Peace Movements and Religion in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Erickson Nepstad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Peace Movements ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
The Cold War

Religious groups in the United States have been active in the cause of peace, particularly in the 20th century. These groups come from a variety of traditions, such as progressive Catholicism, Reformed Judaism, mainline Protestantism, and the Historic Peace Churches (i.e., Quakers, Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethren). Under the broad umbrella of peace issues, religious movements have challenged U.S. foreign policies and intervention abroad, military training, the arms race, and conscription. The Cold War generated significant faith-based organizing. At the close of World War II, there was growing concern about the nuclear arms race. The use of atomic weapons raised serious moral questions, and some religious activists believed that the indiscriminate and immense destructive capacity of these weapons rendered the Just War tradition obsolete. Religious movements challenged the nuclear arms race through a variety of campaigns, including noncooperation with city drill practices, interfering with nuclear testing, and damaging weapons. The Vietnam War also spurred a significant mobilization within U.S. religious communities. Radical Catholic groups began interfering with the conscription process by burning draft cards and destroying Selective Service files. More moderate religious groups were also active, primarily in promoting amnesty for draft resisters and through stockholder challenges that pressured corporations to stop producing weaponry. The Cold War battles in Central America in the 1980s were another major focus for religious peace movements, who organized delegations of U.S. citizens to travel to the war zones of Nicaragua to document and impede counterrevolutionary attacks against citizens. They also developed national networks of resistance to contest U.S. funding of authoritarian states in El Salvador and Guatemala and the training of these nations’ militaries. As the 20th century came to a close, an initiative was launched within the Historic Peace Churches to train volunteers in the art of nonviolent action and then send them to conflict zones to work with oppressed groups facing potentially lethal repression. These religious peace movements challenged faith communities to reflect on their ethical obligations and political commitments during periods of war and militarization.

Same As It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis J. Gavin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
Nuclear History ◽  
The Cold War

A widely held and largely unchallenged view among many scholars and policymakers is that nuclear proliferation is the gravest threat facing the United States today, that it is more dangerous than ever, and that few meaningful lessons can be drawn from the nuclear history of a supposed simpler and more predictable period, the Cold War. This view, labeled “nuclear alarmism,” is based on four myths about the history of the nuclear age. First, today's nuclear threats are new and more dangerous than those of the past. Second, unlike today, nuclear weapons stabilized international politics during the Cold War, when in fact the record was mixed. The third myth conflates the history of the nuclear arms race with the geopolitical and ideological competition between the Soviet Union and the United States, creating an oversimplified and misguided portrayal of the Cold War. The final myth is that the Cold War bipolar military rivalry was the only force driving nuclear proliferation. A better understanding of this history, and, in particular, of how and why the international community escaped calamity during a far more dangerous time against ruthless and powerful adversaries, can produce more effective U.S. policies than those proposed by the nuclear alarmists.

scholarly journals The Reincarnation of the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-9
Author(s):  
Trevor Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Second World ◽  
The U.S

This paper describes the complex challenges to present-day state relations between the United States and the Russian Federation, and how the worsening of state relations between these two powers is indicative of the reincarnation of the Cold War of the 20th century. In describing the complexities of the U.S.-Russia relationship, this paper explores three contemporary international issues that have led to its aggravation. First, it examines the apparent Russian hacking of the U.S. Democratic Party during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and how such interference is comparable to that which occurred during the 20th century Cold War era. Secondly, it analyzes how the Syrian Civil War, characterized by the United States and Russia supporting opposing sides of the conflict, shares a likeness to the proxy wars of the 20th century Cold War. Lastly, it describes how the Russian annexation of Crimea, and the American-led response to it, are reminiscent of the Soviet and American practices of expanding the limits of their own power while trying to limit that of their rival following the Second World War.

The Sultan's Communists

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alma Rachel Heckman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

Structured around the stories of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Léon René Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Lévy, and Sion Asssidon), The Sultan’s Communists examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly independent Morocco. It also explores how Communism facilitated the participation of Moroccan Jews in Morocco’s national liberation struggle with roots in the mass upheavals of the interwar and WWII periods. Alma Heckman describes how Moroccan Communist Jews fit within the story of mass Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 1950s and ’60s, and how Communist Jews survived oppressive post-independence authoritarian rule under the Moroccan monarchy. These stories unfold in a country that, upon independence from France and Spain in 1956, allied itself with the United States (and, more quietly, Israel) during the Cold War all while attempting to claim a place for itself within the fraught politics of the post-independence Arab world. Heckman’s manuscript contributes to the growing literature on Jews in the modern Middle East, filling in the gaps on the Jewish history of 20th-century Morocco as no other previous book has done.

Apostles of Deceit

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Mcvicar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Churches Of Christ ◽  
National Council ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
Theologically Conservative ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the FBI’s domestic intelligence-gathering on religious groups during the Cold War. The author explains how Hoover’s calls for vigilance against foreign agents resonated with socially and theologically conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists who saw “modernizing” or “liberalizing” theological trends in ecumenical American Protestantism as extensions of philosophical materialism and atheistic humanism. The chapter demonstrates how Protestant bodies such as the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States became targets of a fascinating if troubling alliance between the FBI and conservative religious groups that emulated the FBI’s cold hawkishness toward a range of organizations that challenged mainstream trends of the nation.

Short of Nuclear Madness

Worldview ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-37
Author(s):  
Bruce M. Russett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Strategic Planning ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Attack ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Present Ability

Since the beginning of the cold war the keystone of American strategic planning has been the principle that the ultimate deterrent to a Russian attack had to be the certainty of American retaliation against Russian cities. The Russians seemingly have adopted the same position vis-à-vis the United States, usually to the point of denying vigorously any possibility of limiting central war to counterforce strikes alone. A typical formulation was expressed by former Defense Secretary McNamara in his 1968 “posture statement” to Congress:[It is] the clear and present ability to destroy the attacker as a viable 20th Century nation and an unwavering will to use those [Assured Destruction] forces in retaliation to a nuclear attack upon ourselves or our allies that provides the deterrent, and not the ability partially to limit damage to ourselves.

New ''Cold War''

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Vladimir Batiuk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Nuclear Arms

In this article, the ''Cold War'' is understood as a situation where the relationship between the leading States is determined by ideological confrontation and, at the same time, the presence of nuclear weapons precludes the development of this confrontation into a large-scale armed conflict. Such a situation has developed in the years 1945–1989, during the first Cold War. We see that something similar is repeated in our time-with all the new nuances in the ideological struggle and in the nuclear arms race.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

Ballet in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.

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