nuclearism and human rights

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Nuclearism, human rightsand constructions ofsecurity (part 2)Ken Booth aa Professor of International Politics , Universityof Wales , AberystwythPublished online: 19 Oct 2007.

To cite this article: Ken Booth (1999) Nuclearism, human rights and constructionsof security (part 2), The International Journal of Human Rights, 3:3, 44-61, DOI:10.1080/13642989908406828

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Nuclearism, Human Rights andConstructions of Security (Part 2)

KEN BOOTH

Part One of this article discussed the continuing threat of nuclear weapons,despite their ostensible marginalisation through the 1990s. It was argued that atthe core of the problem of creating the conditions for future regional and globalsecurity is a clash of cultures: between that of nuclearism on the one side andhuman rights on the other. Part Two explores these differing approaches in moredepth, as a step towards the discussion of the role of political community in thenormalisation of security practices that offer greater hope than in the past ofdelivering the conditions of sustainable peace. The institutionalising of theconcept of 'security community' is suggested as a promising building block inthat process, as is human rights as a necessary condition for its achievement andconsolidation. The article concludes by looking at the space one particularlysignificant international actor (Britain) has in terms of moving internationalpolitics from a literally MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) condition to a SANE(Security After Nuclear Elimination) world. It is proposed that the Britishgovernment initiate a project, SANE 2000, committed to giving momentum to anew global policy aimed at eliminating all weapons of mass destruction; such aproject could have a decisive effect on the construction of regional and globalsecurity as a result of progressive institution-building and law-creation.

NUCLEAR RITES AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Some nuclear idealists hubristically described the theorising that tookplace between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s (mainly in the UnitedStates) as the 'golden age' of nuclear thinking.1 Even at the time therewere profound sceptics of this view, but during the later phases of theCold War it became apparent to a growing body of opinion that all thatglittered was not gold. As time passed, it became increasingly commonto describe nuclear deterrence theory as a theology. The reasons for thiswere compelling. Nuclearism had its sacred texts and high priests;nuclear deterrence had became a dogma, proclaimed as true by itsexponents; alternative ways of thinking were silenced as far as possible

Ken Booth, Professor of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Part 1 ofthis article was published in The International Journal of Human Rights, Vol.3, No.2.

The International Journal of Human Rights, Vol.3, No.3 (Autumn 1999) pp.44-61PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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NUCLEAR1SM, HUMAN RIGHTS AND SECURITY: PART 2 45

by indoctrination, socialisation, loyalty tests and exclusion; critics werecast as heretics or the 'useful idiots' of the communist devil; and StrategicStudies in general and nuclear deterrence theory in particular wasbelieved to be a faith to be embraced, not a politics to be contested.2 Insuch circumstances, contemporary strategy was dominated by adistinctive set of prescriptions, forms and acts - veritable nuclear rites.

The nuclear rites described above attended what was ostensibly amilitary strategy, but it was a strategy that was increasingly out of its timeand Clausewitzian logic. For over 50 years there has been a significantgap between the genocidal implications of a 'war' involving numerousnuclear weapons and the actual stakes likely to be at the root of theconflict. In the era of nuclear plenty a historic disjunction occurredbetween the ends governments sought and their nuclear means. As aresult, a nuclear war involving two states possessing extensive arsenalsand nuclear war-fighting doctrines would be a negation of Clausewitz,not a continuation of politics. If this was true in the Cold War, which atleast could be portrayed as a global struggle between two irreconcilablesystems, it is even more valid today. In the light of this, it is predictablethat within the time-scale of several hundred years, and probably earlier,the primitive nuclear rites of international society in the second half ofthe twentieth century will come to be regarded by future societies withall the incomprehension and horror that we, with similar criticaldistance, now regard human sacrifice to forgotten gods, or the genocideof first peoples in the name of colonialism. What unites these threeexamples (human sacrifice to gods, colonial genocide, and nucleardeterrence) is the legitimation of practices of execution in one form oranother in the name of elite values. What separates them is that the ritesof the nuclear priesthood, unlike those of the liturgists of primitive godsor the triumphalists of imperialism, legitimise practices that might wellresult in self-execution as well: this is the meaning of MAD.

Nuclear theology can be explained as the highest technologicalexpression of the strategic culture associated with the 350-yearinternational world defined by the ideas and practices of Machiavellianethics, the Clausewitzian philosophy of war and the Westphalian statessystem; this strategic culture is also ethnocentric, masculinist, anddetermined by the materially most powerful. ('Strategic culture' is theidea that particular groups - especially states and nations - havetraditional sets of attitudes and behaviour with respect to the threat anduse of force, and that this 'culture' transcends changes in policy,government and even historical era.3) In its post-Cold War manifestationthe culture of nuclearism has been dominated by complacency, staticthinking and technological idealism. If security is to be constructed on a

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46 THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS

more long-lasting foundation, especially one on which there is a realprospect of a sustainable peace developing, then an alternative culturemust be deployed, one building upon and expanding those humanisingforces that grew within the hegemony of Westphalia (for example, thoseseeking to soften Westphalia's roughest edges, such as the developmentof the laws of war), or those seeking to reduce social conflict (such as thedelegitimisation of racism). This is where human rights come to centrestage in the discussion of security.

