Opposing Nuclear Weapons Testing in the Global South: A Comparative Perspective

ABSTRACT

During the Cold War, nuclear weapon states outsourced their nuclear testing programmes to their hinterlands or overseas territories. Countries such as the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), France and the Soviet Union conducted more than 750 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, Australia, the Algerian Sahara, French Polynesia and Kazakhstan, respectively. In these cases, nuclear activities did not go unchallenged as they affected people’s health and the environment. To different extents, nuclear testing met with opposition from local, regional and international actors. A comparative perspective on anti-nuclear movements – in different regions and time frameworks – that struggled against nuclear colonialism in the form of nuclear testing highlights the impact left by anti-nuclear movements in the Global South, which is relevant to discussions on how the non-proliferation regime is structured today.

KEYWORDS:

• nuclear testing
• social movements
• environmental justice
• nuclear colonialism
• peripheralisation

During the Cold War, nuclear weapon states outsourced their nuclear testing programmes to their hinterlands or overseas territories. Countries such as the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), France and the Soviet Union conducted more than 750 nuclear tests in their peripheries, producing widespread contamination, radiation and harm to human life. From 1946 to 1958, the US carried out 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands (Jacobs 2013, 162). The UK conducted 12 atmospheric tests between 1952 and 1957 on Australian territories at Maralinga, Emu Field and Monte Bello Island, as well as nine atmospheric tests over Christmas Island (Kiritimati) and Malden Island in the central Pacific Ocean from 1957 to 1958 (Bolton and Minor 2021, 87). Between 1960 and 1966, France detonated 17 atomic bombs in the Algerian Sahara and, between 1966 and 1996, it conducted 193 nuclear weapon tests in French Polynesia (Jacobs 2013, 170-1). In the case of the Soviet Union, the Semipalatinsk region in Kazakhstan was the epicentre of the Soviet nuclear testing programme throughout the Cold War. The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk from 1949 until 1989 (Werner and Purvis-Roberts 2006, 463).

Nuclear activities, however, did not go unchallenged as they affected people’s health and the environment. To different extents, nuclear testing met with opposition from social movements, regional organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local governments, among other actors. Hence, this article seeks to answer the following questions: How was the opposition to nuclear testing formulated? How did opposition to nuclear testing contribute to the development of the non-proliferation regime? This article will focus on opposition to nuclear testing in the South Pacific (Marshall Islands, Polynesia and Australia), the Algerian Sahara and Kazakhstan, and provide a comparison between these cases. The rationale behind choosing these cases is their commonality: nuclear weapons states moved their atomic testing programmes to their colonial possessions, overseas territories, or administrated areas to reduce opposition and prevent radiological impact on their own regions and people. Indeed, the Marshall Islands were a US-administered territory in the 1940s and 1950s, Australia was a former UK colony and a member of the Commonwealth, the Algerian Sahara was a French colony, Polynesia is still a French overseas territory, and Kazakhstan was a Soviet republic controlled by Moscow.

While nuclear testing by nuclear weapons states recognised by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ended in the 1990s,¹ the recent publication of two critical books – Political Fallout by Toshihiro Higuchi (2020) and Atomic Steppe by Togzhan Kassenova (2022) – has stimulated new interest in this subject. The former deals with the environmental consequences of nuclear testing in the first two decades of the Cold War and the latter addresses the Soviet atomic testing programme in Kazakhstan. Against this renewed interest, this article aims at assessing the lasting impact of those who confronted one of the most pernicious aspects of the nuclear Cold War.

The article is organised as follows: first, a conceptual framework is laid out by defining the key concepts developed in the article such as the Global South, social movements, nuclear colonialism, environmental justice and peripheralisation. Second, the implications of nuclear tests in the three mentioned cases and the opposition that arose are examined. To conclude, patterns and commonalities across the case studies are highlighted. This research relies on reports and conference proceedings, academic sources on the history of nuclear testing, as well as accounts of struggles against it.

Opposition to nuclear testing in Global International Relations (IR)

The ‘Global South’ is a broad concept that includes decolonised nations and people, institutions and spaces that do not belong to the ‘Western’ centre of power, also referred to as the ‘Global North’. While the Global South has been used to portray systemic inequalities in world politics, it has also been regarded as an alternative source of power (Haug et al. 2021, 1927). In this respect, Amitav Acharya proposed “A New Agenda for International Studies” in 2014 and invited scholars to focus on the Global South’s role in international relations – a topic often overlooked by mainstream studies. As put by Acharya (2014, 651), “Global IR recognizes the voices and agency of the South and opens a central place for subaltern perspectives on global order and the changing dynamics of North–South relations.”

In this article, Global South agency refers to how people, social movements, regional organisations and local governments resisted nuclear testing. In particular, this article focuses on anti-nuclear-testing social movements that “sustained challenge to power holders” – in this case, nuclear powers – “in the name of a population living under the jurisdiction of those power holders” – in this case, in areas affected by nuclear testing (Tilly 1999, 257). As David Meyer and Nancy Whittier (1994, 277) underlined, social movements are a “collection of formal organizations, informal networks, and unaffiliated individuals engaged in a more or less coherent struggle”. To sustain opposition to nuclear powers, social movements employ a variety of tools: coalition formation, public meetings, demonstrations, petitions, lobbying, media presentation and, on rare occasions, direct action (Tilly 1999, 267). In this article, social movements are considered successful if they influence a policy change (Giugni 1998, 383), namely, if they force nuclear powers to stop testing. Two pathways that allow policy change are identified: exogenous and internal to anti-nuclear testing movements. In relation to exogenous factors, the political opportunity structure is understood as openness in the polity and to particular constituencies (Meyer and Minkoff 2004, 1458). In this case, anti-nuclear movements faced polities sometimes more and sometimes less inclined to consider their demands. On the other hand, anti-nuclear movements can influence national and international policy in three distinct ways: influence on state policy from within the state, direct influence on foreign governments and indirect influence on foreign governments by allying with movements in other countries (Meyer 1999, 188).

