Casting the atomic canon: (R)evolving nuclear strategy

Kjølv Egeland,Hebatalla Taha,Thomas Fraise

doi:10.1017/eis.2021.35

Abstract

AbstractLooming decisions on arms control and strategic weapon procurements in a range of nuclear-armed states are set to shape the international security environment for decades to come. In this context, it is crucial to understand the concepts, theories, and debates that condition nuclear policymaking. This review essay dissects the four editions of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, the authoritative intellectual history of its subject. Using this widely acclaimed work as a looking glass into the broader field of nuclear security studies, we interrogate the field's underlying assumptions and question the correspondence between theory and practice in the realm of nuclear policy. The study of nuclear strategy, we maintain, remains largely committed to an interpretive approach that invites analysts to search for universal axioms and to abstract strategic arguments from the precise circumstances of their occurrence. While this approach is useful for analysing the locutionary dimension of strategic debates, it risks obscuring the power structures, vested interests, and illocutionary forces shaping nuclear discourse. In the conclusion, we lay out avenues for future scholarship.

Highlights

In the preface to the second edition of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, published in 1989, Lawrence Freedman concluded that ‘the intellectual exhaustion of nuclear strategy’ had been ‘matched by its political exhaustion’.1 The period since, it would seem, has proved restorative
The study of nuclear strategy, we maintain, remains largely committed to an interpretive approach that invites analysts to search for universal axioms and to abstract strategic arguments from the precise circumstances of their occurrence
Turning to epistemology, we maintain that both The Evolution and field of nuclear security studies more broadly remain wedded, by and large, to an interpretive approach that conceives the ‘classic texts’ of nuclear strategy as impartial contributions to a search for universal insight, often abstracting interventions and arguments from their economic, cultural, and political circumstances. This approach, we maintain, is useful for inspecting the locutionary dimension of strategic debates, but risks obscuring the power structures, vested interests, and illocutionary forces shaping the evolution of nuclear strategy

Summary

Introduction

In the preface to the second edition of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, published in 1989, Lawrence Freedman concluded that ‘the intellectual exhaustion of nuclear strategy’ had been ‘matched by its political exhaustion’.1 The period since, it would seem, has proved restorative. Turning to epistemology, we maintain that both The Evolution and field of nuclear security studies more broadly remain wedded, by and large, to an interpretive approach that conceives the ‘classic texts’ of nuclear strategy as impartial contributions to a search for universal insight, often abstracting interventions and arguments from their economic, cultural, and political circumstances. This approach, we maintain, is useful for inspecting the locutionary dimension of strategic debates, but risks obscuring the power structures, vested interests, and illocutionary forces shaping the evolution of nuclear strategy. The conclusion suggests avenues for future research, highlighting the importance of a contextualised understanding of nuclear concepts and an embrace of counterfactual analysis

Nuclear thought and the evolution of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy

The history of nuclear thought as intellectual history

Reimagining nuclear security studies