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Peace movement
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A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war (or all wars), minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Means to achieve these ends usually include advocacy of pacifism, non-violent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, moral purchasing, supporting anti-war political candidates, demonstrations, and National Political lobbying groups to create legislation. The Political Cooperative is an example of an organization that seeks to merge all peace movement organizations and green organizations which may have some diverse goals, but all of whom have the common goal of peace and humane sustainability.
Some people refer to the global loose affiliation of activists and political interests as having a shared purpose and this constituting a single movement, "the peace movement", encompassing "the anti-war movement". Seen this way, the two are often indistinguishable and constitutes a loose, reactive and event-driven collaboration between groups with motivations as diverse as humanism, nationalism, environmentalism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, decentralization, hospitality, ideology, theology, and fear.
Diversity of idealsThere is much confusion over what "peace" is (or should be), which results in a plurality of movements seeking diverse ideals of peace. Particularly, "anti-war" movements often have ill-defined goals.
It is often not clear whether a movement or a particular protest is against war in general, as in pacifism, or against one side's participation in a war (but not the other's). Indeed, some observers feel that this unclarity has represented a key part of the propaganda strategy of those seeking victory in, e.g., the Vietnam War.
Global protests against the US invasion of Iraq in early 2003 are an example of a more specific, short term and loosely-affiliated single-issue "movement" —with relatively scattered ideological priorities, ranging from absolutist pacifism to Islamism and Anti-Americanism (see Human shield action to Iraq). Nonetheless, some of those who are involved in several such short term movements and build up trust relationships with others within them, do tend to eventually join more global or long-term movements.
By contrast, some elements of the global peace movement seek to guarantee health security by ending war and assuring what they see as basic human rights including the right of all people to have access to air, water, food, shelter and health care. A large cadre of activists seek social justice in the form of equal protection under the law and equal opportunity under the law for groups that have previously been disenfranchised.
The movement is primarily characterized by a belief that humans should not wage war on each other or engage in violent ethnic conflicts over language, race or natural resources or ethical conflict over religion or ideology. Long-term opponents of war preparations are primarily characterized by a belief that military power is not the equivalent of justice.
The movement tends to oppose the proliferation of dangerous technologies and weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons and biological warfare. Moreover, many object to the export of weapons including hand-held machine guns and grenades by leading economic nation's to lesser developed nations. Some, like SIPRI, have voiced special concern that artificial intelligence, molecular engineering, genetics and proteomics have even more vast destructive potential. Thus there is intersection between peace movement elements and Neo-Luddites or primitivism, but also with the more mainstream technology critics such as the Green parties, Greenpeace and the ecology movement they are part of.
It is one of several movements that led to the formation of Green Party political associations in many democratic countries near the end of the 20th century. The peace movement has a very strong influence in some countries' green parties, such as in Germany, perhaps reflecting that country's negative experiences with militarism in the 20th century.
Current eventsSome believe that as of the Iraq crisis, peace movements could be seen as part of a global effort to cohere "public opinion as a superpower" to compete with perceived U.S. unilateralism.
Peace movements are also generally thought to have benefited from the rise of Internet communication and coordination, the so-called smart mob technology.
Detailed history by regionThese histories will begin with the countries that suffered during World War II, and which effectively began the postwar period in a submitted position, and wrote peace into their constitutions. They will then deal with the English-speaking world and the arguments more familiar to the English speaking reader, which intersect with current events most strongly, and are the current focus of the peace movement worldwide.
GermanySuch Green parties and related political associations were formed in many democratic countries near the end of the 20th century. The peace movement has a very strong influence in some countries' green parties, such as in Germany. These can sometimes exercise decisive influence over policy, e.g. as during 2002 when the German Greens influenced German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, via their control of the German Foreign Ministry under Joschka Fischer (a Green and the single most popular politician in Germany at the time), to limit his involvement in the War on Terrorism and eventually to unite with French President Jacques Chirac whose opposition in the UN Security Council was decisive in limiting support for the U.S. plan to invade Iraq.