That US/UK attitudes and behaviour with respect to nuclear weaponsshould be regarded in terms of 'nuclearism' - a strategic culture ratherthan simply a military strategy - is shown by the continuities across theCold War/post-Cold War divide. It is difficult, for example, to see anymarked changes in the mindsets of their nuclear establishments throughthe 1990s, though there have been significant reductions in warheads.Some illustrations were given in Part One of this article of continuities inwarhead and missile production, target-seeking, and doctrinaldevelopment, despite words on the parts of the leaders of these countriespurporting to indicate a commitment to radical nuclear disarmament. Inthis light, the nuclear disarmament that was carried out by governmentsin the 1990s4 was tinkering rather than a major assault on Cold Warnuclearism; it was not part of the more comprehensive approach tosecurity proposed by global civil society. In the Cold War, arms controlpolicies had often sought to make deterrence more 'stable' by allowingagreed increases; in the 1990s the nuclear reductions carried out by themajor powers have sought the same goal - stability - but this time byagreed decreases. The key point is the underlying commitment to nuclearweapons and strategies across the Cold War/post-Cold War divide. Thenuclear disarmament that has taken place in the 1990s has not requiredany shifts in the nuclearist strategic culture or statist conceptions of'security'.

Nuclearism remains much more deeply embedded in the mindsetsand policies of the leading military powers than does the culture ofhuman rights. One of the central claims of this article is that the progressof civilisation can be measured by the relative weight accorded to eachof these cultures around the desks of policy-makers, in the conferencehalls of diplomacy, in the advocacy of civil society, and in the popularimagination. Human rights are intrinsic to any policy attempting toconstruct security in ways that promise to deliver sustainable peacebecause there cannot be global security unless there is justice and therecannot be justice without a vibrant human rights culture. As was arguedat the start of Part One, comprehensive security - that seeking humansecurity5 and not simply the security of states or regimes - must embrace

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NUCLEARISM, HUMAN RIGHTS AND SECURITY: PART 2 47

universal human rights. A strategy to promote the latter must thereforebe central to the project of global security, though many vexing questionsobviously remain to be answered both in theory and practice. In termsof developing the practices of global governance appropriate for thepromotion of comprehensive security, there are no better ideas presentlyon the table than those of 'security communities' and 'cosmopolitandemocracy'.6 They bring together, in approachable distance, the feasibleand the desirable.

The potential historic function of a global human rights culture isnothing short of the invention of a more peaceful and loving humanity.7

In terms of world politics, what this means is steady progress in theeradication of all forms of direct and structural violence, and theextension through changing attitudes and behaviour of political andmoral commitments. Nuclearism in its nature is antithetical to keyelements of this goal, as it marginalises the idea of common security infavour of common insecurity, exchanges the belief in the potential ofcommon humanity with the primacy of the politics of states, and in placeof a strategy seeking coexistence through community relies indefinitelyon coexistence through the strategy of mutual genocidal threat. In thisera of standard-setting and accountability, there is a strong case forarguing that the external policies of every government should be readsubject to a footnote detailing its statements and record with respect tothe eradication of nuclear weapons. If a government is found wanting inthis area - and the statements of The International Court and theCanberra Commission quoted in Part One sets a standard for them -then it is postponing dealing with the most fundamental human rightsquestion of all: the global right to life.

The ways in which the culture of nuclearism is antithetical to humanrights can be examined in relation to the definition proposed by Liftonand Falk and used in the introductory paragraph of Part One.Nuclearism was defined in terms of dependence in three key areas.

First, 'psychologically': All constructions of security, like all theoriesof international relations, rest on a particular theory of human nature.The culture of nuclearism assumes a fixed notion of human nature and afatalism about human possibilities. Given this classical realist view of theselfish/evil/power-seeking/mistrustful essence of all humans, the onlydependable route to security is through policies of deterrence/balance ofpower/statism and so on; and clearly, the more power one has the better,and hence nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantors of independence.The human rights culture has very different assumptions and prioritiesfor action, resting as it does on the belief that human nature is malleable,that political groups learn Clausewitzian war as opposed to having

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inherited the behaviour as an instinct; and that an environment ofhuman rights is one of the ways by which our biological selves can beconstructed into better human beings.

Second, 'politically': The culture of nuclearism is characterised by thepolitics of statism and the status quo. What was earlier described asstructural nuclearism is one manifestation of this, that is the idea that theWestern powers need nuclear weapons until the end of time becauseSaddams cannot be disinvented. Furthermore, nuclear policies demandboth policy-making secrecy and the cultivation of cultures willing insome circumstances to carry out genocidal threats. Such characteristics asthese are antithetical to the concern for the individual, the democraticassumptions, and the emancipatory philosophy and strategies that are atthe heart of the thinking of those seeking to construct a global humanrights culture.

Third, 'militarily': Pro-nuclear advocates argue that human rightsobligations were not intended to cover nuclear weapons and that in anycase such obligations do not prevail in times of armed conflict. Withrespect to the Genocide Convention, the supporters of nuclear strategiesadditionally argue that the 'intent' to destroy particular groups, in wholeor in part, cannot be imputed to nuclear strategies. The counters givento such arguments by those who believe that nuclear deterrence in itsnature is antithetical to human rights obligations are lengthy and morecomplex than space allows.

