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Nuclearism, human rights

and constructions of
security (part 2)
Ken Booth

Professor of International Politics , University

of Wales , Aberystwyth
Published online: 19 Oct 2007.

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

Constructions of Security (Part 2)

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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 at
the core of the problem of creating the conditions for future regional and global
security is a clash of cultures: between that of nuclearism on the one side and
human rights on the other. Part Two explores these differing approaches in more
depth, as a step towards the discussion of the role of political community in the
normalisation of security practices that offer greater hope than in the past of
delivering the conditions of sustainable peace. The institutionalising of the
concept of 'security community' is suggested as a promising building block in
that process, as is human rights as a necessary condition for its achievement and
consolidation. The article concludes by looking at the space one particularly
significant international actor (Britain) has in terms of moving international
politics from a literally MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) condition to a SANE
(Security After Nuclear Elimination) world. It is proposed that the British
government initiate a project, SANE 2000, committed to giving momentum to a
new global policy aimed at eliminating all weapons of mass destruction; such a
project could have a decisive effect on the construction of regional and global
security as a result of progressive institution-building and law-creation.

NUCLEAR RITES AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Some nuclear idealists hubristically described the theorising that took

place between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s (mainly in the United
States) as the 'golden age' of nuclear thinking.1 Even at the time there
were profound sceptics of this view, but during the later phases of the
Cold War it became apparent to a growing body of opinion that all that
glittered was not gold. As time passed, it became increasingly common
to describe nuclear deterrence theory as a theology. The reasons for this
were compelling. Nuclearism had its sacred texts and high priests;
nuclear deterrence had became a dogma, proclaimed as true by its
exponents; alternative ways of thinking were silenced as far as possible
Ken Booth, Professor of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Part 1 of
this 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.44-61
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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45

by indoctrination, socialisation, loyalty tests and exclusion; critics were

cast as heretics or the 'useful idiots' of the communist devil; and Strategic
Studies in general and nuclear deterrence theory in particular was
believed to be a faith to be embraced, not a politics to be contested.2 In
such circumstances, contemporary strategy was dominated by a
distinctive set of prescriptions, forms and acts - veritable nuclear rites.
The nuclear rites described above attended what was ostensibly a
military strategy, but it was a strategy that was increasingly out of its time
and Clausewitzian logic. For over 50 years there has been a significant
gap between the genocidal implications of a 'war' involving numerous
nuclear weapons and the actual stakes likely to be at the root of the
conflict. In the era of nuclear plenty a historic disjunction occurred
between the ends governments sought and their nuclear means. As a
result, a nuclear war involving two states possessing extensive arsenals
and nuclear war-fighting doctrines would be a negation of Clausewitz,
not a continuation of politics. If this was true in the Cold War, which at
least could be portrayed as a global struggle between two irreconcilable
systems, it is even more valid today. In the light of this, it is predictable
that within the time-scale of several hundred years, and probably earlier,
the primitive nuclear rites of international society in the second half of
the twentieth century will come to be regarded by future societies with
all the incomprehension and horror that we, with similar critical
distance, now regard human sacrifice to forgotten gods, or the genocide
of first peoples in the name of colonialism. What unites these three
examples (human sacrifice to gods, colonial genocide, and nuclear
deterrence) is the legitimation of practices of execution in one form or
another in the name of elite values. What separates them is that the rites
of the nuclear priesthood, unlike those of the liturgists of primitive gods
or the triumphalists of imperialism, legitimise practices that might well
result in self-execution as well: this is the meaning of MAD.
Nuclear theology can be explained as the highest technological
expression of the strategic culture associated with the 350-year
international world defined by the ideas and practices of Machiavellian
ethics, the Clausewitzian philosophy of war and the Westphalian states
system; this strategic culture is also ethnocentric, masculinist, and
determined by the materially most powerful. ('Strategic culture' is the
idea that particular groups - especially states and nations - have
traditional sets of attitudes and behaviour with respect to the threat and
use of force, and that this 'culture' transcends changes in policy,
government and even historical era.3) In its post-Cold War manifestation
the culture of nuclearism has been dominated by complacency, static
thinking and technological idealism. If security is to be constructed on a

