From a Nuclear-Free to a War-Free World

Abstract

Throughout the decades of the Cold War, awareness of the threat presented by nuclear weapons grew both in breadth and acuteness, boosted as it was by recurrent crises, to the point where a nuclear holocaust appeared imminent. When the Cold War ended, the threat seemed to recede, not surprisingly, since confrontations between the nuclear powers (as in Berlin 1948–49 or in the Caribbean in 1962) seemed no longer likely. However, campaigns pressing for elimination of nuclear weapons intensified. The emphasis shifted from the immediate danger posed by the weapons to the refutation of justifications for keeping them whether as weapons in war or as backers of deterrence. Resistance to this pressure by military establishments and their supporting institutions also intensified. Outlines of a confrontation between world public opinion and institutions comprising the infrastructure of the ‘war system’ became ever more clearly discernible. In what follows I will offer an interpretation of this confrontation and suggest opportunities created by it for pursuing the goal of a war-free world.