In summary, the argument is made that human rights exist as positivelaw, that human rights apply in armed conflicts; that human rightsprohibit the arbitrary deprivation of life while the use of nuclearweapons necessarily leads to the arbitrary deprivation of life; that theGenocide Convention applies in times of peace and war; that theConvention prohibits the systematic killing of members of certain groupsand nuclear weapons would in certain cases be used to this end; and thatthe intent to commit genocide can be inferred from the predictableconsequences of carrying out nuclear threats.8

The culture of nuclearism is therefore fundamentally posed againstthe culture of human rights - psychologically, politically and militarily.Human rights policies provide global civil society with a litmus test, astrategy and a goal in terms of cultivating a vocabulary, practices andforms of global governance which give some hope of inventing socialhumans out of physical humans in this dislocating, industrialised, andglobalised age. The nuclearist paradigm has been under challenge invarious ways since the mid-1980s, but its replacement by a firmlyembedded global human rights culture and meaningful 'cosmopolitandemocracy' is by no means guaranteed. The record of the past 50 years,

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since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948,has often been appalling, as the annual reports of Amnesty Internationaland Human Rights Watch testify.9 In the presence of so many humanwrongs it is not surprising that one of the themes of Amnesty's publicitythrough the 50th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights (UDHR) has been to describe the UDHR as 'the world'sbest kept secret'.

If, as argued above, nuclearism in its nature is antithetical to thetheory and practice of human rights, and if a human rights culture isessential for that progress in global justice that must be part of anycomprehensive notion of security, then the significance of this clash ofcultures is evident. It is part of the central problematic of the post-ColdWar world, because its outcome will help determine whether security onall levels is enhanced on a global scale in the decades to come. Will welive in a community of fate or a community of emancipation? Will wecontinue to replicate nuclear insecurity communities, or can weconstruct a global community of security communities?

POLITICAL COMMUNITY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SECURITY

One of the implications of the general argument so far has been theinadequacy of compartmentalising nuclear issues - questions relating tonuclear policies, strategies, and attempts to control such weapons -simply in terms of 'defence' policy. Nuclear matters, by their intrusivecharacter, are broad, interpenetrating contemporary culture as well aspolicy-making in other issue areas, and deep, forcing us to askfundamental questions about global politics. The fundamental questionsthat they raise require concrete answers, addressing both long-term goalsand short-term pragmatics. This penultimate section examines somepracticalities relating to the construction of security in ways that start tomove away from the traps of the past.

Security in the context of world politics consists of people(s) being orfeeling free of threats that challenge their existence in some fundamentalway, and hence determine how they must live in order to survive. Thesethreats range from direct bodily violence from other humans (war),through structural political and economic forms of oppression (slavery),into more existential threats to identity (cultural imperialism). Securitybegins with threat(s), but its essence is choice - and so it is intimatelyrelated to emancipation. One of the paradoxical implications of this, forexample, is that being secure allows a person to choose danger. Onlythose who are secure have the time, the material resources, and theopportunity to choose the danger entailed in, for example, Formula One

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car racing or round-the-world yacht racing. The greater one's insecurity(bodily, materially and existentially), the greater is one's everyday lifedetermined. So, security is an instrumental concept or condition. It is astate of being (subjective or objective) that gives people as individuals orgroups the opportunity to try to achieve other things. In particular, inrelation to the present discussion, it gives people(s) the opportunity todevelop peace as a sustainable political (and cultural) practice.10

Security is not therefore synonymous with the absence of danger atthe individual level, and in terms of world politics security is not simplysynonymous with peace. This is evident from the fact that a significantdegree of security was felt within the United States during the final stagesof the Second World War: by this point everybody knew that the UShomeland was safe and that its core values would be triumphant. Equally,that peace is not simply synonymous with security was evident from thehigh degree of insecurity felt in Britain during the increasingly uneasypeace of the late 1930s. The central point for the present argument isthat peace which is other than a mere absence of war - usually called'positive' as opposed to 'negative' peace - depends upon the prioritisingand predictability of peaceful practices. In other words, the constructionof comprehensive security - moving towards freedom from threats at alllevels - creates space for the growth of sustainable peaceful practices.Kenneth Boulding called this 'stable peace', which he defined as 'asituation in which the probability of war is so small that it does not reallyenter into the calculations of any of the people involved.'11

It is one thing to talk about such matters in the abstract; it is anotherto develop them in practical political ways. In this light traditionalthinking about security (focusing on the state, military power, and thepreservation of the status quo) can only deliver what Boulding definedas 'unstable peace', a negative peace resting only on the threat of force.One historic example of imagining, constructing, and then practisingsecurity in ways that have actually delivered stable peace is evident in thedevelopment of Western European integration, discussed in Part One. Inthis case, and increasingly in others, at the heart of the broader anddeeper conception of security is the idea of political community12 - thebelief that 'community' can have real purchase in political practices at alllevels, from the most geographically local to sub-continents, continents,and ultimately globally.