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more long-lasting foundation, especially one on which there is a real

prospect of a sustainable peace developing, then an alternative culture
must be deployed, one building upon and expanding those humanising
forces that grew within the hegemony of Westphalia (for example, those
seeking to soften Westphalia's roughest edges, such as the development
of the laws of war), or those seeking to reduce social conflict (such as the
delegitimisation of racism). This is where human rights come to centre
stage in the discussion of security.
That US/UK attitudes and behaviour with respect to nuclear weapons
should be regarded in terms of 'nuclearism' - a strategic culture rather
than simply a military strategy - is shown by the continuities across the
Cold War/post-Cold War divide. It is difficult, for example, to see any
marked changes in the mindsets of their nuclear establishments through
the 1990s, though there have been significant reductions in warheads.
Some illustrations were given in Part One of this article of continuities in
warhead and missile production, target-seeking, and doctrinal
development, despite words on the parts of the leaders of these countries
purporting to indicate a commitment to radical nuclear disarmament. In
this light, the nuclear disarmament that was carried out by governments
in the 1990s4 was tinkering rather than a major assault on Cold War
nuclearism; it was not part of the more comprehensive approach to
security proposed by global civil society. In the Cold War, arms control
policies had often sought to make deterrence more 'stable' by allowing
agreed increases; in the 1990s the nuclear reductions carried out by the
major powers have sought the same goal - stability - but this time by
agreed decreases. The key point is the underlying commitment to nuclear
weapons and strategies across the Cold War/post-Cold War divide. The
nuclear disarmament that has taken place in the 1990s has not required
any shifts in the nuclearist strategic culture or statist conceptions of
'security'.
Nuclearism remains much more deeply embedded in the mindsets
and policies of the leading military powers than does the culture of
human rights. One of the central claims of this article is that the progress
of civilisation can be measured by the relative weight accorded to each
of these cultures around the desks of policy-makers, in the conference
halls of diplomacy, in the advocacy of civil society, and in the popular
imagination. Human rights are intrinsic to any policy attempting to
construct security in ways that promise to deliver sustainable peace
because there cannot be global security unless there is justice and there
cannot be justice without a vibrant human rights culture. As was argued
at the start of Part One, comprehensive security - that seeking human
security5 and not simply the security of states or regimes - must embrace

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47

universal human rights. A strategy to promote the latter must therefore

be central to the project of global security, though many vexing questions
obviously remain to be answered both in theory and practice. In terms
of developing the practices of global governance appropriate for the
promotion of comprehensive security, there are no better ideas presently
on the table than those of 'security communities' and 'cosmopolitan
democracy'.6 They bring together, in approachable distance, the feasible
and the desirable.
The potential historic function of a global human rights culture is
nothing short of the invention of a more peaceful and loving humanity.7
In terms of world politics, what this means is steady progress in the
eradication of all forms of direct and structural violence, and the
extension through changing attitudes and behaviour of political and
moral commitments. Nuclearism in its nature is antithetical to key
elements of this goal, as it marginalises the idea of common security in
favour of common insecurity, exchanges the belief in the potential of
common humanity with the primacy of the politics of states, and in place
of a strategy seeking coexistence through community relies indefinitely
on coexistence through the strategy of mutual genocidal threat. In this
era of standard-setting and accountability, there is a strong case for
arguing that the external policies of every government should be read
subject to a footnote detailing its statements and record with respect to
the eradication of nuclear weapons. If a government is found wanting in
this area - and the statements of The International Court and the
Canberra Commission quoted in Part One sets a standard for them then it is postponing dealing with the most fundamental human rights
question of all: the global right to life.
The ways in which the culture of nuclearism is antithetical to human
rights can be examined in relation to the definition proposed by Lifton
and 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 theories
of international relations, rest on a particular theory of human nature.
The culture of nuclearism assumes a fixed notion of human nature and a
fatalism about human possibilities. Given this classical realist view of the
selfish/evil/power-seeking/mistrustful essence of all humans, the only
dependable route to security is through policies of deterrence/balance of
power/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 priorities
for 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 of

