Jonathan Dean is the president of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, a pro-disarmament group with ties to such leftwing organizations as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the War Resisters League, Americans for Democratic Action, and the World Federalists. Founded in 1980, the IDDS began at a time when its originators believed that the best way to ensure peace was to denude the United States of its defense arsenal. Soon thereafter, IDDS chief executive Randall Forsberg launched the nuclear freeze movement, a Soviet-sponsored initiative that would have frozen Soviet nuclear and military superiority in place, and would have rendered the new American president, Ronald Reagan, unable to close that gap by any appreciable degree. Reagan opposed the concept of a unilateral freeze, and his opposition was ultimately vindicated by America’s Cold War victory. The success of Reagan’s strategy is detailed in Peter Schweizer’s book Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union.

Dean is also the Advisor on Global Security Issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an anti-industrial organization that opposes nuclear energy, the existence of nuclear weapons in the U.S. military arsenal, and the development of a missile defense system.