Peace and Populism: Why the European Anti-Nuclear Movement Failed

Peace and Populism Why the European Anti-Nuclear Movement Failed losef b f f e At the threshold of the 1980s,an old specter returned to haunt Europe-the specter of neutralism and nuclear pacifism. Notably in the Continent’s northern, Protestant parts, a thriving peace movement, flanked by the churches and the Socialist parties, set out to batter the foundations of established security policy. In terms of noise and numbers, the domestic war over the ”Euromissiles” was the most spectacular upheaval in postwar European history, and in this generation, no conflict has torn at NATO’s social fabric as fiercely as its 1979 decision to station some 500 cruise and Pershing I1 missiles on European soil. Millions of demonstrators massed in the towns and cities of Western Europe to block their deployment. The battle pitted old against young, Right against Left, leaders against led. From the Netherlands to Norway, from Great Britain to Germany, the Brussels Decision would drive center-left parties toward the outer fringes of the political spectrum. At least one government, Helmut Schmidt’s in Bonn, fell largely because the Chancellor could not stem his own cohorts’ revolt against nuclear weapons. It was the most impressive display of populist muscle in the postwar era.’ Though the immediate targets were the accoutrements of extended deterrence , the attack would soon transcend ”neutron bombs” and nuclear misThis article is based on a chapter in the author’s forthcoming book, The Limited Purtnership: Europe, the Uiiited Stntes and the Burdens of Alliance, to be published by Ballinger Publishers, Cambridge, Mass., in 1987. Research for this article was conducted at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington , D.C. As Former Fellow and Senior Associate, respectively, the author would like to acknowledge his debt of gratitude to these two institutions. josef loffe is colrmizisf atid foreign editor of the Suddeutsche Zeitung in Munich 1. The terms “populist” and ”populism” as used in this article should not be confused with the specific meaning that is normally assigned to them in the context of American history-where “Populist” denotes a member of the American People’s Party (1891-1904), which advocated the free coinage of gold and silver, the public ownership of utilities, and government support for agriculture. As used here, these terms carry a more general meaning, taken from their Latin root (”people”). They denote the pursuit of political goals outside-and against-the institutions of representative government by self-selected bodies seeking to pressure the political system with the instruments of grassroots and protest politics: demonstrations, mass marches, blockades , etc.-in short ”mobilization from below.” htemntional Security, Spring 1987 (Vol. 11, No. 4) 01987 by Josef Joffe. 3 International Security I 4 siles. Suddenly, Western Europe seemed poised at a historical double-divide. One was a crisis of belief which found its outlet in the impulse of neutralismthe temptation to opt out, to refuse moral and political choice, and to ignore the reality of power in international affairs. Not policies hung in the balance but their premises: the bond between Western Europe and the United States, the commitment to self-defense, indeed, the very idea of alliance as a freely chosen political community. The other divide was marked by a crisis of political institutions. Observers were quick to surmise that the antinuclear movement of the 1980s presaged something more fundamental than yet another cycle of nuclear anxiety, akin to its forebear in the late 1950s. Or as one British commentator put it: ”Pandora’s Box has been opened. For good or ill, nuclear strategy in Europe has been a ’leadership decision,’ taken by an informed few-a tiny nuclear elite-on behalf of an only-intermittently-interested many. . . . That no longer applies to Western Europe. The Pandora’s Box of the nuclear age is public participation in nuclear policy-making; and the true message of the protest movement . . . is that the lid has opened.”2 In other words, by the beginning of the 1980s, Western Europe was allegedly caught in the midst of a true sea change, and the new nuclear politics, far from merely echoing the revolt of the late 1950s...