Anti‐Nuclear Protest Movements

• Main Author: Rubinson, Paul
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Wiley 2009
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0093; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2F9781405198073.wbierp0093; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0093

Residents of the planet Earth did not sit idly by as nations developed nuclear weapons capable of mass destruction during the twentieth century. Citizens of all nations demanded a damper on the nuclear arms race, resulting in arms control treaties that restricted the development, testing, and proliferation of nuclear weapons across the globe, extending even to Antarctica and outer space. And yet the true legacy of the anti‐nuclear movement remains unclear. Its champions credit the movement with branding nuclear weapons with a mark of abhorrence that prevented their use. The movement's leading historian, Lawrence Wittner (1993), has argued that anti‐nuclear activists shifted the geopolitical landscape away from nuclear confrontation and the Cold War. According to Wittner, it was the world anti‐nuclear movement that shook the foundations of the nation‐state system, as “opponents of the Bomb, by subjecting it to an onslaught of criticism, helped turn public sentiment against the weapon and thereby made it politically less acceptable as an instrument of war and diplomacy” (pp. ix‐x).