The diplomacy of resistance: power, hegemony and nuclear disarmament

ABSTRACT

The humanitarian initiative for nuclear disarmament has challenged and transformed global nuclear politics. Aimed at delegitimising nuclear weapons as acceptable instruments of statecraft, the initiative has been backed by many civil society organisations and most non-nuclear-weapon states. The nuclear-weapon states, however, have opposed the initiative, accusing it of undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and destabilising nuclear politics. Conceptualising a ‘diplomacy of resistance’, this article positions the humanitarian initiative as a transnational social movement and traces its development through practices of resistance and counter-resistance. Drawing on Robert Cox’s conception of resistance as counter-hegemonic and Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall’s taxonomy of power, the article explores the nexus of power and resistance in global nuclear politics. We explain the humanitarian movement’s specific aims and practices as a function of its champion’s relative political weakness vis-à-vis the nuclear-weapon states. The movement’s coherence and effectiveness, in turn, was fostered by a coalitional logic that allowed different identities of resistance to be steered towards a nuclear ban treaty within the UN’s institutional framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear weapons
• power
• diplomacy
• resistance
• disarmament

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Nick Ritchie researches and teaches in the areas of international relations and international security at the University of York. His particular focus is on nuclear disarmament, proliferation and arms control and US and UK national security.

Kjølv Egeland is a DPhil candidate in International Relations at Wadham College, Oxford. Egeland focuses on the dynamics of multilateral disarmament diplomacy and international security. His doctoral thesis ‘Institutional Development in Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament’ explores how diplomatic practices and international institutions change over time.

ORCID

Nick Ritchie http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6397-7498

Kjølv Egeland http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9818-698X

Notes

1 Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 1–38.

2 See Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in Global Governance’, in Power in Global Governance, ed. Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–32; and Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’, International Organization 59, no. 1 (2005): 35–79.

3 We use the term ‘nuclear-weapon states’ in the context of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and its formal recognition of the US, UK, Russia, France and China as ‘Nuclear-Weapon States’. We use the term nuclear-armed states to describe the category of states in global politics armed with nuclear weapons (capturing India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea).

4 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 142.

5 Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power in Global Governance’, 23.

6 Stephen Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World Order (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), xiv.

7 Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci’s Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 23–4.

8 See Mark Rupert, ‘Globalising Common Sense: A Marxian-Gramscian (Re-)vision of the Politics
of Governance/Resistance’, Review of International Studies 29 (2003): 181–98.

9 James Brassett, ‘British Comedy, Global Resistance’, European Journal of International Relations 22, no. 1 (2016): 174. Emphasis original.

10 Joanne P. Sharp et al., Entanglements of Power (London: Routledge, 2000), 2 and Lara M. Coleman and Karen Tucker, ‘Between Discipline and Dissent’, Globalisations 8, no. 4 (2011): 400.

11 See David C. Hoy, Critical Resistance (London: The MIT Press, 2004), 2.

12 See e.g. T.V. Paul, ‘Soft Balancing in the Age of US Primacy’, International Security 30, no. 1 (2005): 46–71.

13 Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).

14 See Iver B. Neumann, ‘Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn’, Millennium 31, no. 3 (2002): 627.

15 For a discussion in relation to concept of global civil society, see Louise Amoore and Paul Langley, ‘Ambiguities of Global Civil Society’, Review of International Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 105.

16 For example, the collection in David Armstrong, Theo Farrell, and Bice Maiguashca, eds, Governance and Resistance in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

17 For a more detailed discussion, see Nick Ritchie, ‘Understanding Global Nuclear Order, Power, and Hegemony’ (presented at the European Initiative on Security Studies Conference, University Panthéon-Assas, Paris, January 14, 2017). Contact the author for further details.

18 Peter Willetts, ‘Understanding the Place of NGOs in Global Politics’, in Non-Governmental Organisation in World Politics (London: Routledge, 2011), chap. 5, 114–62.

19 Robert Cox and Timothy Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

20 Robert Cox, ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations’, Millennium 12, no. 2 (1983): 165.

21 Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States, and World Orders’, Millennium 10, no. 2 (1982): 130.

22 Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, 1–38.

23 Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics’, International Social Science Journal 51, no. 159 (1999): 89–101.

