International Affairs and ‘the nuclear age’, 1946–2013

The article reflects on the distinguished record of publication, in around 130 articles over nearly seventy years, on nuclear politics in International Affairs. Although constituting a small drop in the torrent of writings on nuclear matters since 1945, it can fairly be regarded as the most significant contribution to nuclear discourse by any journal outside the United States. The articles published in International Affairs have covered a wide range of issues including nuclear deterrence and strategy, arms control, non‐proliferation and disarmament, and the policies—and drivers of policy—of countries, in particular the UK and US. Authors have included P. M. S. Blackett, Wyn Bowen, Alastair Buchan, Hedley Bull, Pierre Hassner, Michael Howard, Rebecca Johnson, Michael MccGwire, Michael Quinlan, Nick Ritchie, John Simpson and David Yost. The discussion concludes with Ian Smart's article of 1975 in which he contemplates the nature of the ‘nuclear age’ and its persistence or passing, and comments on governments’ ‘fatuous’ attachment of prestige value to nuclear weapons.     

USING GIS IN THE PROBABILISTIC ASSESSMENT OF EARTHQUAKE TRIGGERED LANDSLIDE HAZARDS

Summit Ridge, located in the North Santa Cruz Mountains, California, was heavily affected by landsliding during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (M_w=7.0). Widespread shallow failures, along with 17 deep-seated landslides, caused extensive damage. In order to study possible methods of assessing landslide hazard a geographical information system (GIS) was utilised. Geological, geotechnical, geomorphological and seismological data were used in a deterministic analysis using two standard earthquake slope stability models (pseudo-static and Newmark displacement). The models were used to assess the landslide potential that existed during the Loma Prieta event. It was found that, of these two models, the Newmark displacement model proved most successful at predicting the location of shallow unstable slopes. However, because both models are deterministic in nature they did not take into account any of the error and uncertainty in the input parameters. Therefore, a probabilistic Newmark displacement method of analysis was developed. This was achieved by incorporating the principles behind a recently developed probabilistic technique which utilises the pseudo-static slope stability model. The method calculates the probability that a slope will exceed a certain critical value of Newmark displacement and thus fail. The use of such an analysis resulted in a more realistic distribution of hazard when compared with the distribution of actual landslides triggered by the 1989 earthquake. Subsequent to this, the probabilistic method was used to undertake a landslide hazard assessment for Summit Ridge given a postulated earthquake located on the Northern East Bay segment of the Hayward fault.     

Land Transport Reforms and the Economic Geography of the Northern Territory

Agreements at the special Premiers' Conferences in October 1990 and July 1991 removed Northern Territory Government control over the setting of heavy vehicle registration charges and arrangements for local roads funding on Aboriginal land. In relating the way in which the Northern Territory Government has traditionally administered these policy areas and reacted to the Premiers' Conference agreements, it is shown how land transport policy has been used to facilitate a preferred direction for development of the Territory's economic geography, namely, one in which costs to the private sector are subsidised and activities on privately-owned Aboriginal land are controlled. The agreements should result in a more equitable administration of land transport pol icy in the Territory. Changes to the administration of land transport reflect a broader shift in Australian Federal relations, in which the Commonwealth has sought greater national uniformity of transport policy. This has major implications for the future economic geography of the Northern Territory.     

HISTORY GOES WALKABOUT

Could the methods of history—and not just its objects of study—be decolonized? This essay explores analogous areas of cultural production, such as painting, to determine how historians might begin to produce work that lies outside the Western, Euro‐Christian imaginary. It focuses on the case of Australia and the means by which Aboriginal artists have reanimated and recalibrated traditional forms of knowledge, offering new bases for thinking about the history and temporalities of Australia. The work of the painter Tim Johnson is then presented as an example for history in his demonstration of the ways in which indigenous methods and ways of seeing the world can be deployed by Others. The ethical, theoretical, and practical challenges that accompany such work are detailed, alongside a historiographical account of the way in which these discussions mesh with seminal debates in postcolonialism, subaltern studies, and settler colonialism as they relate to historical theory. Drawing on recent work in History and Theory, the article asks: what might be the consequences for history were it not to develop a meaningful “global turn,” arguing that a critical moment has been reached in which modes of understanding the world that come from outside the West need to be incorporated into historians’ repertoires for thinking and making.