Can nuclear protest change policy?
Hehir, J. Bryan
Church/world watch Can nuclear protest change policy? J. Bryan Hehir THE NUCLEAR DEBATE is now fully joined in the United States. The protest movement against the arms race has produced the...
...It has already had its consequences...
...The Kennedy-Hatfield freeze resolution has produced the Jackson-Warner freeze proposal...
...The policy debate has traditionally been an elite discussion, closed and consensual in character...
...Both carry a certain kind of authority and trust in the public mind...
...The Foreign Affairs article proposes an increase in NATO conventional forces that many in the popular movement...
...It is unlikely that either of the administration's proposals will defuse the movement but both of them testify to its impact...
...The two most visible examples are religious leadership and medical doctors...
...By the spring of 1982, challenging defense spending in the name of both budgetary frugality and security was a position most elected officials were willing to espouse...
...Today, the consensual character of the policy debate is being threatened...
...In the Foreign Affairs article they call for consideration of a "No-first-use pledge" by the United States...
...Today the political leadership is seeking to catch up with public opinion on nuclear disarmament...
...The popular movement has produced a "democratization" of the nuclear debate, engaging large numbers of people in a discussion previously confined to government circles and a few research institutes...
...In the spring of 1981, it was impossible to find anything but isolated voices in either House of Congress to question the Reagan administration's philosophy of the need to rearm in order to disarm...
...Opponents of SALT and CTB have always been able to show opposition to both which seemed stronger than any public sentiment which arms-controllers could produce...
...It includes groups with a unique capacity to catalyze public opinion...
...This kind of proposal by these personalities opens a new stage in the policy debate...
...nuclear strategy remained unchanged...
...Few observers believe that either the president's proposals of last November or this May would have been forthcoming without the pressure of the peace movement...
...The speed with which the nuclear protest movement has arisen indicates a sea-change in public opinion...
...Administrations could change, political parties could come and go, but the fundamental ideas of U.S...
...Anyone familiar with efforts to pass SALT II or to move through the final steps of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will recognize the value of a constituency for arms control and disarmament...
...It is best exemplified in the recent Foreign Affairs article co-authored by McGeorge Bundy, George F. Kennan, Robert S. McNamara and Gerard Smith...
...The popular proposals arc so broad and general that most in the policy community keep their distance...
...The protest movement against the arms race has produced the Reagan administration's response in the president's Eureka College address...
...The popular dimension of the nuclear debate is today a mass movement: it is large, broad-based, non-technical in its pronouncements and pluralistic in its objectives, programs, and methods...
...The peace movement can already claim a victory...
...The power of the popular movement resides not only in its mass appeal but in some particular parts of its membership...
...This proposal as they note, is a challenge to NATO strategic doctrine of the last 33 years...
...The capacity for long-term impact may lie, however, with a strategy to link the popular movement to the policy debate now emerging on nuclear strategy...
...The significance of the popular movement lies in the pace of its mobilization, the character of its constituency, and the signal it sends to the political process...
...Presently the popular and the policy dimensions of the nuclear debate move on parallel tracks...
...Special Session on Disarmament...
...engaging that authority in a publicly visible fashion against the nuclear arms race is a major political event...
...The consensual character of the policy debate is stretched to its limit by this proposal...
...The popular movement is exemplified in the Nuclear Freeze initiatives, the Ground Zero Week, The Peace Pentecost sponsored on Memorial Weekend and the spate of activities surrounding the U.N...
...it came from the popular movement of protest...
...they have shaped the policy, implemented it and defended it in negotiations with European allies and Soviet adversaries...
...it has posed the nuclear issue for public debate in a fashion which cannot be ignored...
...These four names epitomize the elite consensus on U.S...
...Continued on page 383) Church/world watch (Continued from page 360) nuclear policy...
...The change from 1981 to 1982 was not generated in Washington...
...The new popular movement has created a critical mass of public opinion which could have long-term political consequences...
...the challenge here is to fundamental principles not tactics...
...thus far it constitutes a fragile but effective alliance of diverse groups focused on reversing the nuclear arms race...
...The debate which is now at full tide has two distinct dimensions: there is a popular movement against the nuclear arms race and there is a policy debate alongside the popular movement...
...It has involved a relatively few actors who accepted a set of well-defined premises...
...The symbolic significance, already evident, is the demonstration that a constituency exists in the American political process which is committed to reversing the arms race...
...The threat comes not from the popular movement but from within the policy community...
Vol. 109 • June 1982 • No. 12