24 William DeMars and Dennis Dijkzeul, ‘Introduction: NGOing’, in The NGO Challenge for International Relations Theory, eds DeMars and Dijkzeul (London: Routledge, 2015), 3–38.

25 David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, ‘Master Frames and Cycles of Protest’, in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol M. Mueller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 133.

26 Kjølv Egeland, ‘Punctuated Equilibrium in Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament’, Peace Review 28, no. 3 (2016): 318–25.

27 See Hugh Gusterson, ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Other in the Western Imagination’, Cultural Anthropology 14, no. 1 (1999): 111–43.

28 DeMars and Dijkzeul, ‘Introduction: NGOing’, 5.

29 Keck and Sikkink, ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks’, 93.

30 Magnus Løvold, Beatrice Fihn, and Thomas Nash, ‘Humanitarian Perspectives and the Campaign for an International Ban on Nuclear Weapons’, in Viewing Nuclear Weapons Through a Humanitarian Lens, ed. John Borrie and Tim Caughley (Geneva: UNIDIR, 2013), 147.

31 Carol Cohn, Felicity Hill, and Sara Ruddick, The Relevance of Gender for Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction (Stockholm: Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, December 2005).

32 Women and feminists have a long track record in nuclear protest and disarmament, but this has not corresponded to equal representation of women in disarmament diplomacy or gender as a focus of disarmament diplomacy. John Borrie et al., Gender, Development and Nuclear Weapons (Olso and Geneva: ILPI and UNIDIR, 2016).

33 See Elizabeth Minor, ‘Changing the Discourse on Nuclear Weapons’, International Review of the Red Cross 97, no. 899 (2015), 711–30; Alexander Kmentt, ‘Development of the International Initiative on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and its Effect on the Nuclear Weapons Debate’, International Review of the Red Cross 97, no. 899 (2015): 681–709.

34 See, in particular, Sidney Tarrow, Struggle, Politics, and Reform (Ithaca, NY: Center for International Studies, Cornell University, 1989); David S. Meyer, ‘Protest and Political Opportunities’, Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 125–45.

35 Interview with NNWS official, Geneva, January 7, 2016.

36 For example, Patricia Lewis, ‘A New Approach to Nuclear Disarmament: Learning from International Humanitarian Law Success’, ICNND Research Report No. 13 (2009); Steffen Kongstad (Director General, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), ‘A Nordic Initiative for Nuclear Abolition’, hosted by Soka Gakkai International (SGI), International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), April 15, 2009.

37 Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’, 48.

38 See Anna Holzscheiter, ‘Discourse as Capability’, Millenium 33, no. 3 (2005): 723–46.

39 See John Borrie, ‘Humanitarian Reframing of Nuclear Weapons and the Logic of a Ban’, International Affairs 90, no. 3 (2014): 625–46.

40 Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organisation 52, no. 4 (1998): 910.

41 United Nations. NPT/CONF.2010/50 (Vol. I), New York (2010), para. I(a)(v).

42 See Denise Garcia, ‘Humanitarian Security Regimes’, International Affairs 91, no. 1 (2015): 55–75.

43 Switzerland on behalf of 16 states, 2012 NPT PrepCom, Geneva, May 2, 2012, http://reachingcriticalwill.org/documents/statements?toolbar_year=2012&toolbar_forum=2&toolbar_country=217&toolbar_topic=0.

44 ILPI. ‘Counting to Zero’, 10th edition, December 2016, http://nwp.ilpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/SF_BASIC-INDICATORS-2016B_FULLC.pdf.

45 On challenging the nuclear peace hypothesis, see Benôit Pelopidas, ‘A Bet Portrayed as a Certainty’, in The War That Must Never Be Fought, ed. George P. Shultz and James E. Goodby (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2015), 5–56.

46 Espen B. Eide, Final Remarks at the Oslo Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, March 5, 2013, https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/weapons_final/id716983/.

47 Austria, statement to the 2013 NPT PrepCom, Geneva, April, 24, 2013, http://reachingcriticalwill.org/documents/statements?toolbar_year=2013&toolbar_forum=2&toolbar_country=16&toolbar_topic=0.

48 Keck and Sikkink, ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks’.

49 Ibid., 91.

50 Ibid., 91–2.

51 The Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, Article 36, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Latin America Human Security Network, Norwegian People’s Aid, PAX, Peace Boat, Swedish Physicians against Nuclear Weapons, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Zambian Healthworkers for Social Responsibility.

