Nuclear Discourse in the 1980s: The Unravelling Conventions of the Cold War

Abstract

The power and importance of discourse conventions in the cold war are revealed through their breach. The Reagan Administration talked publicly about nuclear weapons as a way to win a nuclear war. This new mode of representing nuclear weapons breached the deterrence convention, i.e. the purpose of nuclear weapons is to avoid war, not fight war. Humanists fearful of nuclear destruction, moralists condemning the sinful nature of nuclear war, and peace activists demanding a freeze on the production of nuclear weapons challenged this discourse move and struggled to reset the parameters of the nuclear conversation. To repair this breach, the Reagan Administration advocated a strategic defense and considered abolishing nuclear weapons entirely. SDI countered the moral phrasings of the bishops and silenced the peace movement, but only by further undermining cold war conventions. Reagan's abolitionist moves breached the convention of relying on nuclear weapons to counter the threat of Soviet expansion. In this newly opened discourse space, Gorbachev challenged the most basic convention of cold war discourse, the Soviet threat, by denying the US an enemy. It is more difficult for the US to use the Soviet Union as a rationale for its policies when the Soviet threat is removed from US strategic discourse. Our analysis suggests Gorbachev was led to an alternative security vision for the superpowers by the West's loss of discursive control over nuclear weapons, which occurred when the Reagan Administration breached the conventions that tied cold war discourse together.