Nuclear powers’ ‘localisation’ of their testing programmes in the Global South became a form of nuclear colonialism defined as “the way that colonial superpowers appropriated native lands and displaced native people through various nuclear activities, including testing, development, mining, and military training” (Edwards 2011, 109). As Gabrielle Hecht (2002, 691) argued, colonialism was central to the nuclear powers because colonies played a strategic role in their nuclear weapons development. Indeed, nuclear powers appropriated land for nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, Australia, the Algerian Sahara, French Polynesia and the Kazakh steppe. Nevertheless, nuclear activities in the Global South went beyond nuclear testing per se. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan were uranium suppliers, and Tajikistan produced uranium oxide for the Soviet Union. The former also stationed large quantities of nuclear weapons and delivery systems in both Ukraine and Belarus (Hanaček and Martinez-Alier 2022). For their part, France (Hecht 2002) and the UK relied on their former colonies in Africa to obtain uranium supplies.

Another aspect of nuclear colonialism is ‘peripheralisation’. This concept, coined by Andrew Blowers (2010, 162), suggests the movement of unwanted and harmful industries to remote, economically marginal and politically powerless areas where environmental degradation can be caused without significant constraints. Indeed, nuclear powers moved their testing to remote areas, far from their geographic locations and the centre of their controlled territories. These areas were regarded as empty and remote (Edwards 2011, 110) and a place where nuclear powers could harm the land and the Indigenous People without much opposition.

Nuclear colonialism causes environmental injustice (Endres 2009, 918-9) as it harms Indigenous People and their land due to nuclear developments (Churchill and LaDuke 1986). Vulnerable communities in the Global South experienced environmental degradation and harm (Endres 2009, 921), and the broad social-environmental and health consequences have been felt across generations (Blowers 1999, 241-2). In Kazakhstan, more than 1.5 million people were exposed to significant doses of radiation (Werner and Purvis-Roberts 2006, 463). In the Marshall Islands, the radioactive fallout has made parts of the islands unhabitable today (Parsons and Zaballa 2017, 152). In the Sahara, the level of radiation in areas close to the nuclear site is 20 times higher than the norm (Bolton and Minor 2021, 88). In French Polynesia, massive internal migration occurred (90). The end of nuclear testing did not end the struggle for the communities affected by it as they looked for environmental justice, understood as the right of victims of environmental degradation to receive full reparations and get their areas cleaned up.

In short, as nuclear testing allows space for contestation, this article, building upon Acharya’s research agenda, focuses on the agency of the Global South peoples who rejected the nuclear colonialism imposed upon them.

South Pacific

The US conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958, particularly on the Bikini Atoll (Parsons and Zaballa 2017, 2). The Marshall Islands – a group of atolls located in the northern tropics of the Pacific (14) – was chosen as a US testing site immediately after the end of World War II. By then, the Marshall Islands was a US-administered territory and therefore constituted a case of nuclear colonialism. During the 12 years of US testing in the Pacific, Indigenous People and inhabitants of the island suffered from evacuations and were affected by radioactive fallout (15). A turning point for US testing occurred in 1954 when the Castle Bravo test – the largest US nuclear test (51) – caused widespread contamination across the Pacific and generated an international uproar. Consequently, the Prime Minister of India called for an international agreement on a nuclear test ban. After Jawaharlal Nehru’s proposal was submitted to the UN Disarmament Commission the same year, the test ban became a flagship demand for the Global South (Johnson 2009, 11). In parallel, the Castle Bravo test triggered the internationalisation of the movements against nuclear weapons in general and atomic testing in particular. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, published on 9 July 1955, called for a conference of scientists to assess the dangers of nuclear weapons that was convened in 1957 in Pugwash, Nova Scotia (Wittner 1997, 33-7). That was the start of the Pugwash movement² that is still active today. Also, in 1957, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), one of the world’s largest anti-nuclear groups, was established in the UK. At the same time, the population of the Marshall Islands presented little opposition to US nuclear colonialism in those years: the Indigenous Population displaced as a consequence of the high levels of radiation had no means to struggle against the overwhelming power of Washington. Only in the 1970s did the islanders sue the US for the first time, as well as requesting compensation and a radiological survey of the contaminated areas, with Washington eventually agreeing to compensate the islanders by creating a special fund in 1988 (Marcoux 2022).

On the whole, however, these first international steps against nuclear weapons testing were relatively successful. In 1958, the US President Dwight Eisenhower convened a conference of experts to study technical aspects of verifying atomic tests. The same year, the then three nuclear weapons states – the US, the UK and the Soviet Union – adopted an informal nuclear testing moratorium and convened the Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Weapons Tests, which paved the way for the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) of 1963 (Johnson 2009, 13).