52 Austria, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Holy See, Egypt, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland.

53 Miles Kahler, ‘Network Politics; Power, Agency, and Governance’, in Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance, ed. Miles Kahler (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 3.

54 See Charli Carpenter, ‘Vetting the Advocacy Agenda: Network Centrality and the Paradox of Weapons Norms’, International Organization 65, no. 1 (2011): 69–102; Lara M. Coleman and Karen Tucker, ‘Between Discipline and Dissent’, Globalisations 8, no. 4 (2011): 397–410.

55 Amoore and Langley, ‘Ambiguities of Global Civil Society’, 99.

56 Campbell Craig and Jan Ruzicka, ‘The Nonproliferation Complex’, Ethics & International Affairs 27, no. 3 (2013): 329–48.

57 Interview with NNWS official, Geneva, January 7, 2016.

58 Robert Cox, ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations’, Millennium 12, no. 2 (1983): 165.

59 Tom Long, ‘Small States, Great Power? Gaining Influence Through Intrinsic, Derivative, and Collective Power’, International Studies Review 19, no. 2 (2016): 185–205. Actor-network theory has been applied to nuclear weapons and disarmament in Nick Ritchie, ‘Relinquishing Nuclear Weapons: Identities, Networks and the British Bomb’, International Affairs 86, no. 2 (2010): 465–87; Steven Flank, ‘Exploding the Black Box’, Security Studies 3, no. 2 (1993): 259–94; Mike Bourne, ‘Invention and uninvention in nuclear weapons politics’, Critical Studies on Security 4, no. 1 (2016): 6–23.

60 Magnus Løvold, Beatrice Fihn, and Thomas Nash, ‘Humanitarian Perspectives and the Campaign for an International Ban on Nuclear Weapons’, in Viewing Nuclear Weapons Through a Humanitarian Lens, ed. John Borrie and Tim Caughley (Geneva: UNIDIR, 2013), 146.

61 Matthew Bolton and Elisabeth Minor, ‘The Discursive Turn Arrives in Turtle Bay’, Global Policy 7, no. 3 (2016): 385–95.

62 Beatrice Fihn, ‘A Silent Battle for Power’, Huffington Post, September 11, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beatrice-fihn/a-silent-battle-of-power_b_8508882.html.

63 Fihn, ‘Silent Battle’.

64 ICAN, ‘Ban Nuclear Weapons’, October 2015, 4, http://www.icanw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ICAN-Australia-2015.pdf.

65 ICAN, ‘Ban Nuclear Weapons Now’, 3.

66 ICAN, statement to the UN OEWG on nuclear disarmament, Geneva, May 11, 2016, http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/public-and-parliamentary-support-for-a-treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons/.

67 E.g. ICAN (@nuclearban), tweet on June 29, 2017, https://twitter.com/nuclearban/status/880438887906148352.

68 ICAN (@nuclearban), tweet on January 22, 2017, https://twitter.com/nuclearban/status/823095142752153600.

69 Greg Mello, ‘NPT Consensus Failure a Good Thing’, Pressenza, June 10, 2015, http://www.pressenza.com/2015/06/npt-consensus-failure-a-good-thing-108-countries-pledge-to-help-ban-nuclear-weapons/ (accessed December 28, 2016); Daniela Varano and Rebecca Johnson, ‘NPT: Nuclear Colonialism Versus Democratic Disarmament’, Open Democracy, May 21, 2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/rebecca-johnson-daniela-varano/npt-nuclear-colonialism-versus-democratic-disarmament;TobiasMatern, ‘Auf UN-Agenda’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 21, 2016, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/atomwaffen-auf-un-agenda-1.3130428; Dan Zak, ‘U.N. Nuclear Conference Collapses Over WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East’, Washington Post, May 22, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/un-nuclear-conference-collapses-over-wmd-free-zone-in-the-middle-east/2015/05/22/8c568380-fe39-11e4-8c77-bf274685e1df_story.html?utm_term=.ce68d3a3b977.

70 ICAN, ‘Media Update: 70 Years Since the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’, August 2015, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi44o_D89DaAhXBb1AKHR4ZAxEQFjAAegQIABAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.icanw.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2F70-years-since-the-bombings-of-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki.docx&usg=AOvVaw3UHX8X7fdzgD-hBW1tGszd.

