NUCLEAR FREEZE - The nuclear freeze movement was spawned out of the antimilitarism and environmental efforts of the 1970s. It was formed in 1980 under the organizational leadership of the American Friends Service Committee, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Clergy and Laity Concerned. These groups, along with local campaigns against nuclear weapons research, production, and testing facilities, became the social base upon which the national movement was built. The movement reached its peak in 1982-1984 and faded from national visibility soon after the reelection of Ronald Reagan to the White House in November 1984.

The policy proposal for a bilateral, mutual freeze on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had been proposed by President Lyndon Johnson's administration. Its reintroduction into popular discourse began in 1979 through the discussions and writings of Arthur Macy Cox, Randall Forsberg and Richard Barnet. The freeze movement's support rapidly expanded beyond the antinuclear and antimilitarist nucleus to include prominent citizens and professional and do mestic policy organizations. By April 1982, U S citizens polled eighty-one percent in favor of the proposal.

The freeze movement's rapid and expansive growth resulted in 11 million people voting in favor of it in fifty-three referenda (in nine states plus the District of Columbia, and in a total of forty three towns, cities, and counties) in the 1982 elections. By September 1983, 156 national and international organizations had endorsed the freeze, includ ing the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Young Women's Christian Association, the American Nurses' Association, Friends of the Earth, the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and the American Asso ciation of University Women. Mainstream politicians also became visible advocates for the freeze despite a highly visible attack by President Ronald Reagan and others in the administration against the movement as "KGB-inspired."

The freeze movement has had a permanent impact on public policy. The movement caused news cov erage of arms control and East-West issues to expand in breadth and depth. Foundation giving, academic programs, and government officials were influenced by the sophisticated self-styled citizen experts who organized in seventy-five percent of the congressional districts around the country. The freeze movement left an infrastructure for the continued generation of domestic opinion on foreign and military policy matters. Professional organiza tions such as the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Lawyers' Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control, International Physicians for the P.evention of Nuclear War, and other professional organizations joined the established Catholic and mainline Protestant churches who made policy proclamations and made the freeze and nuclear war a priority for social action Independent and unaffiliated groups of citizens at the local level were also established. The freeze movement in the United States devel oped formal relationships with peace movements throughout Western Europe and had some contact with independent movements emerging in Eastern and Central Europe and the Soviet Union. Regular meetings and coordination of events and strategy occured through the mechanism of the Internationa Peace Coordination and Communications (IPCC) based in the Hague and staffed by the Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) in the Netherlands. The European Nuclear Disarmament (END) initiative first articulated in "Protest and Survive," a statement by a group of British peace movement leaders led by historian E. P. Thompson, provided the intellectual and political framework within which a new European politics evolved. West European movement working through a politics of "detente from below, engaged counterparts in Eastern and Central Europe.

While the U.S. freeze movement stressed the dangers of nuclear war and technical issues of arms control, those in Europe stressed a vision for a new Europe beyond the military blocs. Domestic pressure within Europe caused heads of state in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to press President Rea gan to alter war fighting rhetoric and began rattling the consensus around extended deterrence and for the deployment of the cruise and Pershing missiles. The freeze movement altered public discourse and set in motion political changes beyond its intention. Confirmation of the emergence of a new framework for East-West relations and the delegitimization of nuclear deterrence came when Reagan addressed the nation in March 1983 and announced his plan for the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"). Reagan condemned deterrence as immoral and committed himself to making nuclear weapons obsolete.

His path was the technical fix of a military shield in space, but the political equivalent came two years later in Reykjavik, Iceland, when in October 1985 Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to the abolition of nuclear weapons. The staff and allies of the two leaders were unprepared for the declaration. However far off the implementation of the declaration as policy, the two leaders had ratified world opinion. Less than a decade later, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia's weakened situation in the post-Soviet era opened unexpected prospects for extensive reductions in nuclear arsenals. (See also ARMS RACE; COLD WAR; INTEREST (NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS.) Pam Solo, From Protest to Policy (New York 1988). PAMELA A. SOLO

source: Oxford Guide, '93