For its part, the UK, whose wartime nuclear cooperation with the US suddenly stopped in 1946,³ decided to move ahead alone with its nuclear weapons programme. Through an agreement made in 1950, Australia agreed to lend its soil to the UK to test nuclear weapons (Tynan 2018, 68). It is worth recalling that Australia, while an independent country, was a member of the British Commonwealth and had a less autonomous foreign policy vis a vis the UK at that time. This created the conditions that allowed British nuclear colonialism in Australia and the peripheralisation of the UK’s nuclear testing programme in that country. The first bomb was detonated in 1952 on the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia. Later, the testing programme was moved to Emu Field in South Australia and subsequently to the remote area of Maralinga, the final site. Approximately 12 atomic bombs were tested between 1952 and 1957, with another nine hydrogen bomb tests carried out in the central Pacific Ocean (between 1957 and 1958). In addition to nuclear bombs, the UK conducted extensive experiments with plutonium in Maralinga, the so-called ‘minor trials’, between 1960 and 1961 (114-38).

Protests in Australia began in 1954, two years after the beginning of UK nuclear testing (Wittner 1997, 25). The first steps were taken by Marc Oliphant, director of the School of Physics at the Australian National University and former member of the Manhattan Project. In a meeting in Sydney that brought together 4,000 people, Oliphant warned about the consequences of nuclear weapons. Later, he became the Pugwash movement’s representative in Australia. Small protest groups, such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and pacifist groups, such as the Society of Friends, raised their voices against atomic testing. In 1957, a conference on the consequences of nuclear testing for Aboriginals was held in Melbourne (76) and the Australian Labor Party also joined the protests against atomic testing.⁴ Building upon the British model (203), the CND was established in Australia in 1963 after the joint efforts by local CND groups. Establishing the CND was critical as the UK raised the possibility of continuing testing underground in Australia in 1963 (Tynan 2018, 227). As Australia was a signatory of the LTBT and with the nascent anti-nuclear movement raising awareness, the Australian government decided to end UK nuclear testing.

Overall, the Australian opposition to nuclear testing remained limited during the period of the UK’s tests. The reasons behind Australia’s weak opposition can be attributed to several factors, mainly related to the closure of the political opportunity structure. First, nuclear testing in Australia coincided with the era dominated by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, who ruled for more than 16 years. In addition to his anti-communist credentials, Menzies was an anglophile (66) and believed that Australia’s path toward its own nuclear weapon would be paved by assisting the UK. Second, the Australian government kept the nuclear tests secret for much of the period. This was reflected in the Australian media, which concealed many of the events that occurred during nuclear testing as it imposed self-censorship due to the security needs of the Cold War (200-25). Third, the Aboriginal population affected by the test was disenfranchised in those years, which certainly affected their ability to resist nuclear testing (171). Last but not least, the Australian anti-nuclear movement was not yet sufficiently established to effectively protest against nuclear testing during the 1950s. As previously mentioned, the creation of the CND in 1963 probability changed the political calculation of the Menzies administration. Perhaps the limited opposition to nuclear tests in Australia explains the uproar generated since the mid-1970s when the Australian press started to disclose what happened two decades earlier with the UK testing programme. The snowball caused by the reports and the publicity of the nuclear tests resulted in a major inquiry between 1984-85 under the Royal Commission that investigated the British atomic tests in Australia (247-73). Moreover, interest in the nuclear past cast a shadow on the relationship between London and Canberra related to the cleaning-up of contaminated areas and the compensation to be paid to Australians who had been exposed to radiation and suffered from radiation-related diseases throughout many years (Milliken 1987, 44).

After the US and the UK ended their nuclear testing in the Pacific, in 1966, France officially moved its nuclear testing programme to its overseas territories in the region, beginning a new era of nuclear colonialism. This proved to be a turning point for the South Pacific. Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia. French testing in the Pacific became a common cause across the region. Opposition to the French nuclear testing programme was played out on three levels. First, individual states took different courses of action against France. Second, the anti-nuclear cause was pushed forward by regional organisations. Third, anti-nuclear social movements surged, with different intensities, across the region.

In 1971, the South Pacific Forum (SPF) (later renamed Pacific Islands Forum), the main regional intergovernmental organisation, was established. The ending of France’s nuclear testing programme in French Polynesia immediately became its flagship cause. The communiqué of the first meeting of the SPF illustrates its attitude:

The forthcoming series of nuclear tests will be conducted by France in the South Pacific. Participants expressed deep regret that atmospheric nuclear weapons tests continued to be held in the Islands of French Polynesia despite the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the protests repeatedly made by a number of the countries attending as well as other Pacific nations. They expressed their concern at the potential hazards that atmospheric tests pose to health and safety and to marine life, which is a vital element in the Islands’ subsistence and economy. They addressed an urgent appeal to the Government of France that the current test series should be the last in the Pacific area (SPF 1971).

Against this background, in 1973, Australia and New Zealand sued France in the International Court of Justice at The Hague because of its nuclear testing programme. As a consequence, France had to move its nuclear testing programme underground in 1974. In 1975, the SPF recommended the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) in the region and the same year New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea sponsored a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution, the first calling for an NWFZ (Thakur 1985, 218-9). Eventually, in 1984, when the Labor Parties in both Australia and New Zealand were in power, a political opportunity was opened. The SPF was commanded to negotiate an NWFZ and, in one year, completed its task. On 6 August 1985, the anniversary of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing, the Rarotonga Treaty⁵ established an NWFZ (Firth 1986). The main goal of this regime was to ban any atomic testing in the region.

