Contemporary world history has highlighted militarization in many ways, from the global Cold War and numerous regional conflicts to the general assumption that nationhood implies a significant and growing military. Yet the twentieth century also offers notable examples of large-scale demilitarization, both imposed and voluntary. Demilitarization in the Contemporary World fills a key gap in current historical understanding by examining demilitarization programs in Germany, Japan, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica.

In nine insightful chapters, this volume's contributors outline each nation's demilitarization choices and how they were made. They investigate factors such as military defeat, border security risks, economic pressures, and the development of strong peace cultures among citizenry. Also at center stage is the influence of the United States, which fills a paradoxical role as both an enabler of demilitarization and a leader in steadily accelerating militarization.

Bookended by Peter N. Stearns' thought-provoking historical introduction and forward-looking conclusion, the chapters in this volume explore what true demilitarization means and how it impacts a society at all levels, military and civilian, political and private. The examples chosen reveal that successful demilitarization must go beyond mere troop demobilization or arms reduction to generate significant political and even psychological shifts in the culture at large. Exemplifying the political difficulties of demilitarization in both its failures and successes, Demilitarization in the Contemporary World provides a possible roadmap for future policies and practices.

Since the beginning of modern warfare, one of the favorite crusades of the international peacemakers has been toward disarmament. This book investigates the British origin of the disarmament idea--from World War I through the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It traces the development of disarmament as a war aim, with special reference to the influence of British Liberal thought, and President Wilson's acceptance of disarmament as one of his Fourteen Points.

Disarmament is related to the other Allied war aims and to theLiberal and Labor parties during the war period. Particular attention is paid to the influence of public opinion and the British press. Neither an attack on nor an apology for the fiasco which followed, this is a lucid analysis of the events, tensions, personalities, and self-interests which led to the failure of an ideal.

In 1955 the United States and the Soviet Union were matching steps in a race to develop missiles tipped with thermonuclear weapons. American officials were frustrated and alarmed by their inability to learn the scale and progress of the Soviet program, which directly threatened the security of the United States, and they were convinced that serious arms control measures required reliable means for mutual inspection. The result: President Dwight D. Eisenhower's dramatic Open Skies proposal, advanced—and rejected—at the Geneva summit of 1955.

Vetoed by Nikita Khrushchev, Eisenhower's proposal to allow mutual aerial inspection between the United States and the U.S.S.R. was accepted as policy only after satellite photography became feasible. But at the time of the 1955 summit, it was a stunning, if transient, psychological and political victory for the United States and its president.

W. W. Rostow was an active participant in this important episode in American history, and his is the first authoritative account of how Eisenhower's Open Skies proposal came to be. His insider's knowledge, combined with data from hitherto unexploited documentary sources, vividly brings to life the discussions and events that preceded the president's proposal.

Rostow explores the diplomatic forces that led to Eisenhower's reluctant acceptance of a summit with the Soviets. He tracks the origins of the Open Skies concept to an obscure meeting organized at Quantico Marine Corps Base by presidential adviser Nelson Rockefeller. He describes the tensions between Rockefeller and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that complicated Eisenhower's task in mounting the initiative for Open Skies and explains the differences between Eisenhower himself and Rockefeller over postsummit policy that provoked the latter's resignation. He examines Soviet motives and objectives at Geneva. Finally, Rostow reflects on the meaning of this fascinating episode in American history, in particular its importance to later arms control negotiations.

On November 10, 2017, Pope Francis became the first pontiff in the nuclear era to take a complete stand against nuclear weapons, even as a form of deterrence. At a Vatican conference of leaders in the field of disarmament, he made it clear that the possession of the bomb itself was immoral. A World Free from Nuclear Weapons presents the pope’s address and original testimony from Nobel Peace Prize laureates, religious leaders, diplomats, and civil society activists.

These luminaries, which include the pope and a Hiroshima survivor, make the moral case against possessing, manufacturing, and deploying nuclear arms. Drew Christiansen, a member of the Holy See delegation to the 2017 United Nations conference that negotiated the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, helps readers to understand this conference in its historical context.

A World Free from Nuclear Weapons is a critical companion for scholars of modern Catholicism, moral theology, and peace studies, as well as policymakers working on effective disarmament. It shows how the Church’s revised position presents an opportunity for global leaders to connect disarmament to larger movements for peace, pointing toward future action.