Where Is the Nuclear Abolition Movement Today? (cont.)

Movement weaknesses

Despite these indications of strength, today’s nuclear disarmament movement is considerably weaker than in its heyday, during the 1980s. When 15,000 people turned out for the nuclear disarmament rally of 2 May in New York City, organizers considered it a success, for this constituted the largest ban-the-bomb event for decades. Even so, in the early 1980s there were much larger outpourings of people at nuclear disarmament demonstrations. These included nearly a million people in the United States and West Germany, 550,000 in the Netherlands, over 500,000 in Italy and Spain, 400,000 in the United Kingdom and Japan, 350,000 in Australia, 300,000 in France, 130,000 in Finland, 100,000 in Austria, Canada and Denmark, and very substantial numbers elsewhere. In October 1983 alone, an estimated five million people took part in nuclear disarmament demonstrations.

Just as fewer people are taking to the streets, fewer people are joining nuclear disarmament organizations. In the United Kingdom, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has roughly a third of its 1985 membership. In the United States, Peace Action has only about half the membership its predecessor had in 1988. Elsewhere, mass nuclear disarmament organizations have either dwindled into insignificance or disappeared. IPPNW has less than a third its membership of 1988, while other once-powerful organizations, such as European Nuclear Disarmament and the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement, collapsed long ago. To be sure, new organizations have emerged and thrived in recent decades, such as Mayors for Peace. Also, since 2001, after years of decline, there has been some growth in organization membership numbers. But overall, the movement today draws upon a smaller membership base than in the 1980s.

Moreover, there is less organizational cohesion. Today’s multiplicity of peace and disarmament groups has its benefits, most notably the ability to appeal to a variety of constituencies. But this organizational fragmentation, common among groups composed of independent-minded dissenters, makes united action around programmes and activities difficult. As a result, the movement is sometimes less than the sum of its parts. Thus far, the modern nuclear abolition movement has not united around a common theme with the same success as its counterpart in the early 1980s, when European Nuclear Disarmament pulled together disarmament groups all across Europe in resistance to the deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles from East and West. Nor is there any current counterpart to the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign of the early 1980s, which drew together disparate organizations throughout the United States—from peace and disarmament groups to religious, labour and professional groups—and appealed strongly to the American public.

It appears that today’s public opposition to nuclear weapons, although widespread, does not always run very deep. Despite the majorities in favour of an international ban on nuclear weapons revealed in the 2008 poll, such a ban was “strongly favoured” by only 20% of those polled in Pakistan, 31% in India, 38% in Russia, 39% in the United States and 42% in Israel. The shallowness of public opposition to nuclear weapons is also illustrated by the relatively low turnout at nuclear disarmament demonstrations in recent decades.

Another factor undercutting the ability of disarmament groups to mobilize the public is widespread ignorance of nuclear issues. One of the most important defeats for the world nuclear disarmament movement occurred in 1999, when the US Senate rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (or CTBT, which still awaits entry into force). Tellingly, a Gallup poll taken a week after the key vote found that, although most Americans supported the treaty, 34% had never heard of it and only 26% knew that the Senate had rejected it. Young people seem particularly ill-informed about nuclear issues. In 2010, a poll of people aged from their teens to their thirties, conducted in eight countries, found that large majorities did not know that China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and other states possessed nuclear weapons. In fact, only 59% of American respondents knew that their own country was a nuclear power. Among Britons, only 43% knew that the United Kingdom maintained a nuclear arsenal.

Explaining movement weaknesses

At a time when even many government leaders are now publicly discussing the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world, how should we explain the nuclear disarmament movement’s weakness relative to the 1980s?

Probably the most important factor undermining the movement is the lack of a perceived nuclear crisis. The three great upsurges of movement growth and activism occurred in the late 1940s (amid a furor over world destruction provoked by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), in the late 1950s and early 1960s (when hydrogen bomb testing horrified people around the globe), and in the early 1980s (when détente ended, the Cold War re-emerged, and the world seemed on the brink of nuclear war). Today, by contrast, with the Cold War at an end, nuclear testing marginalized and public threats of nuclear war abandoned, members of the public no longer feel a sense of urgency about nuclear disarmament.