In the 1980s, the struggle against nuclear testing in the Pacific was reinforced by protests against other related nuclear activities such as uranium extraction (Martin 2007, 43), the visits of nuclear-armed vessels (Clements 1988, 399) and the superpower arms race. In 1980, Palau approved a nuclear-free constitution, Vanuatu issued a declaration of nuclear-free status and Fiji banned nuclear ships (Maclellan 2005, 366). In 1987, New Zealand went the extra mile and passed the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act, which banned from its ports nuclear-powered ships or those that contained nuclear weapons (Templeton 2006, 499).

The third actor that opposed nuclear testing was the anti-nuclear social movement. In 1972, two years after its founding, Greenpeace, organised sailing trips to Mururoa atoll. In 1973, a yacht belonging to Greenpeace was stormed by a French military ship in the South Pacific. Greenpeace’s crew, despite being attacked, managed to take pictures of the incident, which caused uproar in the region (Wittner 2003, 19). This methodology peaked on 10 July 1985, when the Rainbow Warrior, a ship owned by Greenpeace, was sunk by French intelligence officers while anchored in Auckland Harbor (Thakur 1986) prior to a protest against a new series of nuclear tests. Interestingly, under the Labor Prime Minister Norman Kirk, New Zealand had adopted Greenpeace tactics and sent ships (with ministers onboard) to protest against French nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll in 1973 (Wittner 2003, 19).

In Fiji, ATOM (Against Testing on Mururoa), an anti-nuclear movement based on religious membership, surged in 1970 (Regnault 2005, 345). Diverse Christian denominations joined ATOM, which received the support of the Pacific Conferences of Churches. It was the promoter of the first Nuclear-Free Pacific Conference in 1975 that gathered anti-nuclear organisations from twenty Pacific countries. This was a watershed event for the anti-nuclear movement in the region. During the conference, the Nuclear-Free Pacific Movement was established; its manifesto called for nuclear testing in the region to be banned (Wittner 2003, 34)

All these efforts failed to stop France, which disavowed the treaty establishing a South Pacific NWFZ and the opposition of other countries and social movements. It continued testing until 1990, when François Mitterrand decided to halt it. Nevertheless, when Jacques Chirac became president in 1995, France resumed the testing programme. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back as the coalition between social movements, people from the region and South Pacific governments that opposed nuclear testing in the previous decades was re-enacted. The SPF established an anti-testing committee that sent representatives to France, the US and the UK to seek support for the NWFZ and end nuclear testing. South Pacific nations also promoted a UNGA resolution calling for the end of nuclear testing the same year. Clergymen, in this case, Catholic bishops from 23 Pacific countries, condemned the tests (Thakur 1996, 479). Greenpeace resumed its direct-action methods by sending ships toward the Mururoa atoll and trade unions in Australia and New Zealand joined the wave of public protests (Elliot 1997, 147). In parallel, a political opportunity was opened for the success of the anti-nuclear movement in the South Pacific with the extension of the NPT in 1995 and the negotiation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) culminating in 1996. All these events added pressure, and France was forced to terminate its testing programme in 1996.

Overall, in the South Pacific, there was only minor opposition to nuclear testing conducted by the US and the UK in the 1950s-early 1960s, but it evolved over the years. The region witnessed the emergence of anti-nuclear movements that spread across many countries. Even though the success of the protest movement proved to be a long road, France stopped testing amid the international pressure brought by the South Pacific’s people and governments.

The Algerian Sahara

During the final days of the Fourth Republic in 1957, France, which was close to producing its first nuclear bomb, had to make a fateful decision: choosing a site suitable for conducting a nuclear test. The only options discussed were the Algerian Sahara and French Polynesia (Regnault 2003). Eventually, the former was selected as a temporary site, although the latter option was considered the most promising for the long term. France conducted its first nuclear atmospheric tests in the Algerian Sahara Desert on 13 February 1960, which was followed by three additional tests the same year. One year later, France halted its atmospheric tests but continued testing underground until 1966 (13 in total) when it moved its testing programme to French Polynesia.⁶ By choosing Algeria, France produced two interweaved phenomena: nuclear colonialism and the peripheralisation of its nuclear testing in the Sahara Desert.

France’s nuclear activities in the Sahara met strong opposition from African countries even before they started. Against the backdrop of the decolonisation process, a political opportunity was opened for the African anti-nuclear movement. In this regard, opposing French atomic testing produced three kinds of responses. First, the then-emergent African regionalism opposed the French nuclear programme as its flagship cause. Second, individual countries adopted different strategies to oppose these atomic tests. Third, anti-nuclear movements opposed to French nuclear testing in the Sahara surged in several African countries.

