U.S. PEACE MOVEMENTS: WIN SOME, LOSE SOME

[From a forum sponsored by Historians Against the War at the annual
meeting of the American Historical Assn]

LAWRENCE S WITTNER - Let me begin by examining the provocative comment
by some observers that, rather than peace movements putting an end to
wars, wars put an end to peace movements. This is sometimes the case,
for--given the strength of nationalism--many people tend to rally `round
the flag of their nation once war is declared. Thus, not surprisingly,
substantial U.S. peace movements largely collapsed with the entry of the
United States into the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. In more
recent years, polls indicate that U.S. peace sentiment declined
significantly (albeit temporarily) after the entry of the United States
into the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War. Furthermore,
direct government repression in wartime--for example, during World War
I--has sometimes dramatically undermined or destroyed peace movements.

Moreover, even when powerful peace movements have persisted in wartime,
they have not always been very effective. The War of 1812 might well
have been (as Samuel Eliot Morison claimed) the most unpopular war in
U.S. history. Certainly it drew a tidal wave of criticism, especially in
the Northeast. But the frequent denunciations of the war did not halt
its progress. The same phenomenon can be glimpsed in the case of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century "pacification" of the
Philippines. Although a powerful Anti-Imperialist League consistently
challenged this war (which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Filipinos and 7,000 U.S. troops), it continued to rage
right up to a U.S. military victory.

On the other hand, there are instances in which the peace movement
brought an end to U.S. wars. The Mexican War of the 1840s provides us
with one example. Condemned from the start as a war of aggression and as
a war for slavery, the Mexican War stirred up remarkably strong
opposition. Thus, although the war went very well for the United States
on a military level and President Polk pressed for the annexation of all
of Mexico to the United States, when Nicholas Trist, Polk's diplomatic
negotiator, disobeyed his instructions and signed a treaty providing for
the annexation of only about a third of Mexico, Polk felt trapped. In
the face of fierce public opposition to the conflict, he did not believe
it possible to prolong the war to secure his goal of taking all of
Mexico. And so Polk reluctantly backed Trist's peace treaty, and the war
came to an end.

Another example of peace movement effectiveness can be seen in its
impact upon the Vietnam War. By late 1967, as Lyndon Johnson recalled,
"the pressure got so great" that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
"couldn't sleep at night. I was afraid he might have a nervous
breakdown." Johnson himself seemed obsessed with the opposition his war
policies had generated. Conversations with Cabinet members began: "Why
aren't you out there fighting against my enemies?" After McNamara
resigned and Johnson was driven from office by a revolt within his own
party, it was the Nixon administration's turn to be caught, as Henry
Kissinger complained, "between the hammer of antiwar pressure and the
anvil of Hanoi." Kissinger noted: "The very fabric of government was
falling apart. The Executive Branch was shell-shocked." The war and the
peace protests, Kissinger concluded, "shattered the self-confidence
without which Establishments flounder." In a careful and well-researched
study, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves, the historian Melvin Small
concluded that "the antiwar movement and antiwar criticism in the media
and Congress had a significant impact on the Vietnam policies of both
Johnson and Nixon," pushing them toward deescalation and, ultimately,
withdrawal from the war.

Yet another example of the peace movement's efficacy occurred in the
context of the Reagan administration's determined attempts to overthrow
the Sandinista-led government of Nicaragua. As in Vietnam, despite the
immense military advantage the U.S. government enjoyed against a small,
peasant nation, it was unable to employ it effectively. Popular pressure
against U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua not only blocked the
dispatch of U.S. combat troops, but led to congressional action (i.e.
the Boland amendment) cutting off U.S. government funding for the U.S.
surrogates, the contras. Although the Reagan administration sought to
circumvent the Boland amendment by selling U.S. missiles to Iran and
sending the proceeds to the contras, this scheme backfired, and did more
to undermine the Reaganites than it did the Sandinistas.

There is also considerable evidence that it was the peace movement that
brought an end to the Cold War. The peace movement's struggle against
the nuclear arms race and its clearest manifestation, nuclear testing,
led directly to Kennedy's 1963 American University address and to the
Partial Test Ban Treaty of that year, which began Soviet-American
detente. The speech was partially written by Norman Cousins, founder and
co-chair of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, America's
largest peace group. Cousins also brokered the treaty.

When the hawkish Reagan administration revived the Cold War and
escalated the nuclear arms race, these actions triggered the greatest
outburst of peace movement activism in world history. In the United
States, the Nuclear Freeze campaign secured the backing of leading
religious denominations, unions, professional groups, and the Democratic
Party, organized the largest political demonstration up to that time in
U.S. history, and drew the support of more than 70 percent of the
public. . .

We might also give some thought to the wars that, thanks to peace
movement activism, did not occur. Historians have maintained that the
anti-imperialist crusade against the Philippines war blocked the
occurrence of later U.S. wars of this kind and on this scale. They have
also suggested that peace movement pressures helped to block war with
Mexico in 1916 and helped to soften the U.S.-Mexican confrontation of
the late 1920s. And how many wars, we might ask ourselves, were
prevented through the implementation of many ideas and proposals that
originated with the peace movement: international arbitration;
international law; decolonization; a league of nations; disarmament
treaties; a United Nations; and nonviolent resistance. We shall probably
never know.

We do know, however, that the peace movement played a major role in
preventing one kind of war since 1945: nuclear war. . . The proof of the
pudding came during the Reagan administration, whose top national
security officials -- from the President on down -- entered office
talking glibly of fighting and winning a nuclear war. But this position
quickly changed thanks to a massive popular outcry against it. Starting
in April 1982, Reagan began declaring publicly that "a nuclear war
cannot be won and must never be fought." He added: "To those who protest
against nuclear war, I can only say: `I'm with you!'"  . . .  I think it
is fair to say that, on numerous occasions, peace activism has exercised
a restraining influence on U.S. foreign and military policy.

[Lawrence S. Wittner Dr. Wittner is professor of history at the State
University of New York - Albany and the author of Toward Nuclear
Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to
the Present (Stanford University Press)]