human rights is one of the ways by which our biological selves can be
constructed into better human beings.
Second, 'politically': The culture of nuclearism is characterised by the
politics of statism and the status quo. What was earlier described as
structural nuclearism is one manifestation of this, that is the idea that the
Western powers need nuclear weapons until the end of time because
Saddams cannot be disinvented. Furthermore, nuclear policies demand
both policy-making secrecy and the cultivation of cultures willing in
some circumstances to carry out genocidal threats. Such characteristics as
these are antithetical to the concern for the individual, the democratic
assumptions, and the emancipatory philosophy and strategies that are at
the heart of the thinking of those seeking to construct a global human
rights culture.
Third, 'militarily': Pro-nuclear advocates argue that human rights
obligations were not intended to cover nuclear weapons and that in any
case such obligations do not prevail in times of armed conflict. With
respect to the Genocide Convention, the supporters of nuclear strategies
additionally argue that the 'intent' to destroy particular groups, in whole
or in part, cannot be imputed to nuclear strategies. The counters given
to such arguments by those who believe that nuclear deterrence in its
nature is antithetical to human rights obligations are lengthy and more
complex than space allows.
In summary, the argument is made that human rights exist as positive
law, that human rights apply in armed conflicts; that human rights
prohibit the arbitrary deprivation of life while the use of nuclear
weapons necessarily leads to the arbitrary deprivation of life; that the
Genocide Convention applies in times of peace and war; that the
Convention prohibits the systematic killing of members of certain groups
and nuclear weapons would in certain cases be used to this end; and that
the intent to commit genocide can be inferred from the predictable
consequences of carrying out nuclear threats.8
The culture of nuclearism is therefore fundamentally posed against
the culture of human rights - psychologically, politically and militarily.
Human rights policies provide global civil society with a litmus test, a
strategy and a goal in terms of cultivating a vocabulary, practices and
forms of global governance which give some hope of inventing social
humans out of physical humans in this dislocating, industrialised, and
globalised age. The nuclearist paradigm has been under challenge in
various ways since the mid-1980s, but its replacement by a firmly
embedded global human rights culture and meaningful 'cosmopolitan
democracy' 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 International
and Human Rights Watch testify.9 In the presence of so many human
wrongs it is not surprising that one of the themes of Amnesty's publicity
through the 50th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR) has been to describe the UDHR as 'the world's
best kept secret'.
If, as argued above, nuclearism in its nature is antithetical to the
theory and practice of human rights, and if a human rights culture is
essential for that progress in global justice that must be part of any
comprehensive notion of security, then the significance of this clash of
cultures is evident. It is part of the central problematic of the post-Cold
War world, because its outcome will help determine whether security on
all levels is enhanced on a global scale in the decades to come. Will we
live in a community of fate or a community of emancipation? Will we
continue to replicate nuclear insecurity communities, or can we
construct 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 the
inadequacy of compartmentalising nuclear issues - questions relating to
nuclear policies, strategies, and attempts to control such weapons simply in terms of 'defence' policy. Nuclear matters, by their intrusive
character, are broad, interpenetrating contemporary culture as well as
policy-making in other issue areas, and deep, forcing us to ask
fundamental questions about global politics. The fundamental questions
that they raise require concrete answers, addressing both long-term goals
and short-term pragmatics. This penultimate section examines some
practicalities relating to the construction of security in ways that start to
move away from the traps of the past.
Security in the context of world politics consists of people(s) being or
feeling free of threats that challenge their existence in some fundamental
way, and hence determine how they must live in order to survive. These
threats 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). Security
begins with threat(s), but its essence is choice - and so it is intimately
related to emancipation. One of the paradoxical implications of this, for
example, is that being secure allows a person to choose danger. Only
those who are secure have the time, the material resources, and the
opportunity 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 life
determined. So, security is an instrumental concept or condition. It is a
state of being (subjective or objective) that gives people as individuals or
groups the opportunity to try to achieve other things. In particular, in
relation to the present discussion, it gives people(s) the opportunity to
develop peace as a sustainable political (and cultural) practice.10
Security is not therefore synonymous with the absence of danger at
the individual level, and in terms of world politics security is not simply
synonymous with peace. This is evident from the fact that a significant
degree of security was felt within the United States during the final stages
of the Second World War: by this point everybody knew that the US
homeland was safe and that its core values would be triumphant. Equally,
that peace is not simply synonymous with security was evident from the
high degree of insecurity felt in Britain during the increasingly uneasy
peace of the late 1930s. The central point for the present argument is
that peace which is other than a mere absence of war - usually called
'positive' as opposed to 'negative' peace - depends upon the prioritising
and predictability of peaceful practices. In other words, the construction
of comprehensive security - moving towards freedom from threats at all
levels - creates space for the growth of sustainable peaceful practices.
Kenneth Boulding called this 'stable peace', which he defined as 'a
situation in which the probability of war is so small that it does not really
enter into the calculations of any of the people involved.'11
It is one thing to talk about such matters in the abstract; it is another
to develop them in practical political ways. In this light traditional
thinking about security (focusing on the state, military power, and the
preservation of the status quo) can only deliver what Boulding defined
as 'unstable peace', a negative peace resting only on the threat of force.
One historic example of imagining, constructing, and then practising
security in ways that have actually delivered stable peace is evident in the
development of Western European integration, discussed in Part One. In
this case, and increasingly in others, at the heart of the broader and
deeper conception of security is the idea of political community12 - the
belief that 'community' can have real purchase in political practices at all
levels, 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 'international
community', which governments and opinion-groups of all types employ
when they want to elevate the pursuit of their own interests and projects
to 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 euphemism

