"A new europe" : A historic study of three different peace movement's views on nuclear weapons and disarmament

The general purpose of this study was to examine what views three different peace movements had about nuclear weapons and disarmament questions during 1980 to 1984. The chosen movements were the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS), Swedish Peace Committee and The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WIPLF). The methods used for the study were a quantitative and a qualitative method. The study used three different questions. The first question asked: How does the organization’s journals describe the question about nuclear weapons? Which values are threatened and who is behind the threat? How central is the threat? The second question asked: What political differences could be found between the journals in the question about nuclear weapons? The third question asked: Which potential solutions did the journals discuss in relation to nuclear weapons and disarmament? The results showed that the picture of a threat rested on the impendence of a third world war, mass-death for humanity, that Sweden had to be prepared for war and that the superpowers wanted the war to happen outside of their own borders. The political views differed between the Peace committee, and the other two were the committee defended socialism and Soviet and critiqued USA while WILPF and SPAS critiqued both equally. The solutions presented were disarmament of nuclear weapons and the possible erection of the Nordics as a nuclear weapon free zone. The journals described how disarmament of nuclear weapons is a first step to disarmament and that the zone would keep the superpowers out of the area