In the United States, peace movements have long provided a forum for dissent from government decisions to wage war. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, peace movements emerged from pacifist religious communities like the Quakers, social justice communities, and the first wave of the women's movement; for example, Julia Ward Howe's call for Mother's Day was a way of protesting drafting sons to war.

From these early expressions to the present, several interlocking themes have characterized peace movement activities. Activist communities demonstrate the linkages between peace, justice, and human rights, and oppose what they see as unjust wars, or unjust preparations for war. The U.S. government's testing and development of nuclear weapons far more powerful than those dropped on Japan, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, support for covert operations in support of right-wing regimes in Central America, and...