The Coming of World War Three, Volume 1: From Protest to Resistance/The International War System

Raymond A. Jones is a history professor at Carleton University in
Ottawa.

Roussopoulos has published a number of books dealing with contemporary political issues from a radical perspective and both he and Black Rose are well known in progressive left-wing circles.

The anarchists, like the peace movement itself, have always been outside the mainstream of political life, a fact implicitly recognized in Roussopoulos’s work. This book is the first of a projected two volumes to consider ways in which the widespread 1980s revulsion against nuclear weapons and the threat of a nuclear holocaust can be turned into effective political action in the cause of peace. The solution remains to be revealed in the second volume. In the meantime the first volume offers a detailed, one can almost say pedantic, description of the activities of the anti-nuclear campaign of the 1980s.

In the first 56 pages, Roussopoulos deals with what he calls the international war system from a standard anti-establishment radical perspective. In the remaining 250 pages, he deals with the activities of various peace groups in the East, West, and Third World. This material has a number of documentary appendices. For those interested in the details of these activities, and who have command of the necessary acronyms, this is the most valuable part of the book and provides an information resource not readily available elsewhere.