employed by a dominant nation in a multi-national state). Some analysts
do not think community is an idea that travels well: traditional realists
consider that political community can extend no further than the
boundaries of sovereign states, while ethical communitarians contest the
idea of universalism in human rights and cosmopolitanism in identity.
These points all serve as useful warnings against sloppy thinking about
community as a political panacea, but they do not deter a growing body
of opinion from regarding the construction of community - with its
centripetal dynamics of multi-faceted interaction, shared interests and
identity, and the spread of moral and political obligation - as central to
the project of global governance.14
Expressed in concrete form, the construction of 'security
communities' best conveys the philosophy of security underlying this
article and gives most empirical reality to Boulding's hope of 'stable
peace'. A security community was originally defined by Karl Deutsch and
his co-workers as a group of people who had become 'integrated' in the
sense of having developed a 'sense of community', with a shared belief
that common problems 'must and can' be resolved by 'peaceful change'
and by having the appropriate 'institutions and practices strong enough
and widespread enough' to bring this about." Even more so than when
Deutsch and his co-workers developed the concept in the 1950s, the
integration of Western Europe is the model for the idea: it shows there
can be 'politics among nations', to borrow the title of Morgenthau's
account of the classic conflictual world,16 while in a condition of stable
peace. In other words, international politics are not fated to be an
everlasting game played by Napoleons and Hitlers: a condition of stable
peace is both conceivable and possible, in which state interaction is not
organised around the threat and use of military force. This has been the
condition of Western Europe since the late 1940s. International relations
between the former war-like tribes of Western Europe (and now beyond
this core) take place, but in a context which is no longer determined by
the deployment of armies, navies and air forces against each other.
Military strategy has been superseded in favour of a commitment to
harmonise interests, compromise differences and reap mutual rewards.
Security is constructed through community, not deterrence.
Communication for Deutsch was the essence of the construction of
community. He identified several distinctive characteristics in a security
community, and it is these that must be constructed in the promotion of
security and community in other world regions, and between Western
Europe and other developing or actual security communities. The
characteristics are: mutual compatibility of values; strong economic ties

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and expectations of more; multi-faceted social, political, and cultural

transactions; a growing degree of institutionalised relationships; mutual
responsiveness; and mutual predictablity of behaviour. The defining test
of whether a proper 'sense of community' had been established is
whether the units target each other with their military power.
Subsequent thinkers about security communities, notably Adler and
Barnett, have added refinements and empirical flesh to the original idea.
For present purposes, however, two considerations should be clear from
the definition of a security community. First, nuclear targeting is
incompatible with the growth of a global network of mutually responsive
security communities. Second, the idea of human rights is integral to the
cultivation of key elements in contemporary political communitybuilding, especially for example in relation to the promotion of shared
values and mutual responsiveness (the role of the European Court of
Human Rights has been of great significance in the ideals and practices
of European community-building).
It has been argued that nuclearism is antithetical to the spread of the
practices of stable peace. Mutual targeting based on deterrent threats of
ultimate violence is not compatible with community-building at any level
of world politics. In direct contrast, the idea of a human rights culture
rests on a conception of common humanity, though in practice its
flourishing is confronted by great obstacles, for we live in a multicultural as well as a multi-state world. Furthermore, it is part of an
approach to the construction of security in which the negotiation of
justice is paramount, as opposed simply to the arithmetic of military
power. Clearly, therefore, the global dimension of security community
building requires sustained policies aiming to achieve both a universal
human rights culture and a nuclear weapons-free world (NWFW). The
former does not mean some false universalism, characterised by only one
conception of how people(s) can behave; and so movement towards this
goal has to be relatively slow. The latter, on the other hand, must be
pursued with some urgency, lest the situation deteriorate even further
than was discussed in Part One. Above all, developing or developed
security communities should not become nuclearised super-states, or
traditional insecurities and dynamics would simply be transferred from
the level of states to a higher level, that of continental or sub-continental
regions. Comprehensive global security cannot be constructed on the
foundations of nuclear deterrence; however, as was argued above and in
Part One, an important set of processes in developing towards such a
goal would be generated by the synergy between the institutionalising of
nuclear abolition and the construction of security communities. The very
commitments, routine processes, decision-making structures, and