'Community', of course, is a difficult, albeit 'warmly persuasive'term.13 It can easily be debased (as in the phrase 'internationalcommunity', which governments and opinion-groups of all types employwhen they want to elevate the pursuit of their own interests and projectsto a higher level of legitimacy). It is often used also as a political bromide

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(as in the phrase 'national community', an imperial euphemismemployed by a dominant nation in a multi-national state). Some analystsdo not think community is an idea that travels well: traditional realistsconsider that political community can extend no further than theboundaries of sovereign states, while ethical communitarians contest theidea of universalism in human rights and cosmopolitanism in identity.These points all serve as useful warnings against sloppy thinking aboutcommunity as a political panacea, but they do not deter a growing bodyof opinion from regarding the construction of community - with itscentripetal dynamics of multi-faceted interaction, shared interests andidentity, and the spread of moral and political obligation - as central tothe project of global governance.14

Expressed in concrete form, the construction of 'securitycommunities' best conveys the philosophy of security underlying thisarticle and gives most empirical reality to Boulding's hope of 'stablepeace'. A security community was originally defined by Karl Deutsch andhis co-workers as a group of people who had become 'integrated' in thesense of having developed a 'sense of community', with a shared beliefthat common problems 'must and can' be resolved by 'peaceful change'and by having the appropriate 'institutions and practices strong enoughand widespread enough' to bring this about." Even more so than whenDeutsch and his co-workers developed the concept in the 1950s, theintegration of Western Europe is the model for the idea: it shows therecan be 'politics among nations', to borrow the title of Morgenthau'saccount of the classic conflictual world,16 while in a condition of stablepeace. In other words, international politics are not fated to be aneverlasting game played by Napoleons and Hitlers: a condition of stablepeace is both conceivable and possible, in which state interaction is notorganised around the threat and use of military force. This has been thecondition of Western Europe since the late 1940s. International relationsbetween the former war-like tribes of Western Europe (and now beyondthis core) take place, but in a context which is no longer determined bythe deployment of armies, navies and air forces against each other.Military strategy has been superseded in favour of a commitment toharmonise interests, compromise differences and reap mutual rewards.Security is constructed through community, not deterrence.

Communication for Deutsch was the essence of the construction ofcommunity. He identified several distinctive characteristics in a securitycommunity, and it is these that must be constructed in the promotion ofsecurity and community in other world regions, and between WesternEurope and other developing or actual security communities. Thecharacteristics are: mutual compatibility of values; strong economic ties

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and expectations of more; multi-faceted social, political, and culturaltransactions; a growing degree of institutionalised relationships; mutualresponsiveness; and mutual predictablity of behaviour. The defining testof whether a proper 'sense of community' had been established iswhether the units target each other with their military power.Subsequent thinkers about security communities, notably Adler andBarnett, have added refinements and empirical flesh to the original idea.For present purposes, however, two considerations should be clear fromthe definition of a security community. First, nuclear targeting isincompatible with the growth of a global network of mutually responsivesecurity communities. Second, the idea of human rights is integral to thecultivation of key elements in contemporary political community-building, especially for example in relation to the promotion of sharedvalues and mutual responsiveness (the role of the European Court ofHuman Rights has been of great significance in the ideals and practicesof European community-building).

It has been argued that nuclearism is antithetical to the spread of thepractices of stable peace. Mutual targeting based on deterrent threats ofultimate violence is not compatible with community-building at any levelof world politics. In direct contrast, the idea of a human rights culturerests on a conception of common humanity, though in practice itsflourishing is confronted by great obstacles, for we live in a multi-cultural as well as a multi-state world. Furthermore, it is part of anapproach to the construction of security in which the negotiation ofjustice is paramount, as opposed simply to the arithmetic of militarypower. Clearly, therefore, the global dimension of security communitybuilding requires sustained policies aiming to achieve both a universalhuman rights culture and a nuclear weapons-free world (NWFW). Theformer does not mean some false universalism, characterised by only oneconception of how people(s) can behave; and so movement towards thisgoal has to be relatively slow. The latter, on the other hand, must bepursued with some urgency, lest the situation deteriorate even furtherthan was discussed in Part One. Above all, developing or developedsecurity communities should not become nuclearised super-states, ortraditional insecurities and dynamics would simply be transferred fromthe level of states to a higher level, that of continental or sub-continentalregions. Comprehensive global security cannot be constructed on thefoundations of nuclear deterrence; however, as was argued above and inPart One, an important set of processes in developing towards such agoal would be generated by the synergy between the institutionalising ofnuclear abolition and the construction of security communities. The verycommitments, routine processes, decision-making structures, and

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networks of interest necessary to carrying out the elimination of themost destructive weapons ever devised would in themselves be apowerful motor for community-building, both regionally and globally.

