La Pace Calda. La nascita del movimento antinucleare negli Stati Uniti e in Gran Bretagna, 1957-1963

The aim of this proposal is to offer an alternative perspective on the study of Cold War, since insufficient attention is usually paid to those organizations that mobilized against the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons. The antinuclear movement began to mobilize between the 1950s and the 1960s, when it finally gained the attention of public opinion, and helped to build a sort of global conscience about nuclear bombs. This was due to the activism of a significant part of the international scientific community, which offered powerful intellectual and political legitimization to the struggle, and to the combined actions of the scientific and organized protests. This antinuclear conscience is something we usually tend to consider as a fait accompli in contemporary world, but the question is to show its roots, and the way it influenced statesmen and political choices during the period of nuclear confrontation of the early Cold War. To understand what this conscience could be and how it should be defined, we have to look at the very meaning of the nuclear weapons that has deeply modified the sense of war. Nuclear weapons seemed to be able to destroy human beings everywhere with no realistic forms of control of the damages they could set off, and they represented the last resource in the wide range of means of mass destruction. Even if we tend to consider this idea fully rational and incontrovertible, it was not immediately born with the birth of nuclear weapons themselves. Or, better, not everyone in the world did immediately share it. Due to the particular climate of Cold War confrontation, deeply influenced by the persistence of realistic paradigms in international relations, British and U.S. governments looked at nuclear weapons simply as «a bullet». From the Trinity Test to the signature of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, many things happened that helped to shift this view upon nuclear weapons. First of all, more than ten years of scientific protests provided a more concerned knowledge about consequences of nuclear tests and about the use of nuclear weapons. Many scientists devoted their social activities to inform public opinion and policy-makers about the real significance of the power of the atom and the related danger for human beings. Secondly, some public figures, as physicists, philosophers, biologists, chemists, and so on, appealed directly to the human community to «leave the folly and face reality», publicly sponsoring the antinuclear conscience. Then, several organizations leaded by political, religious or radical individuals gave to this protests a formal structure. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Great Britain, as well as the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy in the U.S., represented the voice of the masses against the attempts of governments to present nuclear arsenals as a fundamental part of the international equilibrium. Therefore, the antinuclear conscience could be defined as an opposite feeling to the development and the use of nuclear weapons, able to create a political issue oriented to the influence of military and foreign policies. Only taking into consideration the strength of this pressure, it seems possible to understand not only the beginning of nuclear negotiations, but also the reasons that permitted Cold War to remain cold.

Tra pacifismo e ambientalismo: il Nuclear Freeze Movement e la risposta dell'amministrazione Reagan

Negli anni Ottanta si assiste tanto nel vecchio quanto nel nuovo continente alla rinascita del movimento antinucleare. Mentre in Europa l’origine di questa ondata di proteste antinucleari è collegata alla “doppia decisione” NATO del 1979, negli Stati Uniti la genesi si colloca nel contesto dalla mobilitazione dei gruppi ambientalisti in seguito all’incidente alla centrale nucleare di Three Mile Island. Dopo l’elezione di Ronald Reagan, alle proteste contro le applicazioni pacifiche dell’atomo si affiancarono quelle contro la politica nucleare del Paese. La retorica di Reagan, il massiccio piano di riarmo, unitamente al rinnovato deteriorarsi delle relazioni tra USA e URSS contribuirono a diffondere nell’opinione pubblica la sensazione che l’amministrazione Reagan, almeno da un punto di vista teorico, non avesse escluso dalle sue opzioni il ricorso alle armi nucleari nel caso di un confronto con l’URSS. I timori legati a questa percezione produssero una nuova ondata di proteste che assunsero dimensioni di massa grazie alla mobilitazione provocata dalla Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign (NWFC). Il target della NWFC era l’ampio programma di riarmo nucleare sostenuto da Reagan, che secondo gli attivisti nucleari, in un quadro di crescenti tensioni internazionali, avrebbe fatto aumentare le possibilità di uno scontro atomico. Per evitare lo scenario dell’olocausto nucleare, la NWFC proponeva «un congelamento bilaterale e verificabile del collaudo, dell’installazione e della produzione di armi nucleari». L’idea del nuclear freeze, che era concepito come un passo per fermare la spirale del riarmo e tentare successivamente di negoziare riduzioni negli arsenali delle due superpotenze, riscosse un tale consenso nell’opinione pubblica americana da indurre l’amministrazione Reagan a formulare una risposta specifica. Durante la primavera del 1982 fu, infatti, creato un gruppo interdipartimentale ad hoc, l’Arms Control Information Policy Group, con il compito di arginare l’influenza della NWFC sull’opinione pubblica americana e formulare una risposta coerente alle critiche del movimento antinucleare.

