The first half of Pugwash's three-decade history coincided with
some of the most frigid years of the Cold War, marked by the Berlin
Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the invasion of Czechoslovakia,
and the Vietnam War. In this period of strained official relations
and few unofficial channels, the fora and lines of communication
provided by Pugwash played useful background roles in helping
lay the groundwork for the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the
Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
of 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, and the Chemical
Weapons Convention of 1993. Subsequent trends of generally improving
East-West relations and the emergence of a much wider array of
unofficial channels of communications have somewhat reduced pugwash's
visibility while providing alternate pathways to similar ends,
but Pugwash meetings have continued until the present to play
an important role in bringing together key analysts and policy
advisers for sustained, in-depth discussions of the crucial arms-control
issues of the day: European nuclear forces, chemical and biological
weaponry, space weapons, conventional force reductions and restructuring,
and crisis control in the Third World, among others. Pugwash has,
moreover, for many years extended its remit to include problems
of development and the environment.
Starting in January 1980, for example, Pugwash's series of Workshops
on nuclear forces provided an off-the-record forum where not only
military and civilian analysts but also some members of the official
negotiating teams compared notes and sought solutions to obstacles
in the official negotiations (24 Workshoops of this series have
been held until now, most of them in Geneva, Switzerland). The
Pugwash chemical and biological warfare Workshops -- 22 of them
since 1974 -- have similarly engaged technical experts from the
official negotiating teams, as well as academic and industry experts;
this series led in early 1987 to the first visit of Western chemical
weapons specialists to an Eastern European chemical-production
complex, and Pugwash contacts were also instrumental in setting
up the first access by a U.S. expert to the medical records associated
with the disputed 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk. The Pugwash
study group on conventional forces, which originated in the European
Security Working Group of the 1982 pugwash conference in Warsaw,
held 11 meetings, and played a pioneering role in developing concepts
for restructuring conventional forces and doctrines into modes
less suited for attack, and in gaining credibility for these concepts
with Eastern as well as Western military planners and policy makers.
A List of Meetings held since the beginning of 1989 is attached.