Download or read book Freeze written by Henry Richard Maar III and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-15 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Freeze!, Henry Richard Maar III chronicles the rise of the transformative and transnational Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Amid an escalating Cold War that pitted the nuclear arsenal of the United States against that of the Soviet Union, the grassroots peace movement emerged sweeping the nation and uniting people around the world. The solution for the arms race that the Campaign proposed: a bilateral freeze on the building, testing, and deployment of nuclear weapons on the part of two superpowers of the US and the USSR. That simple but powerful proposition stirred popular sentiment and provoked protest in the streets and on screen from New York City to London to Berlin. Movie stars and scholars, bishops and reverends, governors and congress members, and, ultimately, US President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev took a stand for or against the Freeze proposal. With the Reagan administration so openly discussing the prospect of winnable and survivable nuclear warfare like never before, the Freeze movement forcefully translated decades of private fears into public action. Drawing upon extensive archival research in recently declassified materials, Maar illuminates how the Freeze campaign demonstrated the power and importance of grassroots peace activism in all levels of society. The Freeze movement played an instrumental role in shaping public opinion and American politics, helping establish the conditions that would bring the Cold War to an end.
Download or read book Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War written by William M. Knoblauch and published by Culture and Politics in the Company. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early 1980s were a tense time. The nuclear arms race was escalating, Reagan administration officials bragged about winning a nuclear war, and superpower diplomatic relations were at a new low. Nuclear war was a real possibility and antinuclear activism surged. By 1982 the Nuclear Freeze campaign had become the largest peace movement in American history. In support, celebrities, authors, publishers, and filmmakers saturated popular culture with critiques of Reagan's arms buildup, which threatened to turn public opinion against the president. Alarmed, the Reagan administration worked to co-opt the rhetoric of the nuclear freeze and contain antinuclear activism. Recently declassified White House memoranda reveal a concerted campaign to defeat activists' efforts. In this book, William M. Knoblauch examines these new sources, as well as the influence of notable personalities like Carl Sagan and popular culture such as the film The Day After, to demonstrate how cultural activism ultimately influenced the administration's shift in rhetoric and, in time, its stance on the arms race.
Download or read book Coalitions Political Movements written by Thomas R. Rochon and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve contributions apply recent theory on movements to the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s. Subject areas include the development of the freeze movement, its social and political impact, and the question of whether the movement simply disintegrated or was transformed into other forms of activism. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The Second Cold War written by Aaron Donaghy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The compelling account of the last great Cold War struggle between America and the Soviet Union that took place between 1977 and 1985.
Download or read book Radiation Nation written by Natasha Zaretsky and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On March 28, 1979, the worst nuclear reactor accident in U.S. history occurred at the Three Mile Island power plant in Central Pennsylvania. Radiation Nation tells the story of what happened that day and in the months and years that followed, as local residents tried to make sense of the emergency. The near-meltdown occurred at a pivotal moment when the New Deal coalition was unraveling, trust in government was eroding, conservatives were consolidating their power, and the political left was becoming marginalized. Using the accident to explore this turning point, Natasha Zaretsky provides a fresh interpretation of the era by disclosing how atomic and ecological imaginaries shaped the conservative ascendancy. Drawing on the testimony of the men and women who lived in the shadow of the reactor, Radiation Nation shows that the region's citizens, especially its mothers, grew convinced that they had sustained radiological injuries that threatened their reproductive futures. Taking inspiration from the antiwar, environmental, and feminist movements, women at Three Mile Island crafted a homegrown ecological politics that wove together concerns over radiological threats to the body, the struggle over abortion and reproductive rights, and eroding trust in authority. This politics was shaped above all by what Zaretsky calls "biotic nationalism," a new body-centered nationalism that imagined the nation as a living, mortal being and portrayed sickened Americans as evidence of betrayal. The first cultural history of the accident, Radiation Nation reveals the surprising ecological dimensions of post-Vietnam conservatism while showing how growing anxieties surrounding bodily illness infused the political realignment of the 1970s in ways that blurred any easy distinction between left and right.