If governments actively pursued their rhetorical commitment tonuclear elimination over several decades, such institutionalisation with apurpose might come to match at the global level the progression of theregional dynamic in Western Europe that led to the sequence: Coal andSteel Community/Common Market/ European Community/EuropeanUnion. Interdependence, common decision-making structures,confidence-building, and habits of co-operation could positively interactin ways that would change the whole context in which the decision tomove to the final abolition of nuclear weapons could take place. Ininternational relations, as in life in general, what is defined as 'necessary'and what is deemed to be 'possible' is context-dependent; and contextscan be changed. It was not feasible, for example, to institute a commoncurrency in Western Europe when the Treaty of Rome was signed; 40years later it was. Today, by analogy, several key governments seem onlyable to believe that nuclear disarmament can safely go as low as a fewthousand warheads. However, if that level could be achieved, thenmoving down to a situation of true minimum deterrence, with no morethan a hundred warheads or less, might then be easily conceivable.Getting rid of these last few might not seem feasible, because of whatsome governments and their supporters believe these weapons representin terms of sovereignty, symbolism and security. However, if it did provepossible for states to negotiate down to the last one hundred warheadsor so, we would then be in a quite different nuclear world than the onewe inhabit at present. At that point nuclearism would be in terminaldecline; there would by necessity be different strategic axioms andcommon sense, new transparency and trust, and progress towards aninternational community worth its name. In terms of the analogy withthe EU, states would have moved from the Coal and Steel Communityto Maastricht. The elimination of nuclear weapons and the constructionof mutual security would be mutually reinforcing projects. The final step,the elimination of the last nuclear devices, would appear a relativelysmall step after sustained community-building, not the enormous one itseems to be today.

The significance of these arguments in favour of a communityapproach can be illustrated by a comparison between South America andSouth Asia in terms of positive and negative synergy between nuclearposturing and the prospect of regimes of co-operation and peacefulpractices. Here we see an empirical case contrasting the 'community'approach to regional security and the 'deterrent' approach advocated by

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traditional national security managers and their academic comforters.17

An analysis of the evolution of the Argentine-Brazil relationship, whichlooked for a period as though their regional ambitions would take anuclear and confrontational form, suggests that the co-operativepractices associated with building regional security regimes such asNWFZs can play a significant part in achieving a move from potentialadversary status to that of potential community-partners.

There are always special regional circumstances working eithertowards or against closer association, but a common feature of successfulcommunity-building is the realisation by elites that their own country'ssecurity is inextricably linked to, and is defined by, those around them.This occurred in South America in the 1980s, when a transformationtook place in the insecurity landscape, from the tensions and suspicionsof the earlier period through a rapprochement leading eventually to theembracing of non-nuclear norms. Not least of the lessons to be derivedfrom this experience is the important reminder that states can learn howto develop co-operative security practices out of what might appear tobe intractably hostile relationships. There were various propitiouscircumstances in South America: historical, socio-cultural, geographicaland political. But what made the difference was the increasing awarenessof the costs and risks of attempting to construct security on the basis ofthe unilateral pursuit of the 'national interest'. Through a growingunderstanding of each other's legitimate security concerns, the key statesin the region, Argentina and Brazil, learned that their existing nationalsecurity policies were proving counter-productive, and that for securityto be sustainable, it had to take a decisively co-operative turn.

If states in a potential nuclear confrontation in South America couldlearn such security common-sense, why not those in South Asia? FromSouth America, and other parts of the world, there is now a considerablebody of useful experience to help operationalise fine words aboutcommunity-building, in terms of the pragmatics of improving dialogue,achieving greater transparency in policy actions and declarations,initiating and reciprocating confidence-building measures and theimplementation of non-offensive defence postures, developing securityguarantees, and bringing about the inter-meshing of global norms andregional practices. Sceptics and critics, of course, will immediately pointto South America in the 1980s as a special case. Those on the other handwho want to see a role model in this case must of course guard againstcarefree generalisation. At the minimum, though, we can confidently saythat the denuclearisation of inter-state relations in South America is avery suggestive case. It shows that in the construction of regional securitylandscapes, the synergy between military postures and political outcomes

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can be positive as well as negative, that broader rather than narrowerways of dealing with security (avoiding compartmentalising defencepolicy issues from security issues) can be successful, and that pessimismis not always justified. Western European integration - another specialcase - is also suggestive. Neither the case of Western Europe or SouthAmerica guarantee that similar outcomes can be replicated elsewhere,but they do offer political encouragement and useful lessons for thosewho seek to construct a more secure global environment. After all, theWestern European security community grew out of a historic cockpit ofwar, while the developing security community in South America isgrowing out of a historic cockpit of militarism and authoritarianism.These cases, where stable peace is now more of a regional reality thanever before - though obviously they are not at the same stage, nor arethey necessarily destined to become so - again forces us to ask: who arethe real realists when it comes to building security? Is it thosetraditionalist governments and their supporters, trapped in regressivemindsets, who continue to answer tomorrow's questions withyesterday's answers? Or is it the demonstrators in Ramallah calling forgreater justice in the Middle East, the TP2000 campaigners in Britaincalling for nuclear elimination, and those rare governments that willlisten to arguments in favour of pursuing policies committed justice andcomprehensive security, and who will then try to put these ideas intooperation with determination and consistency?

FROM A MAD TO A SANE WORLD?