In contrast, there is a sense of urgency about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Most of the organizations agitating for disarmament are peace organizations and, naturally, when the nuclear crisis appears to ebb, they focus more on other peace issues. For the younger generation, particularly, nuclear disarmament seems like an old-fashioned issue, of more interest to their parents than to their peers, while the massive bloodshed and disruption of ongoing wars has attracted their attention, concern and action.

The same problem arises when we consider the support of sympathetic social movements. Environmental, religious, social justice and human rights movements, though supportive of abolition, are often preoccupied with issues that seem more pressing: climate change, the adverse effects of corporate globalization, world poverty and the global economic meltdown. Thus, although leaders of major religious denominations and labour federations have recently spoken out in favour of a nuclear-free world, they have not done much to mobilize their very substantial memberships behind this goal.

This lack of urgency may also in part be explained by ignorance of nuclear issues. The education of the public about nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament has been poor in recent decades. With television, radio and newspapers increasingly in the hands of giant corporations, interested primarily in profits and maintenance of the status quo, the mass communications media, for the most part, have abdicated their responsibility to inform the public adequately on these matters. Thus, it is hardly surprising that so many people are illinformed about nuclear dangers and the role of nuclear disarmament in confronting them. In addition, with the exception of what takes place in scattered peace studies programmes, public education in schools and universities about nuclear issues is remarkably weak.

The sense of complacency regarding nuclear weapons is reinforced by the incremental gains of the past two decades. Over the course of history, small-scale advances have often reduced the fervour of social movements. This certainly has been true of the nuclear disarmament movement, which declined substantially in the late 1960s after the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty and again in the late 1980s, after Reagan and Gorbachev fostered nuclear disarmament agreements and an end to the Cold War. In the 1990s, there were further nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties (START I, START II and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test- Ban Treaty) and important reductions in world nuclear arsenals. The New START of 2010 and recent talk by US President Barack Obama and other government officials of building a world free of nuclear weapons have certainly heartened advocates of nuclear disarmament, but they have also had the effect of contributing to popular complacency. After all, why go to the trouble of joining a nuclear disarmament organization and participating in its activities when it appears that government leaders are coping with the nuclear weapons problem?

There has even been some falling-off in zeal within the ranks of hard-core activists. Despite impressive talk about building a nuclear-weapon-free world, the Obama Administration has done little more than sign a modest nuclear disarmament agreement with the Russian Federation. At the same time, as peace and disarmament groups have complained, the administration has sought to buy support for this treaty in the US Senate by championing a $180 billion, ten-year build-up of the US nuclear weapons complex. During the recent NPT Review Conference, when leaders of peace groups asked whether the administration was planning to work on developing a nuclear abolition treaty, officials laughed at the idea as utopian. Thus, a substantial gap has arisen between the expectations of nuclear abolition raised by administration rhetoric and the reality of traditional, step-by-step arms control and disarmament ventures. This gap is leading to growing cynicism and demoralization among activists.

This same tension between long-term goals and immediate gains is also played out to some degree among civil society organizations. A number of peace and disarmamentgroups, recognizing the limited nature of government disarmament practices and plans, are determined to be “realistic” and restrict themselves to working for incremental steps along the path to disarmament. Other groups, while conceding the importance of incremental steps, are equally determined to continue to press for the onset of negotiations for a nuclear abolition treaty. Indeed, they are careful to say that the implementation of the New START and the CTBT should not be a prerequisite for the latter. As a result of these alternative perspectives, some leading arms control and disarmament groups did not participate in the nuclear abolition events organized around the NPT Review Conference.

This differing emphasis also affects funding for the movement. In general, major foundation funding tends to go to the incrementalists, as most foundations are more interested in immediate results than in what might prove to be a utopian goal. This fact leaves the nuclear abolitionists with very limited financial resources. Thus, for example, the nuclear abolition events surrounding the May 2010 NPT Review Conference were almost entirely funded by the sponsoring organizations themselves. At a time when the worldwide economic downturn has diminished financial contributions to social movements, including peace and disarmament movements, this preference for funding projects linked to incremental changes undermines groups pressing for a nuclear-weapon-free world.