Download or read book Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace written by Michael Krepon and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive guide to the history of nuclear arms control by a wise eavesdropper and masterful storyteller, Michael Krepon. The greatest unacknowledged diplomatic achievement of the Cold War was the absence of mushroom clouds. Deterrence alone was too dangerous to succeed; it needed arms control to prevent nuclear warfare. So, U.S. and Soviet leaders ventured into the unknown to devise guardrails for nuclear arms control and to treat the Bomb differently than other weapons. Against the odds, they succeeded. Nuclear weapons have not been used in warfare for three quarters of a century. This book is the first in-depth history of how the nuclear peace was won by complementing deterrence with reassurance, and then jeopardized by discarding arms control after the Cold War ended. Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace tells a remarkable story of high-wire acts of diplomacy, close calls, dogged persistence, and extraordinary success. Michael Krepon brings to life the pitched battles between arms controllers and advocates of nuclear deterrence, the ironic twists and unexpected outcomes from Truman to Trump. What began with a ban on atmospheric testing and a nonproliferation treaty reached its apogee with treaties that mandated deep cuts and corralled "loose nukes" after the Soviet Union imploded. After the Cold War ended, much of this diplomatic accomplishment was cast aside in favor of freedom of action. The nuclear peace is now imperiled by no less than four nuclear-armed rivalries. Arms control needs to be revived and reimagined for Russia and China to prevent nuclear warfare. New guardrails have to be erected. Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace is an engaging account of how the practice of arms control was built from scratch, how it was torn down, and how it can be rebuilt.
Download or read book Confronting the Bomb written by Lawrence S. Wittner and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-12 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confronting the Bomb tells the dramatic, inspiring story of how citizen activism helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war. This abbreviated version of Lawrence Wittner's award-winning trilogy, The Struggle Against the Bomb, shows how a worldwide, grassroots campaign—the largest social movement of modern times—challenged the nuclear priorities of the great powers and, ultimately, thwarted their nuclear ambitions. Based on massive research in the files of peace and disarmament organizations and in formerly top secret government records, extensive interviews with antinuclear activists and government officials, and memoirs and other published materials, Confronting the Bomb opens a unique window on one of the most important issues of the modern era: survival in the nuclear age. It covers the entire period of significant opposition to the bomb, from the final stages of the Second World War up to the present. Along the way, it provides fascinating glimpses of the interaction of key nuclear disarmament activists and policymakers, including Albert Einstein, Harry Truman, Albert Schweitzer, Norman Cousins, Nikita Khrushchev, Bertrand Russell, Andrei Sakharov, Linus Pauling, Dwight Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, John F. Kennedy, Randy Forsberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helen Caldicott, E.P. Thompson, and Ronald Reagan. Overall, however, it is a story of popular mobilization and its effectiveness.
Download or read book Toward a Theory of Peace written by Randall Caroline Watson Forsberg and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military analyst, peace activist, teacher, and social theorist Randall Caroline Watson Forsberg (1943–2007) founded the Nuclear Freeze campaign and the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies. In Toward a Theory of Peace, completed in 1997 and published for the first time here, she delves into a vast literature in psychology, anthropology, archeology, sociology, and history to examine the ways in which changing moral beliefs came to stigmatize forms of "socially sanctioned violence" such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, and slavery, eventually rendering them unacceptable. Could the same process work for war? Edited and with an introduction by political scientists Matthew Evangelista (Cornell University) and Neta C. Crawford (Boston University), both of whom worked with Forsberg.
Download or read book The Fate of the Earth and The Abolition written by Jonathan Schell and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These two books, which helped focus national attention on the movement for a nuclear freeze, are published in one volume.
Download or read book Congress and the Nuclear Freeze written by Douglas C. Waller and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in 1982 a group of lawmakers introduced into both houses of the U.S. Congress a resolution calling on the United States and the Soviet Union to negotiate a mutual and verifiable halt to the nuclear arms race. It was a bold measure and one that sparked intense debate between members of Congress and the White House over the conduct of U.S. arms control policy. This book is an inside account of that legislative battle, told by a congressional aide who was in the thick of it.
Download or read book Nuclear Threats Nuclear Fear and the Cold War of the 1980s written by Eckart Conze and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book brings together cutting-edge scholarship from the United States and Europe to address political and cultural responses to the arms race of the 1980s.
