Inventing nuclear disarmament

ABSTRACT

The negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons forms part of the process of ‘inventing’ nuclear disarmament. Inventing nuclear disarmament necessarily entails diminishing counter-vailing ideas, norms, and practices. This includes ideas and practices of nuclear deterrence and ‘regimes of truth’ about nuclear weapons that imbue them with value. Inventing nuclear disarmament will be a continuous process rather than an end point: always contingent, always contested, always in production.

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Nick Ritchie

Nick Ritchie is lecturer in International Security at the University of York and advisor to the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. He is the author of US Nuclear Weapons Policy after the Cold War (Routledge 2009) and A Nuclear Weapons-Free World? (Palgrave Macmillan 2012).