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networks of interest necessary to carrying out the elimination of the

most destructive weapons ever devised would in themselves be a
powerful motor for community-building, both regionally and globally.
If governments actively pursued their rhetorical commitment to
nuclear elimination over several decades, such institutionalisation with a
purpose might come to match at the global level the progression of the
regional dynamic in Western Europe that led to the sequence: Coal and
Steel Community/Common Market/ European Community/European
Union. Interdependence, common decision-making structures,
confidence-building, and habits of co-operation could positively interact
in ways that would change the whole context in which the decision to
move to the final abolition of nuclear weapons could take place. In
international relations, as in life in general, what is defined as 'necessary'
and what is deemed to be 'possible' is context-dependent; and contexts
can be changed. It was not feasible, for example, to institute a common
currency in Western Europe when the Treaty of Rome was signed; 40
years later it was. Today, by analogy, several key governments seem only
able to believe that nuclear disarmament can safely go as low as a few
thousand warheads. However, if that level could be achieved, then
moving down to a situation of true minimum deterrence, with no more
than a hundred warheads or less, might then be easily conceivable.
Getting rid of these last few might not seem feasible, because of what
some governments and their supporters believe these weapons represent
in terms of sovereignty, symbolism and security. However, if it did prove
possible for states to negotiate down to the last one hundred warheads
or so, we would then be in a quite different nuclear world than the one
we inhabit at present. At that point nuclearism would be in terminal
decline; there would by necessity be different strategic axioms and
common sense, new transparency and trust, and progress towards an
international community worth its name. In terms of the analogy with
the EU, states would have moved from the Coal and Steel Community
to Maastricht. The elimination of nuclear weapons and the construction
of mutual security would be mutually reinforcing projects. The final step,
the elimination of the last nuclear devices, would appear a relatively
small step after sustained community-building, not the enormous one it
seems to be today.
The significance of these arguments in favour of a community
approach can be illustrated by a comparison between South America and
South Asia in terms of positive and negative synergy between nuclear
posturing and the prospect of regimes of co-operation and peaceful
practices. 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, which
looked for a period as though their regional ambitions would take a
nuclear and confrontational form, suggests that the co-operative
practices associated with building regional security regimes such as
NWFZs can play a significant part in achieving a move from potential
adversary status to that of potential community-partners.
There are always special regional circumstances working either
towards or against closer association, but a common feature of successful
community-building is the realisation by elites that their own country's
security is inextricably linked to, and is defined by, those around them.
This occurred in South America in the 1980s, when a transformation
took place in the insecurity landscape, from the tensions and suspicions
of the earlier period through a rapprochement leading eventually to the
embracing of non-nuclear norms. Not least of the lessons to be derived
from this experience is the important reminder that states can learn how
to develop co-operative security practices out of what might appear to
be intractably hostile relationships. There were various propitious
circumstances in South America: historical, socio-cultural, geographical
and political. But what made the difference was the increasing awareness
of the costs and risks of attempting to construct security on the basis of
the unilateral pursuit of the 'national interest'. Through a growing
understanding of each other's legitimate security concerns, the key states
in the region, Argentina and Brazil, learned that their existing national
security policies were proving counter-productive, and that for security
to be sustainable, it had to take a decisively co-operative turn.
If states in a potential nuclear confrontation in South America could
learn such security common-sense, why not those in South Asia? From
South America, and other parts of the world, there is now a considerable
body of useful experience to help operationalise fine words about
community-building, in terms of the pragmatics of improving dialogue,
achieving greater transparency in policy actions and declarations,
initiating and reciprocating confidence-building measures and the
implementation of non-offensive defence postures, developing security
guarantees, and bringing about the inter-meshing of global norms and
regional practices. Sceptics and critics, of course, will immediately point
to South America in the 1980s as a special case. Those on the other hand
who want to see a role model in this case must of course guard against
carefree generalisation. At the minimum, though, we can confidently say
that the denuclearisation of inter-state relations in South America is a
very suggestive case. It shows that in the construction of regional security
landscapes, the synergy between military postures and political outcomes

