British and International Peace Campaigning against the Strategic Defence Initiative

Burke, P.D.M. 2023. British and International Peace Campaigning against the Strategic Defence Initiative. in: Brunet, Luc-Andre (ed.) NATO and the Strategic Defence Initiative: a transatlantic history of the Star Wars programme London and New York Routledge. pp. 221-237

Chapter titleBritish and International Peace Campaigning against the Strategic Defence Initiative
AuthorsBurke, P.D.M.
EditorsBrunet, Luc-Andre
Abstract

The Strategic Defence Initiative was one of the most controversial policies in the NATO alliance in the 1980s: it deepened tensions between the United States and its West European partners and threatened to undermine the already difficult arms control/arms reduction talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. SDI generated widespread opposition in West European peace movements. But, at their peak when SDI was first proposed, these movements did not (with some small exceptions) make this opposition a priority. In the UK - the principal focus of this chapter - for a long time ‘Star Wars’ barely registered in the peace movement’s strategic debates and activism. When it did, the (very small) group European Nuclear Disarmament (END) mounted a strong anti-SDI campaign, along with even smaller groups founded specifically to oppose SDI; but the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the UK’s largest peace organisation, could only find SDI a secondary place in its new, post-cruise missile deployment activism. In the principal transnational forums of the West European peace movement, British and other peace organisations were unwilling or unable to maintain a focus on ‘Star Wars’.

Book titleNATO and the Strategic Defence Initiative: a transatlantic history of the Star Wars programme
Page range221-237
Year2023
PublisherRoutledge
Publication dates
Published19 Aug 2022
Published in print2023
Place of publicationLondon and New York
ISBN9780367612184
9781003104674
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003104674-17

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