Power, violence, and nuclear weapons

Abstract

This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the role of the thermonuclear revolution in realist thought and the viability of nuclear disarmament. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, it develops an immanent critique of balance-of-power theories of international politics. Immanent critique is a diagnostic process. It takes a thought system on its own terms and by revealing its contradictions from within, opens up new possibilities for transformation. This critique reveals how the ontological assumptions Kenneth Waltz makes about the nature of power allowed him, in the guise of an apolitical theory, to transform the violence of nuclear weapons from a threat to humanity into a source of security, and therefore a normative good. According to the logic of this argument, thinking past the limits of this thought system will necessarily need to include questioning and otherwise disrupting the tight association between violence and power.

Global Nuclear (Back-Up) Hotline: Building Communication Norms Across NC2

“…Increasing global insecurity, especially in the nuclear dimension, is primarily due to the reliance of the national security leaders on (neo)realist (Cimbala 2017;Harrington 2016) and (neo)liberal (Moravcsik 2003, 161;Jervis 1999;Willett 2020;Tisdall 2020;Nye 2020;Foreign Policy 2020) assumptions to explain their choices and behaviour instead of using a constructivist approach 6 A security discourse solely based on material competence and power distribution fails to contribute positively to international security. This became obvious when faced with COVID-19 because it is unable to explain global pandemic outbreak as a threat to national security within its theoretical postulates, and provides no guidance on how to overcome impediments to realizing the requisite global cooperation to defeat a viral existence threat.…”

Solving the nuclear dilemma: Is a world state necessary?

“…This approach, largely unchanged since the Cold War, seeks to maintain stable forms of nuclear deterrence among the major nuclear powers, a process facilitated by moderate arms control measures, the eschewing of offensive weapons arsenals, strategies and missile defence systems, and cooperative and sustained efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to more states (Debs and Monteiro, 2016). This approach is based upon the assumption that deterrence worked during the Cold War and can continue to do so today, but only, or at least ideally, in a stable international order (Harrington, 2016;Monteiro, 2014;Monteiro and Paci, 2017;Pelopidas, 2016;Walker, 2007). In other words, this first solution effectively aims at a freezing of nuclear international politics in its present form, with existing nuclear states maintaining their arsenals (despite rhetoric about disarmament) and preventing other ones from obtaining the bomb.…”

Superweapons and the myth of technological peace

“…Critical security scholarship has further detailed the ideological, technopolitical, and utopian assumptions that underpin the historical and contemporary nuclear order (Cohn, 1987; Egeland, 2021; Hecht, 2012; Peoples, 2019). There has also been extensive work done to problematize the rational-actor and predictability assumptions that sustain nuclear deterrence theory (Harrington, 2016; Pelopidas, 2015, 2017, 2020; Thayer, 2007; Wilson, 2014; Woods, 2002).…”