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Introduction

Jack I. Garvey

in Nuclear Weapons Counterproliferation: A New Grand Bargain

This introductory chapter analyzes how the legal framework intended to ensure nonproliferation—the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), adopted in 1970—is failing to contain the evolution and ... More

This introductory chapter analyzes how the legal framework intended to ensure nonproliferation—the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), adopted in 1970—is failing to contain the evolution and exponential growth of nuclear risk. It explains why the Grand Bargain of the NPT is not succeeding as conceived, and why counterproliferation will continue to fall short in achieving nuclear security unless reinforced and eventually supplanted by a different legal and institutional framework. The task of creating a new legal and institutional framework requires, first, understanding why the current legal and institutional infrastructure is failing, and how contemporary nuclear risk defies containment. This in turn requires examination of nuclear risk in greater detail, to understand its components and its dynamics, at every principal stage, from source to detonation, to identify where in the process we can work a new regime to construct security.Less

The Role of Security Assurances in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime

John Simpson

in Security Assurances and Nuclear Nonproliferation

This chapter outlines the sustained demands from Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) states, especially those within the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), for security assurances ... More

This chapter outlines the sustained demands from Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) states, especially those within the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), for security assurances during the last half-century. It also presents a short analysis of the options available to improve existing NPT-related security assurances. The effect of recent changes in the security environment on the demands for NPT security assurances is dealt with. Security assurances entered the NPT review meeting in 2000, but in a way that suggested they were declining in salience. Recently, attempts to improve security assurances have been fought by long-standing pressures in order to enhance the diplomatic atmospherics surrounding the nuclear nonproliferation regime and the NPT. It is suggested that strengthening assurances and ensuring compliance continue to be pursued together, rather than be seen as competitive alternatives.Less

Strategic Scripts and Nuclear Disarmament

Matthew Harries and Benedict Wilkinson

in The Art of Creating Power: Freedman on Strategy

This chapter spans Freedman’s earliest focus on nuclear weapons and his development of strategic scripts as an analytical tool over three decades later. It discusses the way in which opposing logics ... More

This chapter spans Freedman’s earliest focus on nuclear weapons and his development of strategic scripts as an analytical tool over three decades later. It discusses the way in which opposing logics of disarmament and armament co-existed in relation to nuclear weapons. It deploys the notion of strategic scripts to explain the contradictions inherent in approaches to nuclear disarmament, developing the concept of strategic scripts as it does so. The notion of scripts can be used to explore and even to promote nuclear disarmament. Two scripts, one of ‘stable reduction’, the other of ‘disarmament’, each serve to frame thinking. These scripts and the interactions they generate facilitate understanding of the way in which opposite instinctive reactions and, stemming from these, scripts about nuclear weapons co-exist, but are fragile as either an analytical or a strategic tool.Less

Conclusion

Yoriko Otomo

in Unconditional Life: The Postwar International Law Settlement

This concluding chapter places the Nuclear Weapons and EC–Biotech cases within a post-war context. What emerges is a picture of a public discourse imbricated in a crisis of modernity. The chapter ... More

This concluding chapter places the Nuclear Weapons and EC–Biotech cases within a post-war context. What emerges is a picture of a public discourse imbricated in a crisis of modernity. The chapter shows that while the public language of international law promises to guarantee humanness in a world without God, the decisions in Nuclear Weapons and EC–Biotech do not deliver. The terms ‘risk’ and ‘unconditionality’ referred to in the case studies are expressions of the eschatological tensions embedded in public language that deals with technology. The ICJ and the WTO’s DSB could not choose between the mutually constitutive bodies of the sovereign state and the biological human, nor between international law and other technologies that have a saving and a destroying power vis-à-vis human life. International law’s order, in other words, is driven by a desire to produce and guarantee ‘unconditional life’: human life without condition, infinite and immortal.Less

American Madness

in Nixon at the Movies: A Book about Belief

Henry Kissinger made his first crucial contacts with the foreign policy elite on the corner of Park and Sixty-eighth serving as staff director for a council study group whose findings resulted in his ... More

Henry Kissinger made his first crucial contacts with the foreign policy elite on the corner of Park and Sixty-eighth serving as staff director for a council study group whose findings resulted in his first book, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. Since 1957, when Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy had spent fourteen weeks on the best-seller list, he had been one of America's most prominent policy intellectuals and his brilliance was widely recognized. Two Rode Together is far from being the director's best, even if Jean-Luc Godard did name it the best film of 1961. Protocol dictated that it be Kissinger, as secretary of state, to whom Nixon addressed his official letter of resignation. But that was pro forma, it could as easily have been Rogers or the man initially slated to succeed Rogers, Kenneth Rush.Less