There are also a number of long-term factors limiting the effectiveness of the nuclear disarmament movement. Foremost among them is the traditional reliance of governments on military might, including weapons, to safeguard national security in an anarchic world. As former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan once complained: “[I]n a world where states continue to compete for power … the case for disarmament does not get enough of a hearing.” Beyond this, there is also the influence of powerful vested interests—military, scientific and corporate—in the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons. Nor should we forget the easy connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, a connection that has facilitated the development of nuclear arsenals in a number of countries and that has the potential to facilitate it in yet others. Finally, there is the psychologically attractive alternative of denial. It is difficult, after all, to confront the prospect of worldwide nuclear annihilation, or at least to confront it for very long.

Yet another long-term difficulty confronting the movement is that nuclear disarmament issues are not the same in all countries. For example, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has worked for decades to make the United Kingdom a non-nuclear country. And in the midst of the current economic slump, with the huge costs of modernizing Britain’s nuclear weapons system confronting the nation, British activists are hopeful that they stand on the brink of success. In a non-nuclear state, such as Sweden, or in a nation still divided over ratification of the CTBT, such as the United States, the issues facing peace activists appear quite different. Thus, although a great deal of cooperation takes place among national peace and disarmament movements, their priorities sometimes differ.

Of course, despite these obstacles, activists have been able to form a very substantial global movement for nuclear disarmament. By drawing upon millions of people around the world, they have fostered nuclear arms control and disarmament measures, chilled the enthusiasm of national leaders for waging nuclear war, and pushed the idea of nuclear abolition to the forefront of the international political stage. These are certainly major accomplishments, and they should not be ignored.

Strengthening the movement

Even so, it appears that, if a nuclear-weapon-free world is to emerge one day, the nuclear disarmament movement will have to be strengthened. Ideally, this would include uniting in a single powerful worldwide organization. But, given the organizational, strategic and other obstacles mentioned, this kind of unity seems unlikely to materialize. There remain, however, a number of ways to increase the movement’s strength and cohesion.

One way is to develop a more focused goal, especially an inspiring ideal, which appeals broadly to the disarmament movement. Without an inspiring goal, movements lose the energy and support of activists. During the 1980s, one such goal was a nuclear-free Europe. In the future, the inspiring goal could be a nuclear-weapon-free world. Certainly, the idea of a world without nuclear weapons is in the air, and is already trumpeted by disarmament organizations and government officials. Among disarmament groups, it often takes the more specific form of demanding a nuclear abolition treaty.

It also is necessary to integrate incremental advances into this broad, inspiring framework. Without working on incremental changes, social movements become cut off from the reality of everyday life and strike observers as demanding pie in the sky. Not surprisingly, effective social movements have understood the utility of linking immediate demands to a long-range, visionary goal. In this model, the visionary goal generates the inspiration, while the short-term gains provide a sense of accomplishment to activists along the way. Admittedly, short-term gains sometimes lead to complacency. But this is an unavoidable price of success.

As mass public pressure is needed to alter the traditional reliance of governments on powerful weaponry, it is necessary to develop a public educational campaign around the necessity for nuclear disarmament. This kind of campaign, focused on nuclear weapons dangers and pointing to nuclear disarmament as the alternative, is needed to increase public knowledge and strengthen public support for nuclear abolition. With substantial foundation funding, the task of public education would be greatly simplified. Even without it, however, activists, organizations and sympathetic government officials could work more effectively to utilize the mass media, especially the Internet, to which activists have considerably greater access. They could also work harder at using the extensive networks of sympathetic organizations— religious denominations, professional groups, unions and environmental organizations—to press the case for nuclear abolition through articles in their publications, communications to their constituencies and mobilization of their members.

Even without organizational unity, peace and disarmament groups could develop closer organizational cooperation and coordination through coalitions, simultaneous demonstrations, joint petitions, mass e-mailings, and national and international conferences on nuclear abolition. This would not only strengthen the movement directly, but would also provide the world with an attractive model of a global citizens’ movement.

Finally, the peace and disarmament movement could strengthen itself by highlighting the linkages between what are sometimes seen as separate issues. There is no reason to place the issue of nuclear weapons and the issue of war in separate baskets. After all, they reflect the same problem: the problem of violent conflict among states. Seen in this light, they can be dealt with in the same way: by enhancing international security. In fact, the tide has been moving in this direction for some years now. Increasingly, the world peace movement has been working closely with the United Nations to cut back on the war-making prerogatives of nation states. Whether these allies can succeed in building a nuclear-weapon-free world remains to be seen. But they have made an impressive start.

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