Regarding African regionalism, many of the continent’s independent leaders during the decolonisation process of the 1950s and 1960s were also pan-Africanist. Hence, the fact that France tested its first nuclear weapons in Algeria when the northern African country was fighting for independence presented a golden opportunity for African leaders to rally around the pan-Africanist flag. Interestingly, the anti-nuclear cause prompted a joint regional response when the regionalist movement was taking its first steps as radioactive fallout spread across three African countries. Therefore, in a very short period, recently independent African nations appealed to the UN and created the first pan-African institution, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which targeted the French nuclear programme. Among the first collective actions in Africa was the approval of the UNGA resolution (UNGA 1961) on the Consideration of Africa as a Denuclearized Zone in 1961. The resolution called for the end of nuclear testing in Africa and the respect for Africa as a Denuclearized Zone. Against this backdrop, the Conference of Independent Heads of the African States that met in Ethiopia in 1963 established the OAU and issued a resolution that called again for Africa to be respected as a Denuclearised Zone (Adeniji 2002, 36). A year later, the OAU promoted the Declaration on the Denuclearisation of Africa and called upon “all States to refrain from testing, manufacturing, using or deploying nuclear weapons on the continent of Africa, and from acquiring such weapons or taking any action which would compel African States to take similar action” (OAU 1964).

As the UN expanded its membership due to the decolonisation process, it became a forum for the international struggles of Asian and African nations. African countries took the opportunities when they arose, such as the resolution on the Denuclearisation of Africa case shows. In 1960, 25 African and Asian countries condemned France’s nuclear testing in a letter to the UN Secretary-General (Wittner 1997, 385). In the same year, the first meeting of the non-alignment movement (NAM) was held on the sidelines of the UN’s annual General Assembly. The NAM was later formalised at its first conference in Belgrade in 1961 (386). Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of Ghana, was one of the key leaders in establishing the NAM along with Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia), Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt) and Sukarno (Indonesia). Since then, the NAM has exercised its influence in various fields, such as the peaceful uses of energy and the promotion of disarmament measures (Potter and Mukhatzhanova 2012, 18).

Regarding individual responses, Nigeria broke diplomatic ties with France and Ghana froze French assets in that country (Adeniji 2002). The Algerian National Assembly also requested the revision of the Evian Accords about the nuclear testing site in 1963 (Zia-Ebrahimi 2012, 26). Former UK colonies in Africa and members of the British Commonwealth tried to exercise influence on the UK concerning the French atomic testing (Hill 2019; O'Driscoll 2009). Other countries such as Tunisia, Ghana and Morocco appealed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for assistance in monitoring the fallout from the Sahara, a significant challenge for the then-young nuclear watchdog. The request included the provision of dosimetry and radiation detection equipment (Cooper 2022). In the case of Tunisia, although it failed to prevent France from testing in the Sahara, the government reached out to the IAEA in 1959 in light of imminent tests (407), requesting that the IAEA developed a full-scale fallout monitoring programme which was non-existent at that time (415). The Tunisian initiative, however, prompted an internal discussion in the IAEA on whether the agency was the right forum to deal with nuclear testing. An internal memo on “environmental radioactivity,” without explicitly mentioning the sensitive question of atomic tests, stated that the IAEA had a stake in this problem (416). Ultimately, the board of the IAEA rejected Tunisia’s request but offered its laboratories in Vienna to train scientists in the measurement and analysis of environmental radioactivity instead. At the same time, Tunisia directed the same request to the US, which eventually approved assistance for establishing ground stations to measure radioactivity and analyse the results.

In parallel, a novel social movement also surged amid the tensions created by the French decision to carry out a nuclear test in 1960. On 9 December 1959, an international protest group consisting of 19 people departed from Ghana toward the Algerian Sahara. The group had a diverse composition: two people from the US, four from Europe, 11 from Ghana and the rest from other African countries (Hennaoui and Nurzhan 2023, this Special Issue, 101). The protest group organised a convoy that attempted to break into the French nuclear test site, which was stopped by French authorities 16 miles inside Algeria (Skinner 2015). This group also established close ties with Ghana’s leadership. Indeed, one of the most potent voices against France was the Ghanian Primer Minister, Kwame Nkrumah. A staunch pan-Africanist, the Ghanaian leader wanted to gather the struggle against the bomb behind him. Nkrumah’s international status was a consequence of Ghana being one of the first African countries to obtain independence in 1957. Nkrumah convened the Conference on Positive Action for Peace and Security in Africa, held on 7-9 April 1960, to protest against French nuclear tests conducted two months earlier. On that occasion, Nkrumah not only appealed to traditional pan-African motifs but to the consequences of the tests. He pointed out that the radioactive fallout reached Ghana and that radiation had health implications, such as malformations at birth. On that occasion, the Sahara protest movement participated and Nkrumah himself made references to the protest movement’s actions against nuclear tests (Positive Action Conference for Peace and Security in Africa 1960).

Demonstrations also were held in African capitals as massive rallies took place in Tunisia, Libya and Morocco (Skinner 2015, 419). In the meantime, protests against French institutions were held in large European cities.

In sum, although the appeals of many African countries to France failed to reverse the decision to conduct tests in the Sahara, international pressure on Paris forced it to halt the atmospheric trials (Regnault 2003, 1232). In addition, opposing the French nuclear testing programme had long-term effects. First, the Declaration on the Denuclearisation of Africa issued in the 1960s became the cornerstone of African non-proliferation efforts. The cause for the denuclearisation of the continent was raised again once South Africa pursued a military nuclear programme during the 1970s and 1980s. When Africa established an NWFZ through the Pelindaba Treaty in 1996, it built upon the precedent set by the African declarations in the 1960s (Adeniji 2002, 2). Second, the French nuclear testing in Africa was a watershed moment in the Cold War. As African and Asian countries gained agency, they started working together through international institutions to leverage their combined power. This created a problem for the Soviet and Western blocs that did not want to jeopardise their ties with the newly independent countries. Disarmament was a bone of contention between the nuclear powers and the developing world, as the NAM illustrates. Third, nuclear testing in the Sahara prompted the creation of anti-nuclear movements in several African countries, such as Ghana, Sierra Leone and South Africa (Wittner 1997, 270). Although they were smaller in comparison to the European movements, they enhanced the local civil society in the context of decolonisation.