IsraelPeace NowThe Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflict have existed since the mid-nineteenth century creation of Zionism, and especially since the 1948 formation of the state of Israel, and the 1967 occupation of Palestinian and other Arab lands. The mainstream peace movement in Israel is Peace Now (Shalom Akhshav), whose supporters tend to vote for the Labour Party or Meretz.
Peace Now was founded in the aftermath of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem, when many people felt that the chance for peace might be missed. PM Begin acknowledged that the Peace Now rally in Tel-Aviv at the eve of his departure for the Camp David Summit with Presidents Sadat and Carter – drawing a crowd of 100,000, the largest peace rally in Israel until then – had a part in his decision to withdraw from Sinai and dismantle Israeli settlements there. Peace Now supported Begin for a time, and hailed him as a peace-maker, but turned against him when withdrawal from Sinai was accompanied by an accelerated campaign of land confiscation and settlement building in the West Bank.
This was followed by the June 1982 invasion of Lebanon, under the name "Operation Peace for Galilee". In the first weeks of the invasion Peace Now kept silent under the doctrine of "no political protests during wartime". However, more radical peace groups united into The Committee Against The Lebanon War and held increasingly large protests, which drew many Peace Now grassroots activists. Also, Peace Now members who had been drafted called the movement leadership from the Lebanon front line, giving eye-witness testimonies on the lies of government propaganda on the conduct of the war.
As a result, Peace Now changed its position and launched an intensive campaign against the war. Peace Now remained, however, opposed to soldiers refusing military orders, specifically the order to be deployed to Lebanon. The anti-war group Yesh Gvul (There is a Border/Limit) had organized a campaign which signed up some 2000 reservists who requested not to serve in Lebanon. While Yesh Gvul did not directly advocate that reservists refuse deployment orders, the group counseled those who did. Around 200 soldiers actually served prison terms. Also during the first Intifada (Palestinian Uprising) of 1987-1993 and the Second Intifada (which began on October 2000 and may or may not have ended – opinions are divided) the issue of refusing military orders remained one of the main issues dividing Peace Now from the more radical movements and groups to its left.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre in September 1982 precipitated an unprecedented week of protest demonstrations throughout Israel, dozens of demonstrators being dispersed with tear gas and hauled to detention in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. It culminated with Peace Now's "400,000 rally" in Tel-Aviv, the largest gathering of any kind in Israel’s history up to then, which led to the establishment of the Kahan Judicial Commission of Inquiry whose half a year of deliberations led to the impeachement of Defence Minister Ariel Sharon for indirect responsibility for the massacre.
As described in the commission’s report, the actual killing of at least 400 Palestinian civilians (some estimates put it as high as 2000) was perpetrated by the Christian-Lebanese Phalanges. This militia was at the time armed and trained by the Israeli army, and its armed members were introduced by Sharon into the Sabra and Shartila Palestinian refugee camps at Beirut which were surrounded on all sides by Israeli forces, and whose own inhabitants had been disarmed by Israel shortly before. Sharon took this decision while knowing that the Phalangists deeply hated Palestinians and had a long record of massacring Palestinian civilians whenever they got the opportunity.
In February 1983 the Kahan Commission published its report, calling for Sharon’s removal from the Defence Ministry, but Sharon refused to comply, claiming the report was no more than a “non-binding recommendation". A Peace Now march in Jerusalem, calling for Sharon’s resignation, was brutally assaulted by extreme-right mobs, culminating with the throwing of a grenade, killing Peace Now activist Emil Grunzweig – a reserve army officer recently returned from Lebanon – and severely wounding five others. Only then did Sharon resign and his political career went into a long eclipse (from which he emerged twenty years later to be elected Prime Minister in January 2001).
At the same period the government also announced the official end of the Peace for Galilee operation or war (the name never really caught on among the general public). In fact, however, Israeli occupation in Lebanon lingered on for another eighteen years, costing thousands of Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian lives, until the soldiers were finally evacuated in May 2000 – due especially to the highly effective campaign of the Four Mothers movement ( launched in 1997 by four mothers of soldiers serving in Lebanon).