Epilogue

Yoriko Otomo

in Unconditional Life: The Postwar International Law Settlement

This cases within a post-war context. What emerges is a picture of a public discourse imbricated in a crisis of modernity. The chapter shows that while the public language of international law ... More

This cases within a post-war context. What emerges is a picture of a public discourse imbricated in a crisis of modernity. The chapter shows that while the public language of international law promises to guarantee humanness in a world without God, the decisions in Nuclear Weapons and EC–Biotech do not deliver. The terms ‘risk’ and ‘unconditionality’ referred to in the case studies are expressions of the eschatological tensions embedded in public language that deals with technology. The ICJ and the WTO’s DSB could not choose between the mutually constitutive bodies of the sovereign state and the biological human, nor between international law and other technologies that have a saving and a destroying power vis-à-vis human life. International law’s order, in other words, is driven by a desire to produce and guarantee ‘unconditional life’: human life without condition, infinite and immortal.Less

Borrowing the bomb

Ken Young

in The American Bomb in Britain: Us Air Forces' Strategic Presence, 1946-64

This chapter takes forward the emerging co-operation between Britain and the United States in the field of weapon supply. British authorities were both gratified and suspicious of the new ... More

This chapter takes forward the emerging co-operation between Britain and the United States in the field of weapon supply. British authorities were both gratified and suspicious of the new arrangements whereby nuclear weapons would be transferred to the RAF, with first the tactical Canberras and then the strategic V-bombers being modified under American supervision for this purpose. This work, and the need to adopt common safety and security procedures, drew the two air forces into much closer co-operation in a strategic partnership.Less

International Human Rights Law and Blockade

Phillip Drew

in The Law of Maritime Blockade: Past, Present, and Future

The years since the beginning of the twenty-first century have seen a significant incursion of international human rights law into the domain that had previously been the within the exclusive purview ... More

The years since the beginning of the twenty-first century have seen a significant incursion of international human rights law into the domain that had previously been the within the exclusive purview of international humanitarian law. The expansion of extraterritorial jurisdiction, particularly by the European Court of Human Rights, means that for many states, the exercise of physical power and control over an individual outside their territory may engage the jurisdiction of human rights obligations. Understanding the expansive tendencies of certain human rights tribunals, and the apparent disdain they have for any ambiguity respecting human rights, it is offered that the uncertain nature of the law surrounding humanitarian relief during blockades could leave blockading forces vulnerable to legal challenge under human rights legislation, particularly in cases in which starvation occurs as a result of a blockade.Less

The Bitter Aftertaste of Technical Sweetness

Heather E. Douglas

in Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds

When completing his creation, Victor Frankenstein is in the thrall of technical sweetness, which is the allure of the pieces of an intellectual puzzle fitting neatly together. Scientists working at ... More

When completing his creation, Victor Frankenstein is in the thrall of technical sweetness, which is the allure of the pieces of an intellectual puzzle fitting neatly together. Scientists working at Los Alamos experienced a similar excitement and blindness to the full implications of their work, and they reacted similarly to Victor, bearing a burden of responsibility for their work into the post-WWII context. Frankenstein thus serves as a useful parable for scientists and engineers, showing the difficulty of looking past immediate technical success to the broader implications of their work.Less

From Yijiangshan to Bandung

Pang Yang Huei

in Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958

On 18 January 1955, the PRC upped the ante by recovering the obscure Nationalist-controlled Yijiangshan islands as a prelude to occupying the neighboring Dachen islands. In a news conference on 16 ... More

On 18 January 1955, the PRC upped the ante by recovering the obscure Nationalist-controlled Yijiangshan islands as a prelude to occupying the neighboring Dachen islands. In a news conference on 16 March, Eisenhower publicly threatened the use of nuclear weapons. At the first Afro-Asian Conference held on 18-24 April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, PRC premier Zhou Enlai announced that China was not averse to negotiating with the US over the Taiwan Strait. Zhou’s conciliatory gesture was quickly accepted by the US over virulent protests by the ROC. This chapter explores the motivations for the actions of China, the US and Taiwan. It further explicates on the development of Sino-US relations from the eve of the Yijiangshan campaign to the Bandung Conference.Less