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can be positive as well as negative, that broader rather than narrower

ways of dealing with security (avoiding compartmentalising defence
policy issues from security issues) can be successful, and that pessimism
is not always justified. Western European integration - another special
case - is also suggestive. Neither the case of Western Europe or South
America guarantee that similar outcomes can be replicated elsewhere,
but they do offer political encouragement and useful lessons for those
who seek to construct a more secure global environment. After all, the
Western European security community grew out of a historic cockpit of
war, while the developing security community in South America is
growing out of a historic cockpit of militarism and authoritarianism.
These cases, where stable peace is now more of a regional reality than
ever before - though obviously they are not at the same stage, nor are
they necessarily destined to become so - again forces us to ask: who are
the real realists when it comes to building security? Is it those
traditionalist governments and their supporters, trapped in regressive
mindsets, who continue to answer tomorrow's questions with
yesterday's answers? Or is it the demonstrators in Ramallah calling for
greater justice in the Middle East, the TP2000 campaigners in Britain
calling for nuclear elimination, and those rare governments that will
listen to arguments in favour of pursuing policies committed justice and
comprehensive security, and who will then try to put these ideas into
operation with determination and consistency?
FROM A MAD TO A SANE WORLD?

One persistent theme of this article has been the disappointed hopes that
attended the end of the Cold War with respect to nuclear weapons.
There was a unanimous desire that nuclear deterrence would never again
be the eyeball-to-eyeball pre-occupation of the era of Strangelove. But
the Low Salience Nuclear (LSN) world of the marginalisers has proved
victim to their own complacency. The ostentatious nuclearisation of
Indo-Pakistani relations in 1998 was final confirmation of the view of
the critics of LSN that zero nuclear weapons is the most rational goal.
Something must therefore be done, and quickly, if we are to avoid a
backwards race into nuclear history.
If progress is to be made, purposeful agents are essential. This
concluding section will briefly concentrate on Britain, though each
nuclear power, potential nuclear power, and committed anti-nuclear
state has its own space in terms of advancing the project of eliminating
nuclear weapons.18 Britain is a particularly interesting case, however: it
is 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 for
making the latter claim: Labour does, at least, have a rhetorical
commitment to global nuclear disarmament, a history of opposition to
nuclear weapons, and supporters and MPs who have strong anti-nuclear
credentials; 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 that
any future British government would seek to purchase another
generation of 'independent' nuclear weapons, and certainly no
government would today be contemplating developing nuclear weapons
from scratch if it did not already possess them (furthermore, the
difficulties facing Britain as an independent nuclear power will grow if
the United Kingdom dissolves as a sovereign state in the next 10-20
years); Britain has the freedom of being very secure from the threat of
territorial aggression; if a British government decided to take a lead in
nuclear disarmament it has the weaponry and scientific expertise to help
develop the most sophisticated inspection systems using its own
capabilities as a test-bed; finally, its 'ethical' foreign policy and
commitment to be a force for good in the world implies a determination
to be active, to prioritise human rights, and to establish a set of standards
by which it can be judged.19 For these reasons the British government
might not be totally resistant to being pressed to act, and if it did, it could
be 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 former
includes the possibility of building upon some of the positive
developments of the 1990s. These include: progress in some nuclear
arms control forums (the NPT, the CTBT, and START); the reversal in
the nuclear policies of a number of states, notably South Africa
(following the earlier reversal by Argentina and Brazil); the halting of the
plans of North Korea and Iraq; the relinquishing by several former
Soviet republics, now independent states, of their nuclear 'inheritance';
the establishment of NWFZs in Africa and Southeast Asia; the
marginalisation to some degree of nuclear deterrence, nuclear diplomacy
and nuclear strategies in the national security policies of the major
nuclear powers; and the strong and growing support from experts for a
NWFW (including experts in the United States, which will remain the
key state in shaping what happens in this issue-area).
On the negative side, British public life in the 1990s offers another
catalogue of the regressive attitudes towards nuclear disarmament
mentioned in Part One. Nuclear amnesia is evident at the level of public
opinion. There has been very low interest in nuclear matters: this silence
was 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, in
public debate, and on TV and radio. Rare and partial exceptions were
mentioned earlier. At the official level, complacency was exposed in the
misleadingly entitled Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of 1998, which
reviewed everything except the most important strategic questions.20
Typically, while the SDR trundled away, worrying about issues such as
the future of the Territorial Army - important to a degree, but not the
pinnacle of twenty-first century strategic issues - the hard questions
surrounding NATO expansion/enlargement, relations with the United
States, the future of Trident, and the dangers of WMD in general were
skirted around.21 The SDR in effect was final proof that New Labour had
normalised old thinking on the British bomb. Ethic cleansing has been
evident in the way the government, which contains many individuals
with strong anti-nuclear credentials in the past, has ignored talking about
nuclear issues unless really pressed (which has been very rarely).
Significantly, neither the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, nor the FCO in
general, saw the implications of Britain's nuclear deterrent posture as a
central issue to discuss in relation to the ethical foreign policy they
announced just after the election in 1997. Intellectually as well as
politically, the nuclear issue was compartmentalised from other issues of
foreign and security - and indeed defence - policy. Complacency could
be seen in the apparently easy manner in which some former Labour
radicals in Opposition became socialised into attitudes about defence
that sounded remarkably like their predecessors. The shift to
'multilateralism' proved not only to be a tactic to remove the nuclear
issue from the defence debate preceding the 1997 general election - seen
as an area of potential electoral weakness - but also part of an embracing
of the well-established British tactic of claiming to want to reach
harbour, but in fact postponing nuclear disarmament indefinitely by
moving at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy. The embracing of
traditionalist approaches to military/security questions on the part of
New Labour seemed confirmed by the evident enthusiasm with which
the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his key ministers, grasped their
military roles during the 1998 Gulf crises.22
If the thinking of New Labour and of old Whitehall has generally
revealed the regressive side of the 1990s Western nuclear mindset, there
has been contrary evidence in some (though certainly not all) sections of
British civil society. Britain contains several of the experts who have
contributed powerfully to anti-nuclear arguments. Prominent among
these have been Nobel Prize winner (1995) Joseph Rotblat, former Chief
of the Defence Staff Field Marshal Sir Michael Carver, former Royal
Navy Commander and Soviet specialist Michael MccGwire, and nuclear