One persistent theme of this article has been the disappointed hopes thatattended the end of the Cold War with respect to nuclear weapons.There was a unanimous desire that nuclear deterrence would never againbe the eyeball-to-eyeball pre-occupation of the era of Strangelove. Butthe Low Salience Nuclear (LSN) world of the marginalisers has provedvictim to their own complacency. The ostentatious nuclearisation ofIndo-Pakistani relations in 1998 was final confirmation of the view ofthe critics of LSN that zero nuclear weapons is the most rational goal.Something must therefore be done, and quickly, if we are to avoid abackwards race into nuclear history.

If progress is to be made, purposeful agents are essential. Thisconcluding section will briefly concentrate on Britain, though eachnuclear power, potential nuclear power, and committed anti-nuclearstate has its own space in terms of advancing the project of eliminatingnuclear weapons.18 Britain is a particularly interesting case, however: itis both a serious problem, as a nuclear power of conservative leanings,

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but it is also a potentially pivotal agent. There are several reasons formaking the latter claim: Labour does, at least, have a rhetoricalcommitment to global nuclear disarmament, a history of opposition tonuclear weapons, and supporters and MPs who have strong anti-nuclearcredentials; Britain does not have the constraints of being a superpower,but it is close to the United States; at this point it looks most unlikely thatany future British government would seek to purchase anothergeneration of 'independent' nuclear weapons, and certainly nogovernment would today be contemplating developing nuclear weaponsfrom scratch if it did not already possess them (furthermore, thedifficulties facing Britain as an independent nuclear power will grow ifthe United Kingdom dissolves as a sovereign state in the next 10-20years); Britain has the freedom of being very secure from the threat ofterritorial aggression; if a British government decided to take a lead innuclear disarmament it has the weaponry and scientific expertise to helpdevelop the most sophisticated inspection systems using its owncapabilities as a test-bed; finally, its 'ethical' foreign policy andcommitment to be a force for good in the world implies a determinationto be active, to prioritise human rights, and to establish a set of standardsby which it can be judged.19 For these reasons the British governmentmight not be totally resistant to being pressed to act, and if it did, it couldbe influential. But first New Labour needs a new idea.

The prospects for serious progress in nuclear disarmament, as ever,are made up of both positive and negative considerations. The formerincludes the possibility of building upon some of the positivedevelopments of the 1990s. These include: progress in some nucleararms control forums (the NPT, the CTBT, and START); the reversal inthe nuclear policies of a number of states, notably South Africa(following the earlier reversal by Argentina and Brazil); the halting of theplans of North Korea and Iraq; the relinquishing by several formerSoviet republics, now independent states, of their nuclear 'inheritance';the establishment of NWFZs in Africa and Southeast Asia; themarginalisation to some degree of nuclear deterrence, nuclear diplomacyand nuclear strategies in the national security policies of the majornuclear powers; and the strong and growing support from experts for aNWFW (including experts in the United States, which will remain thekey state in shaping what happens in this issue-area).

On the negative side, British public life in the 1990s offers anothercatalogue of the regressive attitudes towards nuclear disarmamentmentioned in Part One. Nuclear amnesia is evident at the level of publicopinion. There has been very low interest in nuclear matters: this silencewas deafening in the 1997 general election campaign, and throughout

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the decade there has been a general lack of attention in the press, inpublic debate, and on TV and radio. Rare and partial exceptions werementioned earlier. At the official level, complacency was exposed in themisleadingly entitled Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of 1998, whichreviewed everything except the most important strategic questions.20

Typically, while the SDR trundled away, worrying about issues such asthe future of the Territorial Army - important to a degree, but not thepinnacle of twenty-first century strategic issues - the hard questionssurrounding NATO expansion/enlargement, relations with the UnitedStates, the future of Trident, and the dangers of WMD in general wereskirted around.21 The SDR in effect was final proof that New Labour hadnormalised old thinking on the British bomb. Ethic cleansing has beenevident in the way the government, which contains many individualswith strong anti-nuclear credentials in the past, has ignored talking aboutnuclear issues unless really pressed (which has been very rarely).Significantly, neither the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, nor the FCO ingeneral, saw the implications of Britain's nuclear deterrent posture as acentral issue to discuss in relation to the ethical foreign policy theyannounced just after the election in 1997. Intellectually as well aspolitically, the nuclear issue was compartmentalised from other issues offoreign and security - and indeed defence - policy. Complacency couldbe seen in the apparently easy manner in which some former Labourradicals in Opposition became socialised into attitudes about defencethat sounded remarkably like their predecessors. The shift to'multilateralism' proved not only to be a tactic to remove the nuclearissue from the defence debate preceding the 1997 general election - seenas an area of potential electoral weakness - but also part of an embracingof the well-established British tactic of claiming to want to reachharbour, but in fact postponing nuclear disarmament indefinitely bymoving at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy. The embracing oftraditionalist approaches to military/security questions on the part ofNew Labour seemed confirmed by the evident enthusiasm with whichthe Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his key ministers, grasped theirmilitary roles during the 1998 Gulf crises.22

If the thinking of New Labour and of old Whitehall has generallyrevealed the regressive side of the 1990s Western nuclear mindset, therehas been contrary evidence in some (though certainly not all) sections ofBritish civil society. Britain contains several of the experts who havecontributed powerfully to anti-nuclear arguments. Prominent amongthese have been Nobel Prize winner (1995) Joseph Rotblat, former Chiefof the Defence Staff Field Marshal Sir Michael Carver, former RoyalNavy Commander and Soviet specialist Michael MccGwire, and nuclear

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physicist Frank Barnaby.23 Furthermore, the tradition of conscientiousand international law-based direct action has been kept alive by theTP2000 campaign.24 Although the opinions represented by suchindividuals and groups as those just mentioned are of significance in anyserious discussion about the future of British nuclear policy, they do notpresently constitute anything approaching a sufficiently powerful criticalmass to disturb New Labour's priorities - of which taking a lead in globalnuclear disarmament has not been one.

