Peace Work: The Antiwar Tradition in American Labor from the Cold War to the Iraq War
2010; Oxford University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1467-7709.2010.00883.x
ISSN1467-7709
Autores Tópico(s)Military History and Strategy
ResumoIn the summer of 2005 in Chicago, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) convention passed a groundbreaking resolution. After vigorous debate, the convention went on record calling for a “rapid withdrawal” of all U.S. troops from Iraq. The vote was overwhelming and brought loud cheers from the delegates.1 For the first time in its fifty-year history the federation took a position on an international issue in opposition to official U.S. foreign policy. How and why this reversal in the AFL-CIO's traditional support for U.S. foreign policy came about is the subject of this article. From the founding of the AFL-CIO in 1955 until the end of the Cold War, discussion of international issues at any level in most of the American labor movement was rare and sometimes nonexistent. The federation, the largest labor body in the United States, stated its support for the essential thrust and aims of U.S. foreign policy at its birth and later helped to implement U.S. Cold War programs abroad. AFL-CIO leaders seemed to assume that once they had made their decision to support the government's Cold War agenda, the issue was not up for discussion. This article, however argues that the AFL-CIO's official record of support for U.S. foreign policy did not mean that these policies enjoyed universal support among union members. Even during the early Cold War, dissent persisted among a significant number of unionists. They helped to bring dissent back into the AFL-CIO during the Vietnam years, and, along with younger allies, drew important linkages in subsequent decades between the American labor movement's decades' long decline and the hard-line Cold War foreign policies pursued by AFL-CIO leaders. The flowering of foreign policy dissent during Vietnam and its aftermath helped pave the way for the events that culminated in the federation's decision to oppose the Iraq War in 2005.2
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