71 Ray Acheson, ‘Revolt’, First Committee Monitor, no 5, October 31, 2016, http://reachingcriticalwill.org/disarmament-fora/unga/2016/fcm/11259-2016-no-5.

72 Acheson, ‘Revolt’.

73 ICAN, http://www.icanw.org (accessed November 27, 2016).

74 ICAN Norway, ‘Next Stop: South Africa’, http://www.icannorway.no/campaign-news/next-stop-south-africa/#.WGK8z7GZP-Z.

75 Beatrice Fihn, ‘From Hiroshima to Marshall Islands’, Huffington Post, August 28, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beatrice-fihn/from-hiroshima-to-marshal_b_8056856.html.

76 Ray Acheson, ‘Uprising’, NPT News in Review 13, no. 17 (2015): 1–2.

77 Costa Rica, statement to the 2015 NPT RevCon, New York, May 22, 2015, http://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/npt/revcon2015/statements/22May_CostaRica.pdf.

78 Maritza Chan, ‘Non-Nuclear Weapons States Must Lead in Shaping International Norms on Nuclear Weapons’, Global Policy 7, no. 3 (2016): 408–10.

79 South Africa, statement to the 2015 NPT RevCon, New York, April 29, 2015, http://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/npt/revcon2015/statements/29April_SouthAfrica.pdf. Emphasis in original.

80 Kenya, statement to the UNGA First Committee, A/C.1/69/PV.6, New York, October 13, 2014, 7. Emphasis in original.

81 New Zealand, statement to the UNGA First Committee, A/C.1/69/PV.3, New York, October 8, 2014, 21.

82 Guatemala, A statement to the UNGA First Committee, /C.1/70/PV.11, New York, October 21, 2015, 8.

83 Shorna-Kay Richards, lecture in Mexico City, July 7, 2016, http://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Presentation-at-2016-Summer-School-on-Nuclear-Disarmament-and-Non-proliferation-FINAL-1.pdf.

84 James Brassett, ‘British Comedy, Global Resistance’, European Journal of International Relations 22, no. 1 (2016): 174. Emphasis original.

85 Nick Ritchie, ‘Valuing and Devaluing Nuclear Weapons’, Contemporary Security Policy 34, no. 1 (2013): 157.

86 Kjølv Egeland, ‘Banning the Bomb: Inconsequential Posturing or Meaningful Stigmatisation?’, Global Governance 24, no. 1 (2018): 11–20.

87 Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics’.

88 On the role of ‘agenda vetting’ in transnational advocacy networks see Louise Amoore, ‘Situating Resistance’, in The Global Resistance Reader, ed. Louise Amoore (London: Routledge, 2005), 99–102; Keck and Sikkink. ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks’.

89 UN General Assembly. ‘Taking Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations’, A/67/57, New York, January 4, 2013.

90 UN General Assembly. ‘Taking Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations’, A/71/371, New York, September 1, 2016, 18.

91 See ICAN, ‘US Pressured NATO States to Vote Not to a Ban’, November 1, 2016, http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/us-pressures-nato-states-to-vote-no-to-the-ban-treaty/.

92 Russia, statement to the UNGA First Committee, A/C.1/71/PV.22, New York, October 27, 2016, 21.

93 Lara M. Coleman and Karen Tucker, ‘Between Discipline and Dissent’, Globalisations 8, no. 4 (2011): 405.

94 Peter Willetts, Non-Governmental Organisation in World Politics (London: Routledge, 2011), 133.

95 Nick Ritchie, ‘Legitimising and Delegitimising Nuclear Weapons’, in Viewing Nuclear Weapons through a Humanitarian Lens, ed. John Borrie and Tim Caughley (Geneva: UNIDIR, 2013), 44–77.

96 Adam Bower, ‘Norms Without the Great Powers’, International Studies Quarterly 17, no. 3 (2015): 349.

97 Inis Claude, ‘Collective Legitimisation as a Political Function of the United Nations’, International Organisation 20, no. 3 (1966): 367–79.

98 Dan Plesch, ‘The South and Disarmament at the UN’, Third World Quarterly 37, no. 7 (2016): 1211.

99 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’, International Organisation 59, no. 1 (2005): 50.

100 Hannah Arendt, On Violence (London: Penguin, 1969), 42.