Guerra Fria

in western Europe, the Reagan administration began a new round in the militarization of the continent by pursuing deployment of so called "limited" nuclear weapons systems like the cruise andpershing missiles onto European soil. this effort by NATO to introduce medium range nuclear weapons targeting east Germany and other central European states provoked resistance across European civil societyas peace movements emerged in a number of countries in mobilization against the deployment.
working together across national frontiers and the East west divide, many thousands of leading dissidentintellectuals throughout europea signe an Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament first launched on april 28, 1980 by a group of sponsors and the Russell peace foundation. like the CPD manifesto,this document is also preoccupied with danger but not the danger posed by a territorial other as irreducible enemy. Rather, the END manifesto is concerned with the danger posed by escalating cold warmilitarism and its advocates ans apologists. º Seeking a way beyond the mutually reinforcing militarism of the east-west controlation, it argued for a European-wide disidentification ansde-alignment from the military blocs dividing europe. De-alignment was a conscious refusal of the "us" versus "them" polarities offered by cold war discourse.
"we must commence to act as if a united, neutraland pacific Europe already exists. we must learn to be loyal, not to East and West, but to each other, and we must became the charter of the european peace movement that tried, in organizing annualconventions in different european cities, to foster " detente from below" among citizen groups and diverse social movements including progressive Christians, feminist, greens, trade unionists andemocratic leftist groups.
in the United States, a less challenging movements to freeze nuclear weapons garnered enough popular support to provoke come politicians to question the wisdom of the reagan...