Peace Now also advocates a negotiated peace with the Palestinians Originally this was worded vaguely, with no definition of who “the Palestinians” are and who represents them. Peace Now was quite tardy in joining the dialogue with the PLO, started by such groups as the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and the Hadash communist party. Only in 1988 did Peace Now accept that the PLO is the body regarded by the Palestinians themselves as their representative.
During the first Intifada, Peace Now held numerous protests and rallies to protest the army's cruelty and call for a negotiated withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. At the time Peace Now strongly targeted then for Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin for his infamous order to "break the bones of Palestinian trouble-makers." However, after Rabin became Prime Minister, signed the Oslo Agreement and shook Yasser Arafat’s hand on the White House lawn, Peace Now strongly supported him and mobilized public support for him against the settlers’ increasingly vicious attacks. Peace Now had a central role in the November 4, 1995 rally after which Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, an extreme-right miltant.
Since then the annual Rabin memorial rallies, held every year at the beginning of November, have become the main event of the Israeli Peace Movement, always certain to draw a crowd in the tens or hundreds of thousands. While officially organized by the Rabin Family Foundation, Peace Now presence in these annual rallies is always conspicuous.
Nowadays, Peace Now is especially known for its relentless struggle against the expansion of illegal settlement outposts on the West Bank. Dror Etkes, head of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch, is highly regarded for his meticulous work and on one recent occasion was invited to testify before a US Congressional committee at D.C.
Gush ShalomGush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, takes pride in being a radical movement to the left of Peace Now.
In its present name and structure, Gush Shalom grew out of the Jewish-Arab Committee Against Deportations, which protested the deportation without trial of 415 Palestinian Islamic activists to Lebanon in December 1992, and erected a protest tent in front of the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem for two months – until the government consented to let the deportees return.
Members then decided to continue as a general peace movement with a program strongly opposing the occupation and advocating the creation of an independent Palestine side-by-side with Israel in its pre-1967 borders (“The Green Line”) and with an undivided Jerusalem serving as the capital of both states.
Members of Gush Shalom are motivated by moral outrage and the feeling that it is the duty of a decent person to oppose wrongdoing in general and the wrongs perpetrated by his or her own country in particular. They are also, however, motivated by what may be called enlightened self interest – the recognition that at present Israel’s existence relies on the state’s military superiority in the Middle East, on its alliance with the United States, and on US’s hegemony in the world. None of these factors is guaranteed to last forever, and in fact history shows that no alliance and no military superiority lasts without an end. Therefore, Israel’s long-term survival depends upon being accepted by its neighbours – first and foremost, by the Palestinians – as a legitimate part of the Middle East.
While existing under the name Gush Shalom only since 1992, this movement is in fact the lineal descendant of various groups, movements and action committees which espoused the much same program out of the same motivation at least since 1967, and which occupied the same space on the political scene. In particular, Gush Shalom is the descendant of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (ICIPP) which was founded in 1975.
The ICIPP founders included a group of dissidents coming out the Israeli establishment, among them were Major-General Mattityahu Peled who was member of the IDF General Staff during the 1967 Six Day War and after being dishcarged from the army in 1969 turned increasingly in the direction of peace; Dr. Ya'akov Arnon, a well-known economist who headed the Zionist Federation in Holland before coming to Israel in 1948, and was for many years Director-General of the Israeli Ministry of Finance and afterwards chaired the Board of Directors of the Israeli Electricity Company; and Aryeh Eliav who was Secretary-General of the Labour Party until he broke with the then PM Golda Meir over the issue of whether or not a Palestinian People existed and had national rights.
These three and some two hundred more people who had essentially come out of the Israeli establishment, become radicalised and come to the conclusion that the arrogance of power was a threat to Israel’s future and that dialogue with the Palestinians must be opened. They came together with a group of younger, grassroots peace activists who had been active against the occupation since 1967. The bridge between the two groups was Uri Avnery, a well known mud-raking journalist who had been member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) between 1965 and 1973, at the head of his own radical one-man party.
The main achievement of the ICIPP was the opening of dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO, with the aim of making Israelis understand the need of talking and reaching a peace deal with "The Palestinian terrorists", and conversely making Palestinians aware of the need to talk to and eventually reach a deal with "The Zionist Enemy".
