Peace Community Is Now a Force : Mobilized Citizenry Changes Dynamics of Arms Control

When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev sign the agreement to eliminate major categories of nuclear missiles in Europe, it will mark a historic moment in the nuclear age that begs explaining. How did the most vociferous of all Russophobes, the President most devoted to military bravura, agree to such a sweeping accord?

The speculation about the President’s motives has already begun. Nancy Reagan wants him to secure his “place in history.” The Iran- contra scandal drove him to recoup through U.S.-Soviet diplomacy. He wants to undercut the Democrats in 1988. The moderate Howard H. Baker Jr. is calling the shots.

There is quite likely some truth in such musings. But major arms-control agreements are more firmly rooted in the political culture. Indeed, the fact that arms control was high on the President’s agenda was due significantly to the extraordinary outburst of peace activism occurring in the 1980s.

It was the massive demonstrations in Europe in 1981 that first riveted attention on the new and perilous nuclear stand-off on the Continent. At the same time, a similar if less strident movement was spreading through the United States, coalescing in 6,000 local groups that forcefully articulated their concerns: speaking to neighbors, writing pamphlets, lobbying Congress. Nuclear-freeze resolutions were placed on city and state ballots, and were victorious in nearly every test. A citizens’ diplomacy grew quickly as well, establishing sister cities in the Soviet Union, beaming televised space bridges around the world, sending delegations to Moscow.

The results of this dissent began to appear, ironically, only after it was widely assumed that the movement’s vitality had been sapped by Reagan’s reelection. Two years later the House of Representatives voted approval of five bold strokes of arms control. Among them were restrictions on nuclear testing, chemical-weapons production and anti-satellite weapons tests (the last also enacted by the Senate). The large majorities by which these measures were voted attests to the power of the grass-roots peace activism across the country. Would these politicians have supported measures that were binding on a reluctant and popular President if they didn’t know that their constituencies were agreeable--indeed, insistent? Hardly. That legislative performance has been repeated in the 100th Congress, backed by an accelerating shift in public opinion.

The network of local activists has been complemented by the initiatives of larger and more sophisticated organizations. These advocacy “think tanks” provide policy analysis, legal support, Capitol Hill pressure, high-level exchanges with the Soviets and many other services aimed atprying open the cloistered debate on U.S. arms policy.

Their work is impressive. The Natural Resources Defense Council negotiated directly with the Soviet government to monitor its nuclear-test site, an unprecedented move that has improved confidence in Soviet openness to arms-control verification. The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Federation of American Scientists have provided ground-breaking, and probably decisive, critiques of “Star Wars.” The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War has described the human costs of nuclear war and thereby discredited the Administration’s talk of fighting and winning such a contest. As a result, the doctors deservedly won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Along with the millions of activists in churches, city halls and schools, these groups and others have broadened vastly the public debate over nuclear policy and have created a climate of skepticism about Reagan rearmament policies.

The relationship between democracy and representative government is tenuous, especially in a nation the size of the United States. On a topic that is as complex and secretive as nuclear weapons, democracy is constrained, virtually locked out. A small circle of experts and officials have made decisions, force-fed them to Congress and then presented them to the public as bipartisan, consensual faits accomplis. The results of this decision-making apparatus --50,000 nuclear weapons, a $300-billion military budget, a quarter of U.S. science mobilized for weapons research and development--are at least debatable, but a product of democracy they are not.

What the peace movement has done in this decade is to democratize this process. Operating on a fraction of the budgets of Pentagon and defense-industry lobbyists, these activists have given voice to the hopes of ordinary Americans, have demanded of officialdom a reasonable armistice and, perhaps most remarkably, have affected the perceptions and the behavior of the Soviet leadership. The peace community is now a permanent fixture in the constellation of American politics, emitting its own light and exerting a powerful gravitational force.

American and European peaceniks cannot alone seize the credit for the INF accord. Reagan and Gorbachev have been surprisingly adept and flexible in reaching this accommodation--one aided by West European leaders. But credit is also due to the newly mobilized citizenry that has changed the political dynamics of arms control forever.