Pastoralists at War: Violence and Security in the Kenya-Sudan-Uganda Border Region

The majority of those living in the border region of Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda are pastoralists, whose livelihoods are dictated by the upkeep and size of their herds. Harsh environmental conditions force pastoralists to migrate in search of water and pasturelands during the dry season. With limited access to water and competing rights to land, inter-tribal conflict arises when pastoralists from one tribe enter the territory of another. The increased availability of small arms in the region from past wars increasingly makes ordinary clashes fatal. Governments in the region have responded with heavy-handed coercive disarmament operations. These have led to distrust and subsequent violent clashes between communities and security providers. This report reviews the scale, consequences of, and responses to the many pastoral conflicts, utilizing methodological tools such as key informant interviews, retrospective analy¬sis, and a thorough review of available literature.

Gacaca and DDR : the disputable record of state-building in Rwanda

State-building is currently considered to be an indispensable process in overcoming state fragility: a condition characterized by frequent armed conflicts as well as chronic poverty. In this process, both the capacity and the legitimacy of the state are supposed to be enhanced; such balanced development of capacity and legitimacy has also been demanded in security sector reform (SSR), which is regarded as being a crucial part of post-conflict state-building. To enhance legitimacy, the importance of democratic governance is stressed in both state-building and SSR in post-conflict countries. In reality, however, the balanced enhancement of capacity and legitimacy has rarely been realized. In particular, legitimacy enhancement tends to stagnate in countries in which one of multiple warring parties takes a strong grip on state power. This paper tries to understand why such unbalanced development of state-building and SSR has been observed in post-conflict countries, through a case study of Rwanda. Analyses of two policy initiatives in the security sector - Gacaca transitional justice and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) - indicate that although these programs achieved goals set by the government, their contribution to the normative objectives promoted by the international community was quite debatable. It can be understood that this is because the country has subordinated SSR to its state-building process. After the military victory of the former rebels, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the ruling elite prioritized the establishment of political stability over the introduction of international norms such as democratic governance and the rule of law. SSR was implemented only to the extent that it contributed to, and did not threaten, Rwanda's RPF-led state-building.

Beyond Russia’s ‘Versailles syndrome’. Egmont Security Policy Brief No. 58, November 2014

Russia alleges that at the end of the Cold War it underwent a soft version of a Versailles Treaty, pushing it into the periphery of global politics and cutting it out of European decision-making. The crisis in Ukraine is about the survival of Putin’s regime and the dismantling of the post-Cold War settlement. We should not accept the fallacious narrative of victimhood propagated by the Kremlin’s Versailles syndrome. Even so, it is time to explore practical ways of coexisting with Russia. The Helsinki Process and the disarmament and arms control agreements of the Cold War could serve as a model for a mutually acceptable security architecture.

Pacific Rim diversification and defense market assessment : a comprehensive guide for entry into overseas markets.

Mode of access: Internet.

NATO-Warsaw Pact : issues related to implementation of a Conventional Forces Treaty : report to Congressional Committees /

"B-230546"--p. 1.

Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.

Shipping list no.: 98-0230-P.

The dicey impact of a "nuclear freeze" on the defense posture of the free world : report together with dissenting view of the Procurement and Military Nuclear Systems Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Ninety-eighth Congress, first session, March 11, 1983.

Mode of access: Internet.

Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and related agencies appropriations for 1985 [microform] : hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-eighth Congress, second session /

Includes indexes.

Essays on arms control and national security /

Mode of access: Internet.

Understanding the INF Treaty.

Errata slip inserted.

CFE : Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

Cover title.