Waiting for Kant: devaluing and delegitimizing nuclear weapons

Expectations of significant progress towards a nuclear weapons‐free world continue to shape global nuclear politics. Progress towards nuclear disarmament will require diminishing the value of nuclear weapons to the point where it becomes politically, strategically and socially acceptable for nuclear‐armed states to relinquish permanently their nuclear arsenals. Key to this are the concepts and processes of ‘devaluing’ and ‘delegitimizing’ nuclear weapons that have steadily coalesced in global nuclear discourse since the mid‐1990s. This article builds on current research by developing three images of nuclear disarmament under the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty (NPT): ‘surface’ devaluing, ‘deep’ devaluing, and delegitimizing nuclear weapons. The first represents codification by the nuclear‐weapon states of the transformation of the Cold War environment through reductions in the size and role of nuclear arsenals that leaves the logic of nuclear deterrence and nuclear prestige largely unchanged. Deep devaluing is framed as a reconceptualization of the political, strategic and military logics that underpin nuclear‐weapons policies and practices. Delegitimizing represents a more radical normative project to transform collective meanings assigned to nuclear weapons. The analysis examines conceptions of devaluing nuclear weapons from the perspective of non‐nuclear weapon states and the relationship between devaluing nuclear weapons and the idea of a spectrum of nuclear deterrence. It concludes by highlighting the tension between surface and deep devaluing, the emergence of a delegitimizing agenda, and the political implications for the current NPT review cycle set to culminate in the next quinquennial Review Conference in 2015.     

Relinquishing nuclear weapons: identities,networks and the British bomb

Recent analysis on the prospects for achieving a world free of nuclear weapons has tended to focus on a set of largely realist strategic security considerations. Such considerations will certainly underpin future decisions to relinquish nuclear weapons, but nuclear disarmament processes are likely to involve a more complex mix of actors, issues and interests. The article examines this complexity through a sociological lens using Britain as a case‐study, where relinquishing a nuclear capability has become a realistic option for a variety of strategic, political and economic reasons. The article examines the core ideational and organizational allies of the UK nuclear weapon ‘actor‐network’ by drawing upon social constructivist accounts of the relationship between identity and interest, and historical sociology of technology analysis of Large Technical Systems and the social construction of technology. It divides the UK actor‐network into three areas: the UK policy elite's collective identity that generates a ‘national interest’ in continued deployment of nuclear weapons; defence–industrial actors that support and operationalize these identities; and international nuclear weapons dynamics that reinforce the network. The article concludes by exploring how the interests and identities that constitute and reproduce the ‘actor‐network’ that makes nuclear armament possible might be transformed to make nuclear disarmament possible. The purpose is not to dismiss or supplant the importance of strategic security‐oriented analysis of the challenges of nuclear disarmament but to augment its understanding by dissecting some of the socio‐political complexities of nuclear disarmament processes.     

Deterrence dogma? Challenging the relevance of British nuclear weapons

In December 2006 the British government released a White Paper announcing its intention to begin the process of replacing its current Trident nuclear weapons system, thereby allowing it to retain nuclear weapons well into the 2050s. In March 2008 the government released its National Security Strategy that stressed the long‐term complexity, diversity and interdependence of threats to British security with a clear focus on human rights, justice and freedom. This article asks how the threat to kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of people with British nuclear weapons fits into the National Security Strategy's world view and questions the relevance of an instrument of such devastating bluntness to threats defined by complexity and interdependence. It argues that the government's case for replacing the current Trident system based on the logic of nuclear deterrence is flawed. First, Britain faces no strategic nuclear threats and the long‐term post‐Cold War trend in relations with Russia and China—the two nuclear‐armed major powers that could conceivably threaten the UK with nuclear attack—is positive, despite current tensions with Moscow over Georgia. Second, the credibility and legitimacy of threatening nuclear destruction in response to the use of WMD by ‘rogue’ states is highly questionable and British nuclear threats offer no ‘insurance’ or guarantee of protection against future ‘rogue’ nuclear threats. Third, nuclear weapons have no role to play in deterring acts of nuclear terrorism whether state‐sponsored or not. Fourth, British nuclear threats will be useless in dealing with complex future conflicts characterized by ‘hybrid’ wars and diverse and interdependent sources of insecurity. The article concludes by arguing that the government's fall‐back position that it must keep nuclear weapons ‘just in case’ because the future security environment appears so uncertain, makes no sense if British nuclear threats offer no solution to the causes and symptoms of that uncertainty.     