The prospects for purposeful action by the New Labour governmenton nuclear disarmament are not encouraging, therefore, but they are notutterly bleak; and there is still time to do something, before nuclear'realism' reinvents itself in even more dangerous forms than on theIndian sub-continent. But at this stage, words are less convincing thanever on the part of the existing nuclear powers; they must be backed upby persuasive actions. If the LSN framework is not to disintegratecompletely over the next ten years, the nuclear powers must act in amuch more persuasive way to show that they are committed to thestrategic rationality of the abolition of nuclear weapons. What is criticalin this respect is the generation of the positive synergy discussed in PartOne between denuclearisation and confidence-building within acomprehensive notion of security. If the context can be changed, so canwhat is thought to be conceivable.

One immediate step the British government could take, which wouldhelp to reinvigorate the process discussed throughout this article, mightbe called SANE 2000. Britain is certainly not the only state that couldinitiate such a move, but for the reasons suggested at the start of thissection, there are some advantages in Britain doing it, and it is in linewith the highest aspirations of the Labour government, if Tony Blair wasgenuine when he said he wanted 'to define Britain's place in the world,not in isolation but as a leader among a community of nations'.25 Theidea is that the British government would make as the centre-piece of itssecurity policy, at the very outset of the twenty-first century, a dramaticand public commitment to eliminate the WMD which deform politicsamong nations and one day will perhaps destroy significant portions ofthem. How can we talk of 'international society', let alone an'international community', when the hardest currency of all in theirinter-relationships consists of genocidal threats? As early as possible inJanuary 2000 therefore, there should be a meeting of heads ofgovernment from as many countries as possible, to make a commitmentto work in a systematic way towards the elimination of these weapons:this would truly be a millennium project worth its name.

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At present, there are many possible plans on the table suggesting howsuch a commitment might then proceed: with longer or shorter time-tables, different sequencing steps, and more or less flexibility.26 Thecrucial requirement at this juncture is to start moving forward in acomprehensive way. If we are to avoid further shock-waves on the linesof the May 1998 India/Pakistan explosions, the nuclear Haves mustattempt to persuade the Have-nots and especially the Might-gets thatthey are really serious about their commitments to nuclear disarmament- and not just the verbal ones, but also the written one in the Treaty forthe Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The aim of SANE2000would be to make a highly visible, symbolic and formal commitment, atthe start of the new century, to the achievement of nuclear elimination.It would be a commitment to which governments could be heldaccountable; it would set out a preliminary blueprint and timetable; andits language and symbolism would seek to contribute to the de-legitimising of the MAD mindset. In such ways it would be a way of kick-starting the institutions and processes that would help create positivesynergy between weapons control and confidence-building, between theinstitutionalising of radical disarmament and the strengthening of a law-governed international community, and between rethinking securitycommon-sense and founding new forms of global governance. Thepredictable consequence of today's so-called international communityfailing to construct such a global security strategy, in which theelimination of weapons of mass destruction must be central, will be toreproduce yet another international insecurity community, but this timepossibly in even less fortuitous historical circumstances than those thatdeveloped during the Cold War - history's 'Great Escape'.

It was argued at the opening of Part One of this article that globalnuclear war is the possibility that could cancel out all other humanpossibilities. The subsequent theme of the article has been that thedeconstruction of nuclearism is both functional and necessary for theconstruction of comprehensive security. The nuclear age and the age ofhuman rights were born almost simultaneously, and are locked incontestation. It is too early, only a half century on, to know which willeventually triumph. What is certain, however, is that the construction ofa global human rights culture, which it was claimed earlier is thepossibility that could open up all other human possibilities, will alwaysbe threatened as long as nuclearism is politically significant. A cultureembodied in the universal idea of the rights of the individual, provokedby the Nazi Holocaust, can never entirely flourish, and reinvent livingglobally, alongside national security postures planning a nuclearHolocaust.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank Tim Dunne and Nicholas Wheeler for comments on an earlier draft, andMichael MccGwire for sharing ideas on these issues for over 30 years.

NOTES

1. See John Garnett (ed.), Theories of Peace and Security (London: Macmillan, 1970),'Introduction'.

2. One of the most original contributions to this debate was Michael MccGwire,'Deterrence: The Problem not the Solution', International Affairs, Vol.62, No.l,Winter 1985-86, pp.55-70.

3. On Cold War superpower strategic cultures see Carl G. Jacobsen (ed.), Strategic Power:USA/USSR (London: Macmillan, 1990).

