by Lawrence S. Wittner
Reviewed by Sandra Ionno Butcher

The role of citizens' groups in pressing for nuclear disarmament is the subject of historian Lawrence S. Wittner's sweeping trilogy, The Struggle for the Bomb. The third and final book in this series, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press, 2003) provides insight into some of the most frightening days thus far of the nuclear age. Wittner reminds the reader of Ronald Reagan's nuclear zeal, the horrendously bloated arsenals of the mid-1980s, and incomprehensible plans for using Europe as a staging ground for nuclear war. He painstakingly describes the ebb and flow of the anti-nuclear movements around the world, focusing at length on the remarkable surge in activism in the early-1980s when "the antinuclear campaign grew into the largest, most dynamic international citizens' movement of modern times." He shows how different countries responded-often reluctantly-to pressure from the public, and discusses the ways in which the movement often was hindered by various concerted governmental efforts to limit its impact.

In tackling this wide-ranging subject matter, Wittner makes an important contribution to the available disarmament movement scholarship. His is a ground-breaking study that seeks to provide a broad overview of complicated and interrelated events occurring simultaneously around the world, in many corridors and in many public squares. These included very local efforts, such as those by citizens on the tiny island of Palau who stood up time and again against US pressure to amend their anti-nuclear constitution. They included mass mobilizations, such as those led by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in England and the Freeze campaign in the US. Wittner traces the development of diverse organizations like European Nuclear Disarmament and Japan's competing Gensuikin and Gensuikyo. He features constituent campaigns, like those of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and various scientists' groups like Pugwash.

In telling this story of defiance and commitment, Wittner highlights how courageous activists in the Soviet Union's Trust Group and in other "subversive" groups in Communist countries often suffered severe reprisals for raising their voices against nuclear weapons (including the exile of Andrei Sakharov, a Pugwashite). He contrasts their work with the uncritical World Peace Council, funded by the Soviet Communist Party. He shows that Western governments also often used harsh measures against nuclear protesters. And yet, from the UK's Greenham Common to New Zealand's docks, from Alberta to New Delhi, Wittner shows how citizens' demand for greater nuclear sanity around the world influenced decision-makers and leaders.

As a result of its vast subject matter, it is no surprise that Wittner's book is not an "easy read." It is unlikely that people associated with any of the groups that Wittner describes will be fully satisfied with his treatment of their organizations: there simply is not space in this type of study for deeper examination. As Wittner writes in his preface, "there are too many nations, actors, and languages for any individual to do complete justice to such a project." Yet, by providing his broad overview, Wittner helps to define where further research is needed.

Readers looking for greater insight into the role Pugwash played during this time period will, however, be disappointed. Wittner's research into the earlier days of Pugwash-which was evident throughout the second volume in his trilogy, Resisting the Bomb-fell short in the current volume, as can be seen from a few cases.

For example, Wittner skims the history of the early 1970s and as a result, he is perhaps too abrupt in his dismissal of the importance of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He writes, "For the most part, Soviet-American treaties limited items that were not useful. Only when the U.S. Senate refused to fund a nationwide ABM deployment did Nixon and Kissinger agree to ban it through the ABM Treaty." This characterization belies the important conceptual steps that enabled leaders-not only in the Senate, but in the US administrations and in the Soviet Union-to accept the counter-intuitive notion that defenses in a nuclear world create instability. Pugwash played an important role in this process, as Bernd Kubbig, for example, has described in his study "Communicators in the Cold War" (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, PRIF Reports No. 44, October 1996).

In paying due credit to the remarkable impact of Gorbachev's commitment to "new thinking," Wittner does not give enough texture to the impact that scientists had on Gorbachev's thinking. He does write that, "[Gorbachev] gave particular credit 'to the joint efforts of Soviet and American scientists.'" He continues, "The Pugwash movement had been especially important in this regard…indeed some of his key foreign policy advisors-such as Arbatov, Yakovlev, and Velikhov-had attended Pugwash meetings." While he mentions at length throughout the book the importance of these advisors in the Soviet Union, it would be interesting to have more details about the role Pugwash played in the evolution of their thinking. For example, Gorbachev himself writes in Ending War: The Force of Reason (MacMillan Press and St. Martin's Press, 1999. M. Bruce and T. Milne, eds.), "I regard the various Pugwash initiatives as part of the arduous search for an end to the dangerous nuclear stalemate. I recall in particular their warning in the early 1980s against newly fashionable strategies of 'limited nuclear war' and speculations about the 'advantages' of a nuclear first strike." A more informative book for those specifically looking for details about the impact of Pugwash during the Cold War period is Matthew Evangelista's Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 1999).

In writing about the August 1996 Canberra Commission report, Wittner does not mention the fact that the commission grew out of a series of Pugwash workshops and publications which focused on the desirability and feasibility of a nuclear-weapons-free world. Likewise, he does not give adequate attention to the awarding of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize to Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs "for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and in the longer run to eliminate such arms." He also overlooks the emergence of the small, but effective, Student/Young Pugwash network in the late 1970s.

The preceding comments are not intended to detract from the importance of Wittner's work. It has been argued many times before that Pugwash has created an information gap about its activities through its focus on small, informal, and elite discussions. As a result, too little is published about the role of Pugwash. As a mature organization, having received the highest international acclaim for its peace activities, there remains a need to fill in these historical gaps.

In the meantime, we all owe Lawrence Wittner a debt of gratitude for undertaking this work. He helps to prove, in his own words, that "at an exceptionally dangerous junction in modern history, when numerous governments scrambled to build nuclear weapons and threatened to employ them for purposes of annihilation, concerned citizens played a central role in curbing the nuclear arms race and preventing nuclear war."

Sandra Ionno Butcher, a part-time consultant and full-time mom, is working on a history of the Pugwash movement. Sandy previously served as the executive director of Student Pugwash USA and as Interim Research Director and Senior Analyst for the British American Security Information Council.