Dreams for a Decade: International Nuclear Abolitionism and the End of the Cold War by Stephanie L. Freeman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023. 328 pp.
In Dreams for a Decade author Stephanie L. Freeman—former assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University and now a historian at the US Department of State—argues that nuclear abolitionists played a central and often overlooked role in shaping international nuclear arms policy in the 1980s. Based on newly declassified materials from multiple continents as well as traditional historical research, Dreams for a Decade traces how changes in the thinking of prominent decisionmakers and institutions concerning the nuclear question were driven partly by grassroots movements and government nuclear abolitionists rather than purely strategic concerns or individual personalities. This shift in approach driven by activism paved the way for the limitation of nuclear arms and ultimately the end of the Cold War.
There are several key strengths of the book. First, the author expertly balances the tension between broad-based action and individual agency. In history, it is often difficult to determine whether great individuals or the masses drive change. While the truth is that both matter, it can often be difficult to portray this when reconstructing past events. This book strikes a balance by zooming in and out of the view of specific individuals within larger movements.
For example, chapter 2 centers on how E. P. Thompson and Bruce Kent, both prominent figures in European Nuclear Disarmament, engaged the public in discussions of nuclear issues and advocated disarmament at meetings across England in early 1981. The book then contrasts these meetings against the massive antinuclear demonstrations that took place across Europe in the fall 1981, showing how individual action led to a broader response. The numbers of attendees help to put the scale of the protests into perspective: 300,000 people in Bonn, Germany; 200,000 in Brussels; 250,000 in Hyde Park, London; 500,000 in Rome; and 400,000 in Amsterdam. Individual choices, in this case by Thompson and Kent to organize nuclear abolition protests, helped to fuel the actions taken by the masses seen in the subsequent demonstrations. Understanding the causes of broad-based social movements requires following the individual choices made by specific people.
Second, Freeman effectively incorporates the narratives of diverse groups of actors. From Western activists to Soviet dissidents to American and Russian hardliners, the book gives space for each group’s goals and motivations to be explored. Furthermore, seeing how these groups interacted is essential to telling the historical story. For example, President Ronald Reagan’s team had been staunchly against nuclear abolition even though Reagan himself abhorred nuclear weapons. Instead of the White House acting as a single unit, the group was split with the most powerful person on one side and his team on the other. Yet activists, another group in this calculation, were able to put pressure on his administration to change the political space their team had to operate in. As the effects of their campaigns continued, Reagan’s advisers were forced to concede that a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons was a worthy goal. The pressure that the activists put on the Reagan administration changed the path decisionmakers took.
Importantly, Freeman does not simply ignore differences of opinions, even among people with the same stated goals. Instead, she highlights the reality of their divergence. While Reagan felt that a buildup was necessary to bring the Soviets to the negotiating table, the activists felt that it would undermine the negotiations. Despite the fact both wanted a reduction in the nuclear stockpile, the way they viewed the path to take could not have been more different. Not only is the interplay between these diverse narratives fascinating to read, but also it helps focus the thesis, emphasizing the role that the nuclear abolition camp played through the political drama of the group’s interactions with other centers of power.
Third, the book grounds the individuals involved in reality, showing the limits of their ambitions. Often, when discussing grand narratives, historians can overplay their hand and argue that their perspective was more dominant than it may have really been. This book makes no such mistake, fully highlighting the weaknesses and mistakes made by nuclear abolitionists. For example, one antinuclear activist group raised funds for campaigns and distributed those funds to specific antinuclear candidates. Yet much of the money ended up lost in overhead for the organization itself. Furthermore, none of the candidates who won were in particularly close races, implying that the funds provided did not make a crucial difference in increasing the number of nuclear abolition candidates in office. This type of balanced analysis helps to contextualize the real extent of the influence nuclear abolitionists had on policymakers, demonstrating Freeman’s balanced perspective.
Still, at times, the connection between the ideas promoted by nuclear abolitionists and their impact is less clear. For example, there is mixed evidence that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was influenced by the United Europe ideology in his hesitation to crush independence movements in the USSR. A key component of nuclear abolitionism, United Europe was the idea promoted by Western European antinuclear activists and Eastern European dissidents that Europe should not become the nuclear battlefield of superpower conflict and instead should forge its own path forward, independent of the Cold War rivals. While not the same as nuclear abolition, the themes and people involved in the United Europe movement were closely tied with nuclear abolitionist thought. Yet it is difficult to show that this ideology was the core, or even a major, reason that Gorbachev chose to allow nations in the USSR to leave. The author still supports this claim with other pieces of evidence and analysis, but the correlation between nuclear abolitionism and United Europe and then United Europe and Gorbachev’s decisions is difficult to prove.
Overall, this book offers a critical correction to the dominant understanding of the Cold War’s end. Rather than the traditional schools of thought which treat activism as an afterthought, this book demonstrates how the international nuclear abolition movement brought about change in a compelling and engaging way. Although the evidence to support her view ranges from solid to more circumstantial, Freeman bolsters even her weakest arguments with thorough analysis. As a blueprint for how broad-based movements can engage with the public and policymakers to achieve results, Dreams for Decades is an essential read to understanding how the Cold War ended the way it did and offers insight that will not be found in many other texts of its kind.
Vivek Thangam