Nick Ritchie

Valuing and Devaluing Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapons remain deeply embedded not only in strategic thinking and force postures, but also in our political cultures in ways that assign multiple, powerful socio-political values to the bomb. Progress towards nuclear zero will necessarily require peeling away the layers of value to the point where it becomes politically, strategically, and socially acceptable to permanently relinquish a nuclear capability. The concept and process of devaluing nuclear weapons is contested. It is a broad concept that covers notions of reducing the role, delegitimizing, reducing the salience, and marginalizing nuclear weapons in the declaratory and operational policies of the nuclear powers. This article argues that to understand what a process of devaluing might look like, we first need a deeper understanding of how nuclear weapons are valued. To achieve this, the article moves through four stages. First, it provides an overview of the lexicon of devaluing and subsidiary terms in global nuclear discourse since the end of the Cold War. Second, it discusses how we know nuclear value and its discursive construction. Third, using the United Kingdom as a case study it explores the ‘regime of value’ in which British nuclear weapons are embedded and the implications for devaluing. Finally, it reflects on William Walkers notion of ‘responsible nuclear sovereignty’ and the tensions at the nexus of deterrence/devaluing.

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.

The diplomacy of resistance: power, hegemony and nuclear disarmament

ABSTRACT The humanitarian initiative for nuclear disarmament has challenged and transformed global nuclear politics. Aimed at delegitimising nuclear weapons as acceptable instruments of statecraft, the initiative has been backed by many civil society organisations and most non-nuclear-weapon states. The nuclear-weapon states, however, have opposed the initiative, accusing it of undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and destabilising nuclear politics. Conceptualising a ‘diplomacy of resistance’, this article positions the humanitarian initiative as a transnational social movement and traces its development through practices of resistance and counter-resistance. Drawing on Robert Cox’s conception of resistance as counter-hegemonic and Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall’s taxonomy of power, the article explores the nexus of power and resistance in global nuclear politics. We explain the humanitarian movement’s specific aims and practices as a function of its champion’s relative political weakness vis-à-vis the nuclear-weapon states. The movement’s coherence and effectiveness, in turn, was fostered by a coalitional logic that allowed different identities of resistance to be steered towards a nuclear ban treaty within the UN’s institutional framework.

Inventing nuclear disarmament

ABSTRACT The negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons forms part of the process of ‘inventing’ nuclear disarmament. Inventing nuclear disarmament necessarily entails diminishing counter-vailing ideas, norms, and practices. This includes ideas and practices of nuclear deterrence and ‘regimes of truth’ about nuclear weapons that imbue them with value. Inventing nuclear disarmament will be a continuous process rather than an end point: always contingent, always contested, always in production.

A PROGRESSIVE NUCLEAR POLICY

Abstract The United Kingdom has maintained unbroken nuclear weapons patrols since 1968. The rationale for this doctrine of continuous deterrence has been based on several pillars that are irrelevant in todays environment. Rather than an absolute need for continuous deterrent, there is instead a great opportunity for Britain to take the lead as the most progressive of the nuclear weapons states by reducing the readiness and size of its strategic force.

Replacing Trident: Britain, America and Nuclear Weapons

The British government has decided to modernise its nuclear arsenal and retain nuclear weapons at least to the 2050s. The British governments primary rationale is that it needs to retain nuclear weapons as a necessary response to an uncertain future strategic security environment. The article argues that one of the primary rationales for the retention of nuclear weapons is to maintain political and military credibility in Washington and to facilitate British participation in military interventionist activity alongside the United States, thereby assuring both continued American engagement in the world and Britains long-term security. This vital but perhaps more indirect role for British nuclear weapons, and the wider nuclear relationship with the United States, has generally been excluded from the British governments discourse. The article concludes by arguing that parliamentary and NGO activity aimed at making Trident modernization decisions open to public scrutiny face significant obstacles, and that the policy-making process will be a long one, stretching well into the next decade.

