Description:
Does a popular opinion on nuclear weapons influence a nuclear policy of
a national government? It is a question which confronts any participant
of anti-nuclear movements and students of these movements. Many people
assume nuclear policy-making is dominated by specialists and ordinary people
cannot change the established policy. Based on historical examples, this
lecture tries to reconsider this widespread assumption. This lecture introduces
an important example which shows that, in making a nuclear weapons policy,
the government officials paid close attention to the state of public opinion.
The lecture also put this example in the historical context in order to
reveal conditions under which anti-nuclear public opinions would influence
the government policy.
Objective:
This lecture presents an overview of mutual influence among popular attitudes toward the development of nuclear weapons, emergence of nuclear strategies, and the government nuclear policy of the United States
Recommended Readings:
Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement,1954-1970, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998
Name: KURASHINA Itsuki
Present Post and Title: Associate Professor, Faculty of International Studies, Hiroshima City University
Final Education: Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick, Ph.D.
Specialized Field: History of US Foreign Relations, International Relations History, and US History
Recent Publications:
*"'Let the MLF Sink out of Sight': the Cold War and the Atlantic Alliance
during the Johnson Administration," The Japanese Journal of American Studies 24 (forthcoming, June 2013)
* Eisenhower and West Germany: Arms Control Negotiations as an Alliance Policy, Kyoto: Minerva Shobo, 2008 (in Japanese).
* A Political and Diplomatic History of the West, Kyoto: Minerva Shobo, 2013 (co-author, in Japanese)
Grown up in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan; graduated Hitotsubashi University for BA and MA in Law (international relations)
