Performing Nuclear Weapons: How Britain Made Trident Make Sense

✍ Scribed by Paul Beaumont

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 250
• Series: Palgrave Studies in International Relations
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book investigates the UK’s nuclear weapon policy, focusing in particular on how consecutive governments have managed to maintain the Trident weapon system. The question of why states maintain nuclear weapons typically receives short shrift: its security, of course. The international is a perilous place, and nuclear weapons represent the ultimate self-help device. This book seeks to unsettle this complacency by re-conceptualizing nuclear weapon-armed states as nuclear regimes of truth and refocusing on the processes through which governments produce and maintain country-specific discourses that enable their continued possession of nuclear weapons. Illustrating the value of studying nuclear regimes of truth, the book conducts a discourse analysis of the UK’s nuclear weapons policy between 1980 and 2010. In so doing, it documents the sheer imagination and discursive labour required to sustain the positive value of nuclear weapons within British politics, as well as providing grounds for optimism regarding the value of the recent treaty banning nuclear weapons.

✦ Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
1 Introduction: Problematising the Maintenance of Nuclear Weapons
Theorising Nuclear Regimes of Truth
The UK Case: Acquiring, Maintaining and Renewing Trident
British Nuclear Puzzles
Objectives & Outline
References
2 Explaining Britain’s Bombs
Introduction
Competing Explanations: Security, Status, Domestic Politics, & Identity
Security Explanations
The Hollowness of Security Explanations
Towards a Discourse Analysis of British Nuclear Policy
Status Explanations
Status vs. Security: The Wrong Question
Domestic Politics Explanation
Identity Explanations
Mid-Chapter Review
Post-Positivist Nuclear Sign Posts
British Post-Positivist Nuclear Research
Concluding the Review
References
3 Nuclear Regimes of Truth
Introduction
Discourse and Nuclear Regimes of Truth
Discourses May Be Reproduced, Stable but Never Fixed
Structure, Agency; Patterns, and Improvisation
Discourse, Context, and History
Back to International Relations: Nuclear Regimes of Truth
Analysing Foreign Policy Discourse
The Foreign Policy/Identity Nexus
Internal Instability
External Constraints
Challenges
Stabilisation Strategies
Analysing Identity
Expanding the Scope of the Foreign Policy/Identity Nexus
Degrees of Otherness and Status Seeking
Developing the Nexus: Theorising Policy Representations
Representing Policies: Metaphors We Think with
Towards the Analysis
References
4 Constructing the Nuclear Weapon Problem
Introduction
The Nuclear Era: Representing Destruction
Nuclearist Discourse
Management Strategies: Deterrence and Arms Control
Deterrence at Work: “Nuclear Peace”
Proliferation Begets Peace
The Anti-Nuclearist Discourse
Risk of Nuclear War
Questioning “Nuclear Peace”
Imagining Nuclear Apocalypse
The Nuclear Debate: It Will Only End When It Ends
Nuclear Policy Practice: Compromising Utopia
Nuclear Institutions: An Unstable Solution
Struggling to Stabilise International Nuclear Policy Discourse
Conclusion
References
5 Thatcher’s Nuclear Regime of Truth
Introduction
Thatcher’s Nuclear Regime of Truth
The Nuclear Weapons Problem: Disinventable but Manageable
Representing the Enemy: The Soviet Threat
Soviet Union’s Aggressive Intentions
The Soviet Union’s Ideology and Expansionism
Representing the Soviet Union’s Military Power
Representing the Soviet Union’s Deceitfulness
Representing the Soviet Union’s Good Side
The Soviet’s Identity in the UK’s Nuclear Discourse
Representing the Self: The UK’s Nuclear Identity
Performing the UK’s Nuclear Identity
The UK’s NATO Identity Vis-a-Vis France’s
Junior Partner: The UK Self and the US Other
The UK’s Ethical Identity: Passing Responsibility for the “Arms Race”
A Uniquely Western Ethical Dilemma
Summary of UK Selves and Others
Linking the Self and the Other: Representing Britain’s Nuclear Policy
Thatcher’s Security Logic of Legitimacy
Breaking the Normal Rules of Politics
Labour’s Challenge
Performing the UK’s Nuclear Peace Correlation
Representing Nuclear Weapons: “Independent Deterrents” or “Tools of Blackmail”?
Representing US Interventions
Instabilities in Thatcher’s Nuclear Peace Correlation
Concluding Thatcher’s Nuclear Regime of Truth
References
6 Blair’s Nuclear Regime of Truth
The Interlude: Changing External Constraints
Replacing the Soviet Union: Imagining New Others
The New Nuclear Weapon Problem: Now Solvable
The Urgent Proliferation Narrative
The New Nuclear Geography: Global Society Self vs the Proliferating Other
Defining the Agenda and the Other for the International Community
Mid-Section Review: The Identity Nexus Without the Policy
Representing the UK’s Nuclear Policy
The Legal Logic of Legitimacy’s New Primacy
Gordon Brown Wrestles with Disarmament
Marginalising Unilateral Disarmament and Passing the Multilateral Buck
Prefect Logic of Legitimacy
Counting Bombs Narrative
Minimum Deterrence & the Counting Bombs Narrative
Nukespeak: The Nuclear Insurance Metaphor
Usage
Deterring or Insuring?
Filing an Insurance Claim Vs. Nuclear Retaliation
Stopping the Proliferation of Insurance Policies
Insuring the UK and Stabilising the Foreign Policy/Identity Nexus
Remaining Instabilities
Concluding New Labour’s Nuclear Regime of Truth
Trident Epilogue
References
7 Conclusion
Breaking Down Britain’s Nuclear Regime of Truth and Putting It Back Together Again
Maintaining the UK’s Ethical Identity
Nuclear Myopia and Nuclear Empathy (or Lack Thereof)
Moving from Security to Legal Legitimacy
Seeking Status from Nuclear Weapons and Disarmament
Performing the Nuclear Peace Correlation
Implications for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)
Problematising the Maintenance of Nuclear Weapons: A Research Agenda
References
Appendix: Methodological Reflections
Research Design
Texts, Reading, and Analytical Procedures
Limitations
Constructing the UK’s Nuclear Regime of Truth
References
Index