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This article was downloaded by: [National Pingtung University of Science andTechnology]On: 19 December 2014, At: 17:03Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
Contemporary Security PolicyPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fcsp20
Introduction: Symposium onDevaluing Nuclear WeaponsNick RitchiePublished online: 18 Apr 2013.
To cite this article: Nick Ritchie (2013) Introduction: Symposium on DevaluingNuclear Weapons, Contemporary Security Policy, 34:1, 144-145, DOI:10.1080/13523260.2013.771038
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2013.771038
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Introduction: Symposium on Devaluing NuclearWeapons
NICK RITCHIE
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 King-
dom’s then-Labour Party government that set out plans to begin replacing the coun-
try’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.1 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 disarma-
ment is unlikely to involve staged reductions to a common minimum and from there to
zero.2 Instead, Walker concludes, nuclear disarmament will be far messier, with differ-
ent states taking different steps at different times for idiosyncratic reasons. This might
involve multilateral, bilateral and national measures as conceptions of minimum deter-
rence, 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 tech-
nologies, identities, and doctrines. As Walker notes, ‘[w]hen attention is drawn to
national and regional particularities, it becomes more difficult to believe that the col-
lective 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 distinctive-
ness of the individual eight or nine nuclear-armed states’ and ‘the individuality of cir-
cumstances affecting a state’s policies on nuclear weapons’.3
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.
Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.34, No.1, 2013, pp.144–145http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2013.771038 # 2013 Taylor & Francis
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This project started from the observation that the emergent concepts of devalua-
tion of nuclear weapons were understudied. What does devaluing or marginalizing
nuclear weapons mean? How did these concepts relate to the values assigned to
nuclear weapons? To ideas of minimum deterrence and nuclear disarmament? The
purpose, then, has been to bring fresh insights to the nuclear disarmament, deterrence,
arms control, and constructivist security studies literatures. The project included a
workshop at the University of York (UK), in March 2012 on valuing and devaluing
nuclear weapons. Three papers prepared from the workshop have been developed into
more substantial articles for this symposium.
My contribution attempts to unpack the concept of devaluing nuclear weapons by
examining how nuclear weapons are valued using the United Kingdom as a case
study. It contextualizes the study with an overview of the lexicon of devaluing and
related terms in global nuclear discourse since the end of the Cold War and a discus-
sion of how we ‘know’ nuclear value and the ‘regime of value’ in which nuclear
weapons are embedded. It concludes by relating the analysis to Walker’s notion of
‘responsible nuclear sovereignty’ and the tensions at the nexus of deterrence/devaluing.
Susan Martin takes issue with two of the project’s core claims: that significant
progress towards nuclear disarmament is a necessary means of safely managing
long-term nuclear risk; and that nuclear weapons are, echoing Alexander Wendt,
‘what states make of them’.4 Her structural realist account insists that the materiality
of nuclear weapons matters enormously and that one cannot escape or reconceptua-
lize a fundamental condition of strategic deterrence intrinsic to the uniquely destruc-
tive effects of nuclear violence. Martin draws on the processes that have outlawed
chemical and biological weapons to highlight the limits of norm-driven change
vis-a-vis national security imperatives and preferences.
Finally, Paul Schulte, a former official with rich experience, discusses the poten-
tially destabilizing and costly consequences that could arise from the deliberate, suc-
cessful, and far-reaching deep devaluation of nuclear weapons and the tensions
between deterrence and devaluing. He provides a typology of competing interpret-
ations of devaluing and possible contributory factors to a process of devaluation
before examining likely preconditions for a sustained devaluation of nuclear
weapons in international politics and the ever-present risks of nuclear revaluation
as geostrategic circumstances change, sometimes abruptly.
The project has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and
the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, for which I am grateful.
N O T E S
1. Glen Owen, ‘Here’s £37bn of Cuts to Get You Started, Voters Tell PM’, Daily Mail (London), 13 June2010.
2. William Walker, ‘The UK, Threshold Status and Responsible Nuclear Sovereignty’, InternationalAffairs, Vol. 86, No. 2 (March 2010), pp. 446–63.
3. Ibid., pp. 448, 463.4. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics’,
International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (1992), pp. 391–425.
SYMPOSIUM: INTRODUCTION 145
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