Download or read book Nuclear Folly A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis written by Serhii Plokhy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The definitive history.…With his masterly book, Mr. Plokhy has sounded a warning bell." — The Economist A harrowing account of the Cuban missile crisis and how the US and USSR came to the brink of nuclear apocalypse. Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today’s world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. In breathtaking detail, Plokhy vividly recounts the young JFK being played by the canny Khrushchev; the hotheaded Castro willing to defy the USSR and threatening to align himself with China; the Soviet troops on the ground clearing jungle foliage in the tropical heat, and desperately trying to conceal nuclear installations on Cuba, which were nonetheless easily spotted by U-2 spy planes; and the hair-raising near misses at sea that nearly caused a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine to fire its weapons. More often than not, the Americans and Soviets misread each other, operated under false information, and came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. Despite these errors, nuclear war was ultimately avoided for one central reason: fear, and the realization that any escalation on either the Soviets’ or the Americans’ part would lead to mutual destruction. Drawing on a range of Soviet archival sources, including previously classified KGB documents, as well as White House tapes, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama and anxiety of those tense days, and provides a way for us to grapple with the problems posed in our present day.
Download or read book The Future of U S Nuclear Weapons Policy written by Committee on International Security and Arms Control and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1997-07-01 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate about appropriate purposes and policies for U.S. nuclear weapons has been under way since the beginning of the nuclear age. With the end of the Cold War, the debate has entered a new phase, propelled by the post-Cold War transformations of the international political landscape. This volume--based on an exhaustive reexamination of issues addressed in The Future of the U.S.-Soviet Nuclear Relationship (NRC, 1991)--describes the state to which U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and policies have evolved since the Cold War ended. The book evaluates a regime of progressive constraints for future U.S. nuclear weapons policy that includes further reductions in nuclear forces, changes in nuclear operations to preserve deterrence but enhance operational safety, and measures to help prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition, it examines the conditions and means by which comprehensive nuclear disarmament could become feasible and desirable.
Download or read book The Public and Atlantic Defense written by Gregory Flynn and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1985 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can the Alliance afford the almost unprecedented polarization of popular opinion over defense policy? This Atlantic Institute study deals with the appearance and realities of this unique situation by developing and exploring four themes for each of the Alliance countries: their images of the Soviet Union, of their security, of deterrence, and of their allies. Each of these themes is explored in terms of the criteria used by populations in their 'image formation, ' the evolution of these criteria, the intensity with which public perceptions are held, and the sources of information on the basis of which perceptions are formed
Download or read book Domestic Society and International Cooperation written by Jeffrey W. Knopf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-05-13 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how peace movements affected US decisions to enter nuclear arms control talks during the Cold War. Most scholarship assumes that state policies on pursuing international cooperation are set by national leaders, in response either to international conditions, or to their own interests and ideas. By demonstrating the importance of public protest and citizen activism, Jeffrey Knopf shows how state preferences for cooperation can be shaped from below.
Download or read book Arsenals of Folly written by Richard Rhodes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-11-04 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a riveting account of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. In the Reagan-Gorbachev era, the United States and the Soviet Union came within minutes of nuclear war, until Gorbachev boldly launched a campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the 1986 Reykjavik summit and the incredible events that followed. In this thrilling, authoritative narrative, Richard Rhodes draws on personal interviews with both Soviet and U.S. participants and a wealth of new documentation to unravel the compelling, shocking story behind this monumental time in human history—its beginnings, its nearly chilling consequences, and its effects on global politics today.
Download or read book The Seventh Decade written by Jonathan Schell and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2007-11-13 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Fate of the Earth, a provocative look at the urgent threat posed by America's new nuclear policies When the cold war ended, many Americans believed the nuclear dilemma had ended with it. Instead, the bomb has moved to the dead center of foreign policy and even domestic scandal. From missing WMDs to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, nuclear matters are back on the front page. In this provocative book, Jonathan Schell argues that a revolution in nuclear affairs has occurred under the watch of the Bush administration, including a historic embrace of a first-strike policy to combat proliferation. The administration has also encouraged a nuclear renaissance at home, with the development of new generations of such weaponry. Far from curbing nuclear buildup, Schell contends, our radical policy has provoked proliferation in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere; exacerbated global trafficking in nuclear weapons; and taken the world into an era of unchecked nuclear terror. Incisive and passionately argued, The Seventh Decade offers essential insight into what may prove the most volatile decade of the nuclear age.