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physicist Frank Barnaby.23 Furthermore, the tradition of conscientious

and international law-based direct action has been kept alive by the
TP2000 campaign.24 Although the opinions represented by such
individuals and groups as those just mentioned are of significance in any
serious discussion about the future of British nuclear policy, they do not
presently constitute anything approaching a sufficiently powerful critical
mass to disturb New Labour's priorities - of which taking a lead in global
nuclear disarmament has not been one.
The prospects for purposeful action by the New Labour government
on nuclear disarmament are not encouraging, therefore, but they are not
utterly bleak; and there is still time to do something, before nuclear
'realism' reinvents itself in even more dangerous forms than on the
Indian sub-continent. But at this stage, words are less convincing than
ever on the part of the existing nuclear powers; they must be backed up
by persuasive actions. If the LSN framework is not to disintegrate
completely over the next ten years, the nuclear powers must act in a
much more persuasive way to show that they are committed to the
strategic rationality of the abolition of nuclear weapons. What is critical
in this respect is the generation of the positive synergy discussed in Part
One between denuclearisation and confidence-building within a
comprehensive notion of security. If the context can be changed, so can
what is thought to be conceivable.
One immediate step the British government could take, which would
help to reinvigorate the process discussed throughout this article, might
be called SANE 2000. Britain is certainly not the only state that could
initiate such a move, but for the reasons suggested at the start of this
section, there are some advantages in Britain doing it, and it is in line
with the highest aspirations of the Labour government, if Tony Blair was
genuine 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 The
idea is that the British government would make as the centre-piece of its
security policy, at the very outset of the twenty-first century, a dramatic
and public commitment to eliminate the WMD which deform politics
among nations and one day will perhaps destroy significant portions of
them. How can we talk of 'international society', let alone an
'international community', when the hardest currency of all in their
inter-relationships consists of genocidal threats? As early as possible in
January 2000 therefore, there should be a meeting of heads of
government from as many countries as possible, to make a commitment
to 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 how
such a commitment might then proceed: with longer or shorter timetables, different sequencing steps, and more or less flexibility.26 The
crucial requirement at this juncture is to start moving forward in a
comprehensive way. If we are to avoid further shock-waves on the lines
of the May 1998 India/Pakistan explosions, the nuclear Haves must
attempt to persuade the Have-nots and especially the Might-gets that
they are really serious about their commitments to nuclear disarmament
- and not just the verbal ones, but also the written one in the Treaty for
the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The aim of SANE2000
would be to make a highly visible, symbolic and formal commitment, at
the start of the new century, to the achievement of nuclear elimination.
It would be a commitment to which governments could be held
accountable; it would set out a preliminary blueprint and timetable; and
its language and symbolism would seek to contribute to the delegitimising of the MAD mindset. In such ways it would be a way of kickstarting the institutions and processes that would help create positive
synergy between weapons control and confidence-building, between the
institutionalising of radical disarmament and the strengthening of a lawgoverned international community, and between rethinking security
common-sense and founding new forms of global governance. The
predictable consequence of today's so-called international community
failing to construct such a global security strategy, in which the
elimination of weapons of mass destruction must be central, will be to
reproduce yet another international insecurity community, but this time
possibly in even less fortuitous historical circumstances than those that
developed during the Cold War - history's 'Great Escape'.
It was argued at the opening of Part One of this article that global
nuclear war is the possibility that could cancel out all other human
possibilities. The subsequent theme of the article has been that the
deconstruction of nuclearism is both functional and necessary for the
construction of comprehensive security. The nuclear age and the age of
human rights were born almost simultaneously, and are locked in
contestation. It is too early, only a half century on, to know which will
eventually triumph. What is certain, however, is that the construction of
a global human rights culture, which it was claimed earlier is the
possibility that could open up all other human possibilities, will always
be threatened as long as nuclearism is politically significant. A culture
embodied in the universal idea of the rights of the individual, provoked
by the Nazi Holocaust, can never entirely flourish, and reinvent living
globally, alongside national security postures planning a nuclear
Holocaust.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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