The Kazakh steppe

Immediately after the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Soviet Union found itself in a disadvantageous strategic position vis-à-vis the US. As such, Stalin decided to develop his country’s first nuclear bomb to match the US during the early years of the Cold War (Higuchi 2020, 31). By 1947, the Soviet Union had started to prepare the steppes of Kazakhstan in the Semipalatinsk region as the site to test the bomb. The decision to use the Semipalatinsk region was based on several considerations (Kassenova 2022, 13). First, it was a remote location far from major cities and public scrutiny. Second, the area was suitable for building the required infrastructure to conduct the test. For more than 40 years, this region became a focal point of the Soviet Union’s nuclear programme: 456 atomic tests were conducted during this period, including 118 atmospheric tests (Jacobs 2013, 164). In other words, the Soviet Union engaged simultaneously in nuclear colonialism, as Kazakhstan was a Soviet republic controlled by Moscow, and the peripheralisation of the testing site in the steppes. Nuclear testing in the Semipalatinsk Polygon has left a long-term legacy. Areas surrounding the Polygon became uninhabitable due to nuclear contamination and many water sources in the region were poisoned. The radiation in Kazakhstan affected 1.5 million people and generated an impact on life expectancy, higher rate of cancer, stillbirths and mental disorders (Threet 2005, 48-9).

Despite the authoritarian character of the Soviet Union, opposition to nuclear testing in Kazakhstan could be expressed, albeit under challenging conditions. It is possible to divide that opposition into two periods. The first occurred from the mid-1950s to 1963. During this time, the Soviet Union carried out atomic testing in the atmosphere until the tests were moved underground after the signing of the LTBT. This period is considered the most pernicious because the nuclear fallout affected the environment and the health of the Kazakhstan people the most (Kassenova 2022, 46). In this period, the opposition was limited to requests for medical attention by local authorities and passed through official channels. The second period took place in the last years of the Soviet Union when the Glasnost and Perestroika created more opportunities for the expression of civil society. In this second period, the opposition to the Polygon became a popular struggle and demanded its closure.

Between 1949 and 1953, the Soviet Union did not inform the inhabitants of the Polygon about the tests nor warn them to move away temporarily from the area. Due to the secrecy of the atomic programme, Soviet authorities did not advise the population about their health being at risk (Werner and Purvis-Robert 2006, 464). In the post-Stalin period, Nikita Khrushchev's rise to the leadership of the Soviet Union opened a political opportunity for the expression of anti-nuclear attitudes, albeit under limited conditions. Only in 1956 did the Soviet Union start monitoring public health around the area of the Polygon. By then, widespread radiation had already produced a considerable toll and caused illness in the local population. As a consequence of a nuclear test in August of that year, which caused the hospitalisation of hundreds of people, the Soviet government allowed a delegation of experts to assess the contamination of the area (Kassenova 2022, 59-60). A public outcry pushed Moscow to open clinics in Kazakhstan to monitor public health in areas affected by nuclear fallout. The clinic’s establishment permitted doctors to raise the alarm about the contamination, report the situation and call for the end of nuclear testing. Indeed, reports were delivered to Soviet authorities in Moscow but no decisive action followed. The Soviet Union watered down and dismissed the complaints sent via official channels. Popular discontent was also monitored as the infamous KGB checked the personal correspondence of Semipalatinsk’s residents, which included references to the region's health problems and air pollution (335).

Despite the warnings, Kazakhstan authorities and people could not confront Moscow, which in turn, as mentioned, continued testing and underestimating the impact on people's health. The fact that the Soviet Union moved its testing underground when the public resentment against the Polygon was at its peak allowed Moscow to temper the discontent. As the Soviet polity was resistant to such demands at the time, opposition to nuclear testing was contained for the next two decades, after which a political opportunity for opposition to be mobilised appeared at the beginning of the Mikhail Gorbachev era.

The second wave of opposition occurred in the second half of the 1980s and, in contrast to the first period, became a mass movement. In 1986, the Kazakh public protested against Moscow for the first time under Soviet rule, which in turn, severely repressed the demonstrations (Budjeryn 2016, 241). From then onward, the gap between Moscow and the Soviet republic became impossible to bridge. As resentment toward the Soviet Union increased, Gorbachev’s reforms created a political opportunity for the emergence of a popular anti-nuclear movement. Against this backdrop, a nuclear test in February 1989 was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The spread of radioactive gases reached population centres. As the local authorities recognised the contamination and Moscow officials downplayed its effect, a tipping point was already in the making (245).

