of the very substantial costs of the WPC's worldwide operations. Through subsidies to other Communist parties, the Soviet party also covered the costs of most WPC affiliates. The only rival force in the organization, the Chinese Communist Party, contemptuously abandoned the WPC in the mid-r96os, as the Chinese and Soviet governments increasingly clashed over foreign policy issues. Although some non-Communists were active in WPC affiliates, Communists dominated the movement. In East Germany, for example, the president of the German Peace Council, Professor Gunther Drefahl, was not a Communist. But, before a German Peace Council meeting began, the Communist leaders met and made decisions on the important matters. Then they would invite Drefahl in and commence the official meeting.