4. See the detailed record in Arms Control Reporter (Cambridge MA: Institute forDefense and Disarmament Studies, 11 issues annually).

5. The concept of 'human security' is increasing rapidly in usage. See, for example, theUNDP Human Development Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), andCaroline Thomas and Peter Wilkin, (eds), Globalization, Human Security & the AfricanExperience (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999). See also Our GlobalNeighborhood. The Report of The Commission on Global Governance (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1995).

6. The latest significant contribution to thinking about security communities is EmanuelAdler and Michael Barnett (eds), Security Communities (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998). An early contribution to the idea of 'cosmopolitan democracy'is Daniele Archibugi and David Held, Cosmopolitan Democracy. An Agenda for a NewWorld Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).

7. This is the general theme of Ken Booth, 'Three Tyrannies' in Tim Dunne and NicholasJ. Wheeler, (eds), Human Rights in Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1999) pp.31-70.

8. M. Weller, The Inadequacy of Arguments Presented to the International Court ofJustice in the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinions' (unpublished paper, 1997,presented at the Council For Arms Control & Just Defence Annual Seminar, 'Achievinga Sustainable Peace', 16 February 1998, King's College, London.

9. See The Amnesty International UK Annual Review, Amnesty International AnnualReport, and Human Rights Watch Annual Report.

10. Emanuel Adler, 'Condition(s) of Peace', Review of International Studies, Vol.24(Special Issue), December 1998, p.167.

11. Kenneth Boulding, Stable Peace (Austin TX: University of Texas Press, 1979) p.13.12. See Daniele Archibugi, David Held and Martin Kohler (eds), Re-imagining Political

Community Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).Community is one of the central organising concepts in the theoretical and empiricalchapters in Ken Booth (ed.), Security, Community and Emancipation. Critical SecurityStudies and Global Politics (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, forthcoming).

13. Raymond Williams, Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana,1976) pp.65-6.

14. See notes 54 and 60. A major contribution to such accumulating literature is AndrewLinklater, The Transformation of Political Community. Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998). For a variety of critical perspectivessee 'Forum on The Transformation of Political Community', Review of InternationalStudies, Vol.25, No.l, January 1999, pp.139-75.

15. Karl Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Alliance (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957) p.5.

16. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (NewYork: Knopf, 1978).

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17. The argument below relies heavily upon Simon Davies, 'Community versusDeterrence: Approaches to Security and Non-Proliferation in Latin America and SouthAsia', in Booth, Security, Community and Emancipation (note 12).

18. The first version of some of the arguments below were published in Ken Booth,Nuclear Weapons: Britain's Role in the Transition from a MAD to a SANE World(London: ISIS, September 1997. Special ISIS Report on the Future of UK NuclearWeapons, Fissile Materials, Arms Control and Disarmament Policy, No.3).

19. On the latter point, see Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne, 'Good InternationalCitizenship: A Third Way for British Foreign Policy', International Affairs, Vol.74,No.4, October 1998, pp.847-70.

20. The Strategic Defence Review, Cm 3999 (London: TSO, 1998); see the related TheStrategic Defence Review: Supporting Essays (London: TSO, 1998).

21. On SDR and Trident see Colin McInnes, 'Labour's Strategic Defence Review',International Affairs, Vol.74, No.4, October 1998, pp.841-3.

22. During the December 1998 crisis, the demeanour of those who spoke for thegovernment was such that it brought back memories of the US diplomat a generationago who talked of enjoying and being elated by crises. See Phil Williams, 'Crisismanagement', in John Baylis, et al., Contemporary Strategy. Theories and Policies(London: Croom Helm, 1975) p.152.

23. See, inter alia, Dorothy Zinberg, 'A World Worth Fighting For', THES, 25 December1998; Jonathan Schell, The Gift of Time. The Case for Abolishing Nuclear WeaponsNow (London: Granta Books, 1998); and Michael Foot, Dr Strangelove, I Presume(London: Gollancz, 1998).

24. See Angie Zelter, 'Peace in Chains,' The Guardian, 29 August 1998. The TP2000campaign can be followed in the newsletter, Speed the Plough ... and on its website athttp://www/gn/apc.org/tp2000/. The campaign's operational manual, Tri-Denting ItHandbook. An Open Guide to Trident Ploughshares 2000 (Norwich: TP2000,December 1997) provides a stark contrast to the SDR.

25. Quoted in Rebecca Johnson, British Perspectives on the Future of Nuclear Weapons(Washington DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, Occasional Paper No.37, January1998) p. 1.

26. Ibid., Parts II and III contain some useful ideas, together with further references. Seealso Malcolm Chalmers, British Nuclear Weapons Policy. The Next Steps (London: ISIS,May 1997. Special Report on the Future of UK Nuclear Weapons, Fissile Materials,Arms Control and Disarmament Policy, No.l) and William Walker, Britain's Policies onFissile Materials: The Next Steps (London: ISIS, July 1997. Special ISIS Report on theFuture of UK Nuclear Weapons, Fissile Materials, Arms Control and DisarmamentPolicy, No.2).

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nuclearism and human rights

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