Olzhas Suleimenov, local poet and deputy of the Supreme Soviet since 1984, took the lead and called for the Kazakhstan population to protest against the Semipalatinsk nuclear site. In a television appearance in February 1989, he spoke about the latest nuclear incident as well as the legacy of the Polygon and demanded the end of atomic testing in the Soviet republic. Moreover, he called for a rally in the capital three days later. Responding to Suleimenov’s call, thousands of people gathered in Almaty (formerly Alma-Ata) which founded the anti-nuclear movement in Kazakhstan. According to Kassenova, that day constituted the establishment of the most important civil society movement in the country’s history and the most significant movement against nuclear testing in the world (2022, 77-8). The movement later called itself Nevada-Semipalatinsk in solidarity with the movement that was seeking to close the Nevada testing site in the US. The connection between two regions located in the territory of the two Cold War superpowers was aimed at expressing that the nuclear sites affected the local population living near them and reclaiming a voice against nuclear colonialism (Hennaoui and Nurzhan 2023, this Special Issue, 98). In addition, it was an appeal to both superpowers to jointly end nuclear testing (Budjeryn 2016, 247).

Quickly, the protest movement encompassed all the accumulated grievances of the Kazakhs toward the Soviet Union (Kassenova 2022, 79) and triggered a wave of subsequent actions that achieved a total victory two years later. Among its first actions, one million people signed a public petition to end nuclear testing in the country (Budjeryn 2016, 245). During the years 1989-90, public protest increased against the Polygon, and Suleimenov’s international leadership consolidated. He called for the leaders of both the US and the Soviet Union to agree on a nuclear testing moratorium by travelling to Moscow and the US. In turn, Kazakhstan opened the door for international activism. In 1990, it hosted an international conference organised by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Hennaoui and Nurzhan 2023, this Special Issue, 98-9).

Those events unfolded in a way that opened a political opportunity for the anti-nuclear movement by creating a schism between the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and the Soviet Union. The Kazakh communist leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, along with other important officials, co-opted the anti-nuclear message and lobbied for reducing nuclear tests. Surprised by the widespread discontent, the Soviet leadership had to take note of the claim and cut in half the number of planned tests for 1989 and the yield of the bombs (Kassenova 2022, 84). The Soviet Union and the Kazakh leadership played a cat-and-mouse game. Although Moscow showed some sympathy for the claims of the movement, no decisive action was taken concerning the Polygon. For its part, the Kazakh government took a course of action that involved carefully staged steps against it. Through calls and resolutions against the testing site, the Kazakh leadership created momentum for the final act. On 29 August 1991, Nazarbayev issued a decree definitively closing the testing site (Budjeryn 2016, 248) – a symbolic date for the republic as it was the 42nd anniversary of the first Soviet nuclear test in Semipalatinsk. The formal closing of the Polygon also occurred during the week when an attempted coup d’état against Gorbachev occurred. The imminent collapse of the Soviet Union untied Kazakhstan’s hands to take an independent course of action.

In sum, the anti-nuclear movement – supported by the people and Kazakhstan’s Communist Party – achieved its ultimate goal: the closure of the Polygon. Moreover, the anti-nuclear movement projected its influence beyond the Cold War. Once an independent republic, Kazakhstan became a strong voice against nuclear weapons. First, it dismantled the nuclear weapons infrastructure left by the Soviet Union and returned the atomic bombs on its soil to the Russian Federation. Second, it adopted several non-proliferation instruments such as the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme, signed the NPT and supported the creation of an NWFZ in Central Asia. In addition, Kazakhstan allowed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation to conduct experiments on seismic monitoring and related exercises on the former nuclear test site and hosted the first IAEA Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank (Kassenova 2022, 245-53).

In lieu of conclusions: Nuclear testing in a comparative perspective

This article has provided a comparative perspective on anti-nuclear movements – in different regions and time periods – that struggled against nuclear colonialism in the form of nuclear testing. Acknowledging the impact left by anti-nuclear movements in the Global South is relevant to discussions on how the non-proliferation regime is structured today (see also Hennaoui and Nurzhan [2023], this Special Issue, 103)

The first common characteristic across the three analysed cases is that of nuclear colonialism: nuclear weapons states moved their atomic testing programmes to their colonial possessions or controlled areas. This meant that the health and lands of local populations – mainly Indigenous Peoples, ethnic minorities – were contaminated by nuclear testing and their political maneuvering to oppose these actions was restricted. Testing by the US and UK affected both the Marshall Islands and Australian indigenous groups, respectively. The Soviet Union testing affected the population of Kazakhstan, a ‘peripheral’ republic in the broad Soviet empire, and French nuclear testing impacted their colonial subjects in Africa and the Pacific Islands. Nuclear powers promoted a process of peripheralisation even within their controlled regions. In Kazakhstan, the nuclear testing site was located in the steppes; in Algeria, it was placed in the Sahara Desert; in the South Pacific, in remote islands and desert areas in Australia. In other words, nuclear weapons states moved their testing sites to territories considered peripheral in their colonies and where they assumed that opposition would be limited. However, as Toshihiro Higuchi (2020, 19) states in reference to the peripheral test site in New Mexico for the Manhattan Project, “isolation was an illusion”. Similarly, the idea that nuclear testing in remote areas would affect fewer people and would have fewer international repercussions was an illusion.

Second, as Lawrence Wittner (2003, 485) has stressed, the world nuclear disarmament movement has been a citizen crusade built upon a multiplicity of organisations within mobilised civil societies, including professional associations, unions, religious groups and political parties. Across all cases, social movements used similar methods: demonstrations, public petitions, lobbying local and national authorities, and involvement in national politics. Direct action methods were mainly observed in the South Pacific against French nuclear testing.

