| Publication |
2011.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
On 5 April 2009, US President Barack Obama spoke in the Czech Republic, and the speech included the following quite extraordinary pledge: 'So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.' Obama renewed the commitment the United States had first made formally by ratifying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to work towards nuclear disarmament, and went further to indicate that the means he would use to reach that goal, in the first instance, would be bilateral arms control negotiations. This article explores the relationship between the practice of negotiated, bilateral, nuclear arms control, and the goal Obama has so clearly set of reaching a world without nuclear weapons. It argues that arms control, understood as a social practice, is ill-suited to the pursuit of nuclear disarmament; that while arms control can produce limits and even reductions in nuclear weapons, it works against the overall elimination of arms. It then sets the practice of bilateral nuclear arms control in the context of the governmental rationality, or governmentality, elaborated by Michel Foucault to argue that nuclear arms control is a governmental technology, rooted much deeper than simply a Cold War diplomatic practice. From there, the article shows that the initial products of Obama's pledge, notably the New START Treaty are another instance of this governmental practice, before concluding with some thoughts on the way towards denuclearisation without passing through Cold War arms control.
|