Nuclear identities and Scottish independence

ABSTRACT This article argues that the study of national identity is central to understanding and explaining national and transnational nuclear politics. It argues that the meanings assigned to nuclear weapons are not fixed or self-evident, but are instead changeable and contingent on social and historical context. The article develops this argument by studying how the Scottish National Party has framed UK nuclear weapons in ways very different from those of the major UK political parties. It argues that the SNP has done this by developing and promoting a specific national identity for an independent Scotland in which nuclear weapons have no place. This identity is juxtaposed against that of a “Westminster other” for whom nuclear weapons remain highly valued. The article provides an original constructivist case study of contemporary Scottish-British nuclear politics and the social construction of nuclear identities in the context of the 2014 Scottish-independence referendum and the 2015 general election.

A Citizen’s View of ‘National Interest’

There is no ‘national interest’, at least not in a singular and objective sense. Instead, there are multiple interpretations of national interest based on different positions (Ritchie 2011). Four positions can be discerned. First, perceptions of national interest by virtue of being an individual member of the national community; second, by virtue of being a modern urban-industrial island state; third, by virtue of ascribing to our collective self a particular national identity or role conception; and fourth, by virtue of being part of a global human community and society of states in terms of a collective vision of a preferable global order.

Introduction: Symposium on Devaluing Nuclear Weapons

What are the prospects for devaluing nuclear weapons? Does devaluation offer opportunities for long-term progress towards a world free of nuclear weapons? The genesis of the project lies in a White Paper published in 2006 by the United Kingdom’s then-Labour Party government that set out plans to begin replacing the country’s only nuclear weapons system, the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile force, beginning with the procurement of a new class of ballistic missile submarines. For many, the issue was straightforward: the United Kingdom must remain a nuclear weapon state. But for many others, perhaps the majority if opinion polls are accurate, the decision seemed anachronistic. Research on Trident replacement led me to a more holistic exploration of just what exactly nuclear weapons mean in British nuclear policy discourse, how these meanings constitute nuclear policy choices, and the implications for significant progress towards nuclear disarmament not just in the United Kingdom, but globally. This approach is consistent with William Walker’s argument that nuclear disarmament is unlikely to involve staged reductions to a common minimum and from there to zero. Instead, Walker concludes, nuclear disarmament will be far messier, with different states taking different steps at different times for idiosyncratic reasons. This might involve multilateral, bilateral and national measures as conceptions of minimum deterrence, strategic stability in relation to non-nuclear strategic weapons technologies, nuclear identities, and national interests evolve. Key to this is the fact that nuclear weapons mean different things to different leaders and societies, meanings assigned in particular socio-historical contexts of acquisition and consolidation of nuclear technologies, identities, and doctrines. As Walker notes, ‘[w]hen attention is drawn to national and regional particularities, it becomes more difficult to believe that the collective managerialist approach to nuclear disarmament can work, certainly on its own’. Nuclear disarmament will require all nuclear possessors to cross the threshold to nuclear elimination, but this will ‘be different and feel different for each state and region . . . In discussions of disarmament, it is important to acknowledge the distinctiveness of the individual eight or nine nuclear-armed states’ and ‘the individuality of circumstances affecting a state’s policies on nuclear weapons’. His analysis also raised questions of the values assigned to nuclear weapons and, by extension, how this related to ever more frequently used terms like ‘devaluing’, ‘marginalizing’, ‘delegitimizing’, and ‘reducing the salience of’ nuclear weapons in international nuclear policy discourse, notably the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the UN Conference on Disarmament, and international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation commissions.

Towards a Nuclear Weapons-Free World

The UK’s undimmed commitment to retaining a nuclear capability beyond the lifetime of the current Trident system raises conspicuous questions about the prospects for significant progress towards a world free of nuclear weapons. Decisions by states to acquire nuclear weapons have been driven by a number of factors, the most salient being national insecurity induced by significant military threats from a nuclear-armed adversary. But, as noted in Chapter 5, Lavoy points out that national insecurity is a necessary but insufficient condition for nuclear proliferation .Other key factors include notions of ‘prestige’ and political power, domestic political dynamics, technological determinism, and the cognitive frameworks and disposition of national leaders.1 In 1996 Scott Sagan published a seminal article asking ‘Why do states build nuclear weapons?’ and presented ‘Three models in search of a bomb’. He argued that the orthodox focus on strategic national security threats as the primary causal driver was too narrow and that domestic political dynamics and normative prestige factors were equally relevant, perhaps more so in some cases.2