Introduction: Problematising the Maintenance of Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

The nuclear era has prompted a great deal of investigation into how best to manage nuclear weapons, but far less on how states maintain them. Indeed, Security Studies was for a long time mainly concerned with studying nuclear weapons management strategies: deterrence, arms control, and addressing the security challenges related to new nuclear technology. Amidst this, the question of why states maintain nuclear weapons typically receives short shrift: it’s security silly. Yet, only nine nuclear weapon-armed states exist, while 186 get by without nuclear weapons, and most seem content with non-nuclear status. Thus, it makes sense to consider the few states that maintain such unpopular, yet expensive weapons to be a puzzle. Indeed, picking up and running with Nick Ritchie’s notion of “nuclear regimes of truth”, this chapter proposes a research agenda studying the discursive maintenance of nuclear weapons. That is, how governments manage to (re)produce foreign policy discourses that constitute nuclear weapons as legitimate and desirable. In short, such an approach aims to make nuclear weapon states strange. Thus, while the rest of the book explores Britain’s nuclear regime of truth, this introductory chapter lays the groundwork for post-positivist scholars to investigate and unsettle other societies’ nuclear regimes of truth too.KeywordsNuclear weaponsTridentBritish politicsBritish nuclear weaponsBritish foreign policyBritish security policyDiscourse analysis