"Pugwash symposium on Strategic Defences, London 1985"
(Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Works of Joseph Rotblat)
(Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Works of Joseph Rotblat)
TAKING A STAND BY INFLUENCING
COLD WAR ARMS CONTROL
Impacting the cold war
Tensions between the Soviet Union and United States increased as their nuclear reserves expanded. Rotblat became determined to use Pugwash to bring representatives and intellectuals from both sides of the Iron Curtain together to discuss diminishing nuclear reserves. Pugwash discouraged a bilateral approach, or the involvement of only two world powers. By gathering scientists from numerous countries, Pugwash successfully impacted treaties and negotiations during the Cold War.
The Partial Test Ban Treaty
|
During the tenth Pugwash Conference held in London in 1962, participants proposed a nuclear test ban and the use of unmanned automatic seismic stations, or "black boxes." The seismic stations were incorporated in the Partial Test Ban Treaty signed one year later.
Newspaper article on the ninth Pugwash Conference, August 26, 1962
(Reynolds News) |
John F. Kennedy signing the Partial Test Ban Treaty, October 7, 1963
(John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum) |
"...this first tangible evidence of progress in disarmament, towards which Pugwash has contributed so much, had created a feeling of exhilaration and hopeful expectation of further successes."
–Joseph Rotblat on the Partial Test Ban Treaty in Scientists in the Quest for Peace (1972)
Sunday Times article, Soviet and American scientists at a Pugwash Conference, August 26, 1962
(McMaster University Libraries)
(McMaster University Libraries)
THE ANTI-BALLISTIC MISSILE TREATY
Pugwash participant and Soviet Mikhail Millionshchikov supported a defense system against ballistic missiles for his country. Pugwash succeeded in changing his viewpoint, preventing further anti-ballistic missile stockpiling.
President Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow after signing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, 1972
(Sputnik International) |
"At that time, the Soviet Union was officially in favor of developing anti-ballistic missiles. They looked at it almost as a moral issue. They said, 'We want to defend our people.' The Americans at the time were against having such a defense system. We knew that the offensive weapons [were] much cheaper than the defensive weapons. You can saturate the defenses, either with offensive weapons or with decoys...Somehow we had to explain this to our Soviet colleagues." |
|
Signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in Moscow, 1972
(People's World) |
Clip from a personal interview with Sandra Ionno Butcher, former Executive Director of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and current director of the Pugwash history project
"A number of non-governmental organizations were involved in the preparatory work for these treaties, and it is difficult to assess the credit due to a single group. But the role played by Pugwash was attested by many public figures, including Mikhail Gorbachev, who said, 'Through its activities, due to its scientific and moral authority, Pugwash has contributed in a unique way to averting the military danger, has helped to stop the 'Cold War' and to achieve profound positive changes in the development of the world.'"
–Joseph Rotblat in "Bertrand Russell and the Pugwash Movment: Personal Reminiscences" (1998)
"Launching the WMD Awareness Project with Mikhail Gorbachev, London 2004"
(Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat) |
Pugwash also actively influenced Mikhail Gorbachev's "New Thinking," which ended the Cold War and reduced nuclear proliferation. Gorbachev announced a unilateral approach to demilitarization of the Soviet Union at the United Nations on December 7, 1988. He worked closely with Pugwash, launching the W.M.D. (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Awareness Programme in London along with Rotblat.
“...perhaps the accolade that meant most to him was the sometime Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's statement that Pugwash papers and conferences had helped to guide the foreign policy that had led to the thaw in the cold war.” |
"I greatly valued my close rapport and friendship with Joseph Rotblat. Over the past few years, we met many times at the Forum of Nobel Peace Laureates and the World Political Forum. One could not help admiring this man of indomitable energy, moral integrity and high culture. Yet the most important thing about him was that even in very old age his mind remained crystal clear and his convictions firm. In a changed world facing new challenges, he addressed the people, ordinary citizens as well as world leaders, with an urgent appeal to rid the world of nuclear weapons, for in the final analysis this is the only way to a secure existence for future generations."
–Mikhail Gorbachev upon the death of Joseph Rotblat (Global Security Institute)
Opposition surrounding pugwash's involvement in the cold war
|
The 1995 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Rotblat and Pugwash, sparking outrage from French politicians that felt targeted for recent nuclear testing. Others felt Pugwash was not deserving of the award for inclusion of Soviets in the conferences and uncertain as to how Pugwash could produce a world without nuclear weapons since “...(a) there would never be certainty that every last weapon was gone and (b) the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons–hence the possibility of reconstitution of nuclear arsenals–cannot be eradicated” (Holdren, "Getting to Zero: Is Pursuing a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World Too Difficult? Too Dangerous? Too Distracting?" 8).
"Fellow traveler is a loaded term. But these are people who in the darkest days of the cold war were used shamelessly as vehicles for Soviet propaganda. You have to give them the benefit of the doubt and think they were simply dupes. But it's inconceivable in light of what we know about Soviet propaganda that this operation could be seen as anything other than, at the very least, an unwitting tool of the Kremlin, if not worse." |
Joseph Rotblat receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo
with Professor Francesco Calogero (1995) (Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs) “[Early thinkers of the consequences of nuclear weapons] account for the view of opponents and skeptics of a NWFW (nuclear-weapon-free-world) that it is a utopian idea in the same class with GCD (“general and complete disarmament”) and world government...and thus will never need to be taken seriously except in the almost unimaginable event that world government becomes a plausible proposition.” |
