Imagining Disarmament, Enchanting International Relations

147 Pages·2020·1.5 MB·English

by  Matthew Breay Bolton

Imagining
Disarmament,
Enchanting
International Relations
Matthew Breay Bolton
Imagining Disarmament, Enchanting International
Relations
Matthew Breay Bolton
Imagining
Disarmament,
Enchanting
International Relations
Matthew Breay Bolton
Department of Political Science
Pace University
New York, NY, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-17715-7 ISBN 978-3-030-17716-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17716-4
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To Emily, storyteller
T D s : F
elling isarming Tories oreworD
Those who tell new stories are often unwelcome in the assemblies of offi-
cials who negotiate the shape of our international politics. If they are
allowed in the room at all, the newcomers are told to sit at the back, made
to wear “appropriate” clothing and, if given the chance to speak, are kept
within a strict time limit. As a result, conversations about technologies that
can kill thousands, even millions, of people are kept to a small, chummy
circle. The largely male, white and Western managers of our global secu-
rity architecture convey the impression that the world’s problems are
either under their control or beyond anybody’s control.
But far from unassailable, the status quo is actually fragile, riven with
contradictions. The exclusivity of political discussions on issues like nuclear
weapons betrays the anxiety and vulnerability of those in charge. They are
desperate to prevent disruption of diplomacy’s complacent humdrum,
desperate to protect their privilege. Because the arrival of new voices—
from survivors, women, doctors, youth, indigenous people, retirees, activ-
ists, artists, people from the Global South—can be profoundly
transformative.
In the years since I joined the International Campaign to Abolish
Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) as its executive director, I have been inspired by
the dedication of our global network of advocates, who, in 2017, success-
fully persuaded 122 governments to adopt a treaty prohibiting nuclear
weapons at the United Nations. As part of ICAN’s