The Nuclear Threat posed by the Cold War
Glow cloud from the
Hiroshima bomb
August 6th 1945
An underlying cause of the protest in New Zealand against nuclear weaponry and testing was the fear of the possibility of the Cold War turning into a Third World War.
The 1950’s and 1960’s were the beginning of the Cold War period and the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, a state of M.A.D was in operation- a state of Mutually Assured Destruction. There was the potential for a nuclear war and global destruction if either side fired or retaliated with the nuclear weapons they had developed. Many people in New Zealand were troubled by the fact that two countries were in possession of such weapons which had the potential to wreak absolute devastation on entire cities. The obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two was seen as evidence by New Zealanders of the impact the firing of any nuclear weapons would have. At least twenty thousand New Zealanders felt this concern as 20,000 people from New Zealand signed the Stockholm Peace Appeal which demanded the ‘absolute banning of atomic weapons’, along with 650 million people worldwide. As a result of this fear of a Third World War due to nuclear weapons the first ‘wave’ of anti-nuclear in protest in New Zealand began with the formation of the NZCND in 1959. The New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (NZCND) took inspiration from the British group Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The NZCND was an amalgamation of anti-nuclear groups from the main centres into a national organisation. A petition called ‘No Bombs South of the Line’ was signed by 80,000 New Zealanders in 1963. The government could not act on this petition as they did not want to withdraw NZ from the ANZUS treaty. By 1963 the movement had slowed somewhat as fears of a Cold War lessened and public interest waned, as well as the more immediate issue of the Vietnam War, which many CND members were also involved in protesting. However anti-nuclear protest would pick up again in the 1970’s and become a mass movement during the next two decades.
The 1950’s and 1960’s were the beginning of the Cold War period and the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, a state of M.A.D was in operation- a state of Mutually Assured Destruction. There was the potential for a nuclear war and global destruction if either side fired or retaliated with the nuclear weapons they had developed. Many people in New Zealand were troubled by the fact that two countries were in possession of such weapons which had the potential to wreak absolute devastation on entire cities. The obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two was seen as evidence by New Zealanders of the impact the firing of any nuclear weapons would have. At least twenty thousand New Zealanders felt this concern as 20,000 people from New Zealand signed the Stockholm Peace Appeal which demanded the ‘absolute banning of atomic weapons’, along with 650 million people worldwide. As a result of this fear of a Third World War due to nuclear weapons the first ‘wave’ of anti-nuclear in protest in New Zealand began with the formation of the NZCND in 1959. The New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (NZCND) took inspiration from the British group Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The NZCND was an amalgamation of anti-nuclear groups from the main centres into a national organisation. A petition called ‘No Bombs South of the Line’ was signed by 80,000 New Zealanders in 1963. The government could not act on this petition as they did not want to withdraw NZ from the ANZUS treaty. By 1963 the movement had slowed somewhat as fears of a Cold War lessened and public interest waned, as well as the more immediate issue of the Vietnam War, which many CND members were also involved in protesting. However anti-nuclear protest would pick up again in the 1970’s and become a mass movement during the next two decades.
"It could have played out very differently (......) nuclear war was seen as a very tangible prospect"
- CND member and peace activist Maire Leadbeater on the Cold War.
This statement shows that to some, nuclear war was a real possibility and was a driving force for some people to protest.
This map form the NZCND shows their perception of the extent of damage likely to occur if New Zealand was attacked by nuclear weapons
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In the documentary 'No Nukes is Good Nukes!', two of the women interviewed remembered seeing the glow cloud of a US nuclear test conducted at Johnson Island, near Hawaii, from New Zealand shores. Tests were conducted here between 1958 and 1975. This is evidence of a nuclear war being perceived as a real and present threat to these women who would go on to become members of nuclear protest groups.
Prime Minister David Lange would later refer to the situation presented by the Cold War in his famous 1985 Oxford Union speech. “A system of nuclear defence guarantees only insecurity (.....) There is simply only one thing more terrifying than nuclear weapons pointed in your direction and that is nuclear weapons pointed in your enemy’s direction: the outcome of their use would be the same in either case, and that is annihilation of all of us.” These comments in his speech show Lange's belief that possessing nuclear weapons was a poor way to defend your country as use of them had more negative outcomes than positive. In an memorial account of his speech, Lange noted that “I spoke about the essential irrationality of the arms race, which led to the greater and greater proliferation of weapons, even as the people who built them understood that they were daily adding to the risk of our total destruction.” Here, Lange is still of the opinion that nuclear weapons were a 'lose-lose' situations for both the countries deploying them and the countries (like New Zealand) allied with either country. |