It was far from easy. Two of the ICIPP's Palestinian interlocutors, Sa’id Hamami and Imad Sartawi, were assassinated by Palestinian militant groups which considered them traitors – which did not deter other Palestinians from taking the murdered men’s place and continuing the dialogue. The Israeli participants received countless death threats, and some efforts were made to implement such threats. On one occasion Avnery was stabbed and spent a week in intensive care – which did not deter him from setting out to meet Yasser Arafat in 1982 besieged Beirut, the act of crossing and recrossing the front line involving considerable risk.
Between 1986 and 1993 the very act of an Israeli citizen meeting with a member of the PLO was an offence under Israeli law, carrying a maximum penalty of three years’ imprisonment. Members of the ICIPP and of other groups, such as the Hadash communist party, were actively involved in meetings with the PLO held in defiance of that law, the first one being held at November 1986 at the Romanian Black Sea resort of Costinesti. A total of some fifteen activists had been charged under what came to be known as "The Anti-Peace Law". Two of them served a half-year prison term each - the well-known philanthropist Abie Nathan who for many years operated the "pirate" Voice of Peace Radio from a ship off the Tel-Aviv shore, and Jerusalem activist David Ish Shalom. The two were accompanied to the prison gates by large crowds of supporters. At the time the prohibition on meeting with the PLO was abolished in early 1993, various other judicial proceedings were still going on against other activists.
After the signing of the Oslo Agreements in September 1993, meetings with the PLO became not only legal but official government policy. Members of Gush Shalom (into which the ICIPP merged) who came to meet Yasser Arafat found themselves rubbing shoulders with senior Israeli government officials.
However, after the collapse of the Camp David Summit in August 2000 and the outbreak of the Second Intifada, a concerted and quite successful campaign was launched to “re-demonise” the Palestinians, the PLO and particularly Yasser Arafat. Members of Gush Shalom persisted in meeting with Arafat also when Peace Now and other mainstream groups shied away from such meetings, and when Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah came under Israeli army siege and entry became difficult and risky.
On two occasions – in May 2002 and again in September 2003 – the Sharon government was known to be deliberating the sending in of commandos and the capture or killing of Arafat (which amounted to the same thing, since the Palestinian leader announced he would not be taken alive). On both occasions, a group of about 15 Gush Shalom activists headed by Uri Avnery staid the night at the Ramallah Presidential Compound and announced their presence to the media. According to Sharon aides, the presence of Israeli citizens and the complications it may cause were a factor in cancelling the intended raids. Gush Shalom activists feel that by so doing they have saved the lives of dozens and possibly hundreds of Israelis, who might have been killed in an outburst of Palestinian rage at the killing of Arafat.
In 1995 Gush Shalom launched a campaign under the title "Our Jerusalem – Capital of Two States", jointly with the late Feisal Husseini, leader of the East Jerusalem Palestinians. The petition, signed by more than a thousand prominent Israelis and Palestinians, did quite a bit to make this once taboo idea acceptable to a broad part of the Israeli public (49% by the latest opinion poll) – though Gush Shalom certainly does not claim the whole credit for this development.
Another Gush Shalom campaign involves the boycott of Settlement products, with a detailed list of industrial and agricultural products maintained on the Gush Shalom website, with the public in Israel and abroad called upon not to consume such products – since the proceeds go to strengthen the settlements which are the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Unlike Peace Now, Gush Shalom persistently supports Conscientious Objectors and those who refuse to render military service to the occupation – in particular the five youngsters Haggai Matar, Matan Kaminer, Shimri Zameret, Adam Ma’or and Noam Bahat, who were court-martialed in 2002 and spent two years behind bars.
Gush Spokesperson Adam Keller himself was court-martialed back in 1988, for daubing graffiti on 117 army tanks (as well as in the officers' toilet and various other locations at Tze'elim Camp in the Negev) while on reserve military duty, the inscription in all places consisting of the words: “Soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces, refuse to be occupiers and oppressors! Refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories!”. For that, Keller was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment plus demotion from corporal to private. Afterwards, he was diagnosed by an army psychiatrist as “mentally unfit to military service” and given what the army considers a dishonourable discharge and Keller himself considers a highly honourable one.
