Quick Facts
Date:
1961 - present

Women Strike for Peace (WSP), organization that evolved out of an international protest against atmospheric nuclear testing held on November 1, 1961. On that day between 12,000 and 50,000 women in various nations demonstrated to protest nuclear testing and to voice concern, in particular, about the hazards posed by such testing to children’s health. In the United States some 1,500 women marched in Washington, D.C., to make their appeal. That same year Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson, who had been influential in organizing the strike, founded the Women Strike for Peace (WSP) organization. The Soviet Union–U.S. signing of the 1963 Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty has been attributed in part to the early efforts of WSP.

During the 1960s WSP members picketed the White House, the United Nations headquarters in New York City, and the Pentagon to demonstrate their opposition to nuclear weapons and to war. WSP remained a significant voice in the peace movement throughout the 1980s and ’90s, speaking out against U.S. intervention in Latin America and the Persian Gulf states. In addition to staging direct political action, the organization encouraged members to write to legislators and worked in coalition with other women’s peace groups, such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Women for Meaningful Summits. During the late 1990s WSP focused on total international abolition of nuclear armaments by the end of the 20th century.

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Quick Facts
Also called:
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Date:
July 1, 1968
Participants:
Soviet Union
United Kingdom
United States

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, agreement of July 1, 1968, signed by the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and 59 other states, under which the three major signatories, which possessed nuclear weapons, agreed not to assist other states in obtaining or producing them. The treaty became effective in March 1970 and was to remain so for a 25-year period. Additional countries later ratified the treaty; as of 2007 only three countries (India, Israel, and Pakistan) have refused to sign the treaty, and one country (North Korea) has signed and then withdrawn from the treaty. The treaty was extended indefinitely and without conditions in 1995 by a consensus vote of 174 countries at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty is uniquely unequal, as it obliges nonnuclear states to forgo development of nuclear weapons while allowing the established nuclear states to keep theirs. Nevertheless, it has been accepted because, especially at the time of signing, most nonnuclear states had neither the capacity nor the inclination to follow the nuclear path, and they were well aware of the dangers of proliferation for their security. In addition, it was understood in 1968 that, in return for their special status, the nuclear states would help the nonnuclear states in the development of civilian nuclear power (although in the event the distinction between civilian and military nuclear technology was not so straightforward) and also that the nuclear states would make their best efforts to agree on measures of disarmament. In the 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, this inequality was a major complaint against the established nuclear powers. The treaty continues to play an important role in sustaining the international norm against proliferation, but it has been challenged by a number of events, including (1) North Korea’s withdrawal from the treaty in 2003 as it sought to acquire nuclear weapons, (2) evidence of the progress Iraq made in the 1980s on its nuclear program despite being a signatory to the treaty, and (3) allegations about uranium enrichment facilities in Iran, yet another signatory to the treaty. The credibility of the nonproliferation norm has also been undermined by the ability of India and Pakistan to become declared nuclear powers in 1998 without any serious international penalty—and indeed by India establishing its own special arrangements as part of a bilateral deal with the United States in 2008.

Lawrence D. Freedman
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