The success of the anti-nuclear testing coalitions varied in relation to the political opportunities they faced and their capacity to influence the policies of the nuclear powers. In the case of the South Pacific, the anti-nuclear movement compelled governments to adopt part of its agenda. The protests succeeded in forcing France to move its testing programme underground in 1974, but they fell short of attaining the complete end of testing until 1996. Indeed, when France resumed its nuclear testing programme in 1995, the anti-nuclear coalition rose again and made its final and most successful attempt to end French testing in the South Pacific. In the case of Africa, the decolonisation process created the conditions for an anti-nuclear social movement, the mobilisation of African governments and the establishment of the OAU that opposed French nuclear testing. While all these factors did not halt France’s nuclear testing programme, they pushed it underground. In the case of Kazakhstan, the political openness produced in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s allowed a protest movement to develop. This contributed to the closure of the Polygon by bringing the issue to the attention of the local government and increasing Moscow’s political cost of maintaining the site. By contrast, opposition in the Marshall Islands and Australia in the 1950s and 1960s was limited. The indigenous population was displaced in the former and had no means to influence policy-making. In the latter, the Aboriginal population was disenfranchised and the anti-nuclear movement was in an early stage. In addition, in Australia, the political structure was closed as Prime Minister Menzies had given the green light to the UK to test nuclear weapons.

Movements that opposed nuclear testing also appealed to an international audience to advance their aims. In Kazakhstan, the anti-testing movement was named ‘Nevada-Semipalatinsk’ to raise the struggle’s profile and attach its fortunes to the battle to close the Nevada test site in the US. In Africa, the Sahara protest movement was reinforced by European and American anti-nuclear activists and was supported by the Ghanaian government. At the same time, international NGOs like Greenpeace took their first steps in the South Pacific.

Third, following the end of nuclear testing, the legacies of nuclear colonialism persist. A new battle for environmental justice – claiming reparations, addressing long-term health problems and cleaning up nuclear sites – began after the end of nuclear testing. Australia set up a commission of inquiry in the mid-1980s. In 1993, the UK compensated Australia for cleaning up Maralinga (Suter 1994, 195) and in 1994 the Australian government offered reparations to the Indigenous People of that region. The US had to compensate the Marshall Islands several times and embarked on a clean-up process (Gerrard 2015). France recognised the damage caused by its nuclear testing programme in French Polynesia and the Sahara in 2010 (Philippe et al. 2022, 64). Nevertheless, financial compensation and the clean-up have been minimal and claims continue to be filed against the French government. In Semipalatinsk, the clean-up has been carried out by Russia and the US (Werner and Purvis-Roberts 2006, 467-68). Still, compensation to the nuclear victims offered by the national government has not been sufficient and Russia has declined to provide reparations to Kazakhstan (473-74).

In conclusion, the lasting impact of the anti-nuclear movement is fourfold. First, opposition to nuclear testing throughout the Cold War created the conditions for establishing an anti-testing norm once it concluded. The Soviet Union stopped atomic testing in 1991, the US followed suit in 1992 and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and France suspended their testing in 1996. This process led to the signing of the CTBT in 1996. Second, the anti-nuclear movement was revitalised with the creation of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in 2007. This NGO, built upon groups across regions and countries, became a global civil society coalition that pushed forward the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Without the experience gained by anti-nuclear movements worldwide during previous decades, it is likely that ICAN would not have been established. As stated by Wittner (2003, 490) years before the TPNW, a vigilant citizenry is a sin qua non factor for abolishing nuclear weapons. Third, the Global South’s opposition to nuclear testing enhanced regional identities, as well as regional integration mechanisms and non-proliferation governance. The French atomic testing pushed African countries to work together and had a central role in the constitution of the OAU in 1963. In the South Pacific, the SPF worked against the French nuclear testing programme from its inception in 1971. In all cases, the establishment of NWFZs in the South Pacific, Africa and Central Asia were aimed at banning nuclear testing in those regions (Lacovsky 2020). The Global South’s disappointment with the slow pace of disarmament and the failed attempt to achieve the CTBT’s entry into force pushed many countries to support the TPNW. Finally, the fact that there is a renewed interest in the history of nuclear testing reveals the extent of the disconnection between the end of nuclear testing and the people’s suffering (Higuchi 2020, 198). While atomic testing ceased to be a reality, the consequences are still being felt in the areas most affected. In short, people in the areas discussed here will continue living under the shadow of nuclear testing for some time to come.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the journal’s editors, the guest editors of this Special Issue and the three reviewers for the thorough reading and the insights to improve the original manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Exequiel Lacovsky

Exequiel Lacovsky is a Research Associate at The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.

Notes

1 Non-NPT states such as India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, and North Korea has conducted six tests since 2006.

2 The Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs is an international organisation for nuclear disarmament whose members include scholars and public figures. The Pugwash Conference won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for their efforts on nuclear disarmament.

3 The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) restricted the sharing of nuclear information with other countries, including wartime allies.

4 This would be critical decades later when the Labor Party was in power with Robert Hawke and Paul Keating in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. Both Labor Party leaders raised Australia’s international commitment to non-proliferation by pushing forward initiatives such as the South Pacific nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ), the Australia Group and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

5 The current States Parties to the Treaty are: Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.

6 It is worth recalling that when France conceded independence to Algeria in 1962, the Evian Accords between them granted France control of the Sahara for a few more years. For more details see Narzhan and Hennaoui (2023, this Special Issue).