At present, Gush Shalom activists are mainly involved in daily struggle at Palestinian West Bank villages which have their land confiscated by the Separation barrier, erected ostensibly to stop suicide bombers and actually to implement the de-facto annexation of considerable tracts of land to Israel and make them available for settlement expansion. Gush activists are to be found, together with those of other Israeli movements like Ta'ayush and Anarchists Against the Wall, joining the Palestinian villagers of Bil'in in the weekly non-violent protest marches held to protest confiscation of more than half of the village lands.
Although Gush Shalom earned itself respect among peace-seeking Israelis as well as in the United States and Europe, it is regarded by mainstream Israelis as a purely pro-Palestinian movement. This is hardly surprising given the enormous campaign waged against the movement in the Israeli media, with Gush Shalom’s own voice hardly being given a chance to be heard. For example, in 2003 the well-known commentator Ben Kaspit branded Gush Shalom as "a movement of traitors" on his Channel 10 TV talk show, leading to a large new wave of death threats. That was after Gush Shalom sent warning letters to several IDF colonels and brigadier-generals, warning them that acts which their units perpetrated constituted a violation of International Law, specifically of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and might lead to persecution on charges of war crimes.
Gush Shalom's position was and remains that all peoples have the right to self-determination and to oppose foreign rule and occupation, and that the Palestinians have this right no less than Israelis had it when they launched an uprising against British colonial rule between 1945 and 1947, and the Americans exercised it between 1775 and 1781. That in no way gives the right to attack the civilian population of the oppressor nation, and such attacks deserve all condemnation. Both sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as long as it has not been resolved, must adhere to that rule and avoid harming civilians. (It is little known, either in Israel or internationally, that the number of Palestinian children killed in IDF attacks and raids since 2000 is three times the number of Israeli children killed in Palestinian suicide bombings.)
CanadaCanada has a diverse peace movement, with coalitions and networks in many cities, towns and regions. The largest cross-country umbrella coalition is the , whose 140 member groups include large city-based coalitions, small grassroots groups, national and local unions, faith, environmental, and student groups, with a combined membership of over 4 million Canadians. The Canadian Peace Alliance has been a leading voice, along with its member groups opposing the "War on Terror." In particular, the CPA opposes Canada's participation in the war in Afghanistan and Canadian complicity in what it views as misguided and destructive US foreign policy.
Canada has also been home to a growing movement of Palestinian solidarity, marked by an increasing number of grassroots Jewish groups opposed to Israel's policies, in many cases likening them to Apartheid, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.
The Canadian Peace Congress (1949-1990) was a leading organizer in the peace movement for many years, particularly when it was under the leadership of James Gareth Endicott who was its president until 1971.
The McGill Middle East Program in Civil Society and Peace BuildingBorne of the Montreal Consortium of Human Rights Advocacy Training (MCHRAT), the McGill Middle East Program (MMEP) is modelled on one of Montreal's most celebrated efforts of civil society and peace building, Project Genesis. Project Genesis comes from a growing school that sees Social Work and Peace-Building as inseparable projects (click for publications by expert Jim Torczyner and others).
The MMEP takes this Canadian model to the Middle East, not only promoting but actively engaging communities - Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israel - in the process of civil society and peace building. Taking advantage of Canada's reputation as a peacemaker, Fellows from the Middle East come to Montreal to participate in a year-long Masters of Social Work program that includes fieldwork at Canadian organizations like Project Genesis as well as an intensive peace-building class between the fellows themselves.
United KingdomThe National Peace Council was founded in 1908 after the 17th Universal Peace Congress in London (July August 1908). It brought together representatives of a considerable number of national voluntary organisations with a common interest in peace, disarmament and international and race relations. The primary function of the NPC was to provide opportunities for consultation and joint activities between its affiliated members, to help create an informed public opinion on the issues of the day and to convey to the government of the day the views of the substantial section of British life represented by its affiliated membership. The NPC folded in 2000 to be replaced in 2001 by Network for Peace, which was set up to continue the networking role of NPC.
From 1934 the Peace Pledge Union gained many adherents to its pledge, "I renounce war and will never support or sanction another". Its support diminished considerably with the outbreak of war in 1939, but it remained the focus of pacifism in the post-war years.
Post-World War II peace movement efforts in the United Kingdom were initially focused on the dissolution of the British Empire and the rejection of imperialism by the United States and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The anti-nuclear movement sought to "opt out" of the Cold War (see below under U.S.) and rejected such ideas as "Britain's Little Independent Nuclear Deterrent" in part on the grounds that it (BLIND) was in contradiction even with MAD (see below).
Anti-nuclear campaigning in the early 1950s was at first focused on the small Direct Action Committee (DAC), who organised the first of the Aldermaston Marches in 1958. The DAC were later to merge into the much larger Committee of 100. The formation of CND tapped widespread popular fear and opposition to nuclear weapons following the development of the first hydrogen bomb, and in the late 1950s and early 1960s anti-nuclear marches attracted large followings, especially to the annual Aldermaston march at Easter.
Popular opposition to nuclear weapons produced a Labour Party resolution for unilateral nuclear disarmament at the 1960 Party Conference, but it was overturned the following year and did not appear on later agendas. This experience disillusioned many anti-nuclear protesters with the Labour Party, in whom they had previously put their hopes. Subsequently there was a strong anti-parliamentary current in the British peace movement, and it has been argued that during the 1960s anarchism became as influential as socialism.
Two years after the formation of CND Bertrand Russell, its president, resigned to form the Committee of 100, which was to undertake civil disobedience in the form of sit-down demonstrations in central London and at nuclear bases around the UK. Russell said that these were needed because the press had grown indifferent to CND and because large scale direct action could force the government to change its policy. A hundred prominent people, many in the arts, put their names to the organisation. Very large numbers of demonstrators were essential to this strategy, but the violence of the police, the arrest and imprisonment of demonstrators, and pre-emptive arrests for conspiracy made support dwindle rapidly. Although several eminent people took part in sit-down demonstrations (including Russell, whose imprisonment at the age of 89 was widely reported) many of the 100 signatories were inactive.
As the Committee of 100 had a non-hierarchical structure and no formal membership, many local groups sprang up calling themselves Committee of 100. This helped the promulgation of civil disobedience but it produced policy confusion and, as the decade progressed, Committee of 100 groups engaged in actions on many social issues not directly related to war and peace.
The VSC led by Tariq Ali mounted several very large and violent demonstrations against the Vietnam war in 67/68 but the first anti Vietnam demonstration was at the American Embassy in London and took place in 1965.
The peace movement was later associated with the Peace camp movement as Labour moved "more to the centre" under Prime Minister Tony Blair.
By early 2003, the peace and anti-war movement, mostly grouped together under the banner of the Stop the War Coalition, was powerful enough to cause several of Blair's cabinet to resign, and hundreds of Labour Party MPs to vote against their government. Blair's motion to support militarily the U.S. plan to invade Iraq continued only due to support from the UK Conservative Party. Protests against the invasion of Iraq were particularly vocal in Britain. Polls suggested that without UN Security Council approval, the UK public was very much opposed to involvement, and over two million people protested in Hyde Park (the previous largest demonstration in the UK having had around 600,000).
United States of AmericaIntroductionAlthough there was substantial organized resistance to foreign wars in the U.S. since the nation's origins (see the Anti-Imperialist League and Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience), this was often simply an outgrowth of noninterventionism or religious pacifism, and not in general a coherent mass movement with unified goals until after World War II. These movements were dismissed by most in U.S. foreign policy circles as impractical as the country entered the Cold War era (c. 1948-1990). Some peace groups, such as the United World Federalists, hoped to secure world peace through integrated world government.
The 1930s: The Rise of the Peace Movement from World War IWith the end of World War I, there was widespread weariness with war. This led to an isolationist policy in America, marked by the passage of the Neutrality Act and congressional investigations into munition makers, who were charged with instigating wars for profit. Popular films in the era also demonstrated this view that war was futile and should never happen again, with films like All Quiet on the Western Front. This isolationism contributed to the "appeasement" of Hitler, due to the lack of will to go to war.
The Peace Movement in World War IIOpposition to World War II was limited in the United States, but included the War Resisters League, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Catholic Worker Movement.
The Cold War: The Forties and FiftiesWith Cold War tensions rising, the Progressive Party became a home for the peace movement. Like the American Peace Mobilization before the war, they were accused of harboring communist sympathies. In the election campaign of 1948, the Progressive Party supported appeasement of the Soviet Union and a ban on nuclear weapons. They opposed the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan. They received over one million popular votes but no electoral votes.
There was a relatively small amount of domestic protest relevant to the Cold War in the 1950s, which saw a large buildup of both nuclear and conventional weapons in both the United States and its adversary, the Soviet Union. The lack of protest was in part due to McCarthyism and general disdain for those who did not view communist expansion as a threat. It was during this time that the Eisenhower administration developed the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, in which both the U.S. and the USSR held enough nuclear weapons to obliterate each other should they become embroiled in nuclear war. According to this notion, the two superpowers' possession of nuclear weapons was viewed as a deterrent that would prevent any such war from taking place. MAD also became a central doctrine to the U.S.'s foreign policy of containing Communism.
One may reasonably date the open explicit and public resistance to this process to the departing comments of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1960) who warned that the United States was in peril of being politically dominated by a military-industrial complex. Shortly into the Kennedy era, the world experienced white-knuckled nuclear brinksmanship during the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962). To the delight of anti-militarism activists and the relief of ordinary citizens worldwide, a test ban treaty and nuclear arms control talks ensued soon after.
The Vietnam Era: 1962-1975The peace movement in the 1960s in the United States sought to bring an end to the Vietnam War. Some advocates within this movement advocated a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. One reason given for the withdrawal is that it would contribute to a lessening of tensions in the region and thus less human bloodshed. Another, contrasting reason was that the Vietnamese should work out their problems independent of foreign influence.
Opposition to the Vietnam War tended to unite groups opposed to U.S. anti-communism, imperialism and colonialism and, for those involved with the New Left, capitalism itself, such as the Catholic Worker Movement. Others, such as Stephen Spiro opposed the war based on the theory of Just War. Although he was convicted of avoiding conscription, he received a suspended sentence, and was later pardoned by President Gerald Ford.
Some critics of U.S. withdrawal predicted that it would not contribute to peace but rather vastly increased bloodshed. These critics advocated U.S. forces remain until all threats from the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had been eliminated.
Advocates of U.S. withdrawal were generally known as "doves", and they called their opponents "hawks", following nomenclature dating back to the War of 1812. The imagery was intended to present the withdrawal advocates as peace-seeking and the withdrawal opponents as bad and predatory. The idea of a chickenhawk refers back to this time, to describe those who had avoided dangerous military service before they entered politics, but then advocated aggressive stances once in office.
High-profile opposition to the Vietnam war turned to street protests in an effort to turn U.S. political opinion against the war. The protests gained momentum from the Civil Rights Movement that had organized to oppose segregation laws, which had laid a foundation of theory and infrastructure on which the anti-war movement grew. Protests were fueled by a growing network of independently published newspapers (known as "underground papers") and the timely advent of large venue rock'n'roll festivals such as Woodstock and Grateful Dead shows, attracting younger people in search of generational togetherness.
The fatal shooting of four anti-war protesters at Kent State University cemented the resolve of many protesters. The Kent State killings saw campuses erupt all across the country; in May 1970 most universities were strike-bound, for example at Wayne State University. The late 1960s in the U.S. became a time of youth rebellion, mass gatherings and riots, many of which began in response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but which ignited in an atmosphere of open opposition to a wartime government.
Provocative actions by police and by protesters turned anti-war demonstrations in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention into a riot. Explosive news reports of American military abuses, such as the 1968 My Lai Massacre, brought new attention and support to the anti-war movement.
Veterans of the Vietnam War returned home to join the movement, including John Kerry, who spearheaded Vietnam Veterans Against the War and testified before Congress in televised hearings. Thirty years later, as a United States Senator, Kerry campaigned to become President of the United States, betraying a newfound reluctance to acknowledge his anti-war roots while playing up his stellar war record. Other U.S. veterans returned from the war saying that nobody wants to be in a war where people are suffering and dying, but that they found peace in their own minds by knowing they served their country. Some cited the words of George Washington's 1790 State of the Union Address: "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
Anti-war protests ended with the final withdrawal of troops after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. Momentum from the protest organizations became a main force for the growth of an environmental movement in the United States. South Vietnam was left to defend itself alone when the fighting resumed. Many South Vietnamese fled to the United States in one of the largest war refugee migrations in history. There was no peace movement to protest the renewed bloodshed, and little media coverage. Saigon surrendered to the North in 1975; Laos and Cambodia were overrun by Communist troops that same spring.
The Eighties and NinetiesDuring the 1980s U.S. peace activists largely concentrated on slowing the superpower arms race in the belief that this would reduce the possibility of nuclear war between the U.S. and the USSR. As the Reagan Administration accelerated military spending and adopted a tough, challenging stance to the Russians, peace groups such as the Nuclear Freeze and Beyond War sought to educate the public on the what they believed was the inherent riskiness and ruinous cost of this policy. Outreach to individual citizens in the Soviet Union and mass meetings, using then-new satellite link technology, were part of peacemaking activities in the 1980s.
In response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, President George H.W. Bush began preparations for a mideast war. Peace activists were starting to find their groove just before the Gulf War was launched in February 1991, with well-attended rallies, especially on the west coast. However, the ground war was over in less than a week. A lopsided Allied victory and a media-incited wave of patriotic sentiment washed over the protest movement before it could develop traction.
The 1990s began with the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union (November 1991), removing one of the main focuses of peace activism. The U.S. government of Bill Clinton adopted a more conciliatory tone and presided over a decade of perceived peace and prosperity — one in which corporate rule quietly advanced. Peacemakers' priorities during the Nineties included seeking a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, belated efforts at humanitarian assistance to war-torn regions such as Bosnia and Rwanda, and mitigating the harm caused by U.N. sanctions on Iraq. These sanctions — in effect from 1990 to 2003 — led to the deaths of some 500,000 children from fully preventable causes, including common infections and malnutrition; American peace activists brought medicine into Iraq in defiance of U.S. law, in some cases enduring heavy fines and imprisonment in retaliation. Some of the principal groups involved were Voices in the Wilderness and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
The Iraq WarBefore, during, and after the War in Iraq began, a concerted protest effort existed in the United States. In March 2003, just before the U.S. and British Military invasion of Iraq, a protest mobilization called "The World Says No to War" led to as many as 500,000 protestors in cities across the U.S. Alleged incidents of initimidation, spying, and police harassment toward protesters have discouraged some members of the movement , and have led to lawsuits against the U.S. Government's policies related to privacy and freedom of speech. However, many protest organizations have persisted as the United States has maintained a military and corporate presence in Iraq.
U.S. activist groups including United for Peace and Justice, CODEPINK (Women Say No To War), Military Families For Peace, Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Not In Our Name, A.N.S.W.E.R., Veterans for Peace, and The World Can't Wait continue to protest against the Iraq War. Methods of protest include rallies and marches, impeachment petitions, the staging of a war-crimes tribunal in New York (to investigate crimes and alleged abuses of power of the Bush administration), bringing Iraqi women to tour the U.S. and tell their side of the story, street theater and independent filmmaking, high-profile appearances by anti-war activists such as Scott Ritter, Janis Karpinski, and Dahr Jamail, resisting military recruiting on college campuses, withholding tax monies, mass letter-writing to legislators and newspapers, blogging, music, and guerrilla theater. Independent media producers continue to broadcast, podcast and Web-host programs about the movement against the Iraq War.
The threat of military action against IranStarting in 2005, opposition to military action against Iran started in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, including the creation of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran. By August 2007, fears of an imminent United States and/or Israeli attack on Iran had increased to the level that several Nobel Prize | |