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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 for
Defense and Disarmament Studies, 11 issues annually).
5. The concept of 'human security' is increasing rapidly in usage. See, for example, the
UNDP Human Development Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), and
Caroline Thomas and Peter Wilkin, (eds), Globalization, Human Security & the African
Experience (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999). See also Our Global
Neighborhood. The Report of The Commission on Global Governance (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995).
6. The latest significant contribution to thinking about security communities is Emanuel
Adler and Michael Barnett (eds), Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998). An early contribution to the idea of 'cosmopolitan democracy'
is Daniele Archibugi and David Held, Cosmopolitan Democracy. An Agenda for a New
World Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
7. This is the general theme of Ken Booth, 'Three Tyrannies' in Tim Dunne and Nicholas
J. Wheeler, (eds), Human Rights in Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999) pp.31-70.
8. M. Weller, The Inadequacy of Arguments Presented to the International Court of
Justice in the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinions' (unpublished paper, 1997,
presented at the Council For Arms Control & Just Defence Annual Seminar, 'Achieving
a Sustainable Peace', 16 February 1998, King's College, London.
9. See The Amnesty International UK Annual Review, Amnesty International Annual
Report, 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 empirical
chapters in Ken Booth (ed.), Security, Community and Emancipation. Critical Security
Studies 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 Andrew
Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community. Ethical Foundations of the PostWestphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998). For a variety of critical perspectives
see 'Forum on The Transformation of Political Community', Review of International
Studies, 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 (New
York: Knopf, 1978).

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17. The argument below relies heavily upon Simon Davies, 'Community versus
Deterrence: Approaches to Security and Non-Proliferation in Latin America and South
Asia', 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 Nuclear
Weapons, Fissile Materials, Arms Control and Disarmament Policy, No.3).
19. On the latter point, see Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne, 'Good International
Citizenship: 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 The
Strategic 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 the
government was such that it brought back memories of the US diplomat a generation
ago who talked of enjoying and being elated by crises. See Phil Williams, 'Crisis
management', 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 December
1998; Jonathan Schell, The Gift of Time. The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons
Now (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 TP2000
campaign can be followed in the newsletter, Speed the Plough ... and on its website at
http://www/gn/apc.org/tp2000/. The campaign's operational manual, Tri-Denting It
Handbook. 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, January
1998) p. 1.
26. Ibid., Parts II and III contain some useful ideas, together with further references. See
also 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 on
Fissile Materials: The Next Steps (London: ISIS, July 1997. Special ISIS Report on the
Future of UK Nuclear Weapons, Fissile Materials, Arms Control and Disarmament
Policy, No.2).