Australian Coastal Management and Climate Change

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) raised public awareness of the need to consider climate change in coastal management and gained international recognition when it received a joint award of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. The raised awareness of climate change surrounding the work of the IPCC was in large part responsible for the focus of the recent Australian national inquiry into coastal management in the context of potential climate change impacts on the coast, conducted by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts. In the same year the then Minister of Climate Change, Senator Penny Wong, and the Department of Climate Change released a major government report Climate Change Risks to Australia's Coast and set up a national Coasts and Climate Change Council to provide advice to the government. This paper provides a review and analysis of the extent to which climate change issues, within the context of the broader global change debate, have influenced Australian coastal management through its legislation, policies and practice. In particular, the paper focuses on the impact of recent national reports and state government legislative and policy changes and draws conclusions on future directions for Australian coastal management.     

The Significance of Coastal Processes for Management of the River Murray Estuary

The tidal prism in the River Murray estuary has been reduced by over 85 percent since completion of the barrages in 1940 and regulation has diminished the rate and size of river flows through the estuary. Reduced fluvial flushing has emphasised the dominance of coastal processes at the river mouth. These are expressed in the accretion and stabilisation of a flood-tidal delta, the migration of the mouth, the erosion of Sir Richard Peninsula and the accumulation of new flood-tidal deltaic deposits. Inconclusive studies relating river flow to mouth migration indicate the importance of coastal processes such as littoral drift, tidal flux and sea state, particularly at times of low river flow, in explaining the position and morphology of the mouth. Previous management strategies have failed to consider coastal processes adequately.     

Making Homes by Machine: Images, Ideas and Myths in the Diffusion of Non-Traditional Housing in Britain 1942-54

To understand more fully the widespread—and arguably mistaken—postwaradoption of prefabricated and systems construction, scholarshave sought to place this process in its broader social andpolitical context. In so doing they have located, apparently,a subversion of rational public decision-making, where a widelybelieved mythology was purposefully constructed by self-servinginterests. This erroneously equated non-traditional housingwith modernity and efficiency. This article suggests this tobe a false reading. Undoubtedly a strong tendency existed amongmanufacturers and architectural ideologues to eulogize nontraditionalmethods. However, despite this ubiquitous promotion, key sectorsamong the architectural profession, public sector purchasersand other decision-makers overtly rejected, or remained questioninglysceptical towards, modernistic claims and creeds. Instead, decisionswere largely determined by contemporary necessity, a rationalinterpretation of a broader national interest and the best advicethen available. Importantly, non-traditional performance wasconstantly investigated and largely validated. To speak, therefore,of a determining mythology is to largely misconstrue contemporaryunderstanding. ¹ First presented as a paper to the Fourth International Conferenceon Urban History, Venice. I am also indebted to Ian Inksterand Jeff Hill for their comments on an earlier draft of thisarticle.     

Rethinking security: a critical analysis of the Strategic Defence and Security Review

In 2010 the coalition government conducted a major review of defence and security policy. This article explores the review process from a critical perspective by examining and challenging the state‐centrism of prevailing conceptions of current policy reflected in the quest to define and perform a particular ‘national role’ in contrast to a human‐centric framework focused on the UK citizen. It argues that shifting the focus of policy to the individual makes a qualitative difference to how we think about requirements for the UK's armed forces and challenges ingrained assumptions about defence and security in relation to military operations of choice and attendant expensive, expeditionary war‐fighting capabilities. In particular, it confronts the prevailing narrative that UK national security‐as‐global risk management must be met by securing the state against pervasive multidimensional risk through military force, that military power projection capabilities are a vital source of international influence and national prestige and that the exercise of UK military power constitutes a ‘force for good’ for the long‐term human security needs of citizens in both the intervened and intervening state.