War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Randall Forsberg, 1987
Description:
Dr. Randall Forsberg was executive director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, a think tank she founded in 1980 with the aim of reducing the risk of war and minimizing the burden of U.S. military spending. In the interview she conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, Forsberg describes the genesis of the movement, which was born from the failure of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II and from public awareness of the development of a new generation of war-fighting systems. Forsberg describes the reach of grassroots activism at the height of 1982's national Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, which called for a bilateral, verifiable halt to new production of nuclear weapons. She traces the town-by-town growth of the anti-nuclear petition, which began in 1980 with the four-page document "Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race," and the referendum process that fanned out across the nation but remained largely ignored by the national media. Forsberg details the negative reaction by President Ronald Reagan's administration and the ensuing support on Capitol Hill, which passed a freeze resolution. This was followed just weeks later by congressional approval of the MX missile by an equally large margin - a vote that Forsberg says "tore up the movement." Soon afterward, President Reagan suddenly announced the Strategic Defense Initiative - a program that Forsberg critiques at the end of her interview - and he agreed to negotiate with the Soviet Union, which was a key goal of "Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race." The lasting impact of the nuclear-freeze movement, says Forsberg, has been a shift away from public protest and toward grassroots, long-term education. She concludes that this new "institutionalized peace movement" will re-emerge more informed and cohesive than the last, with the determination to change "the direction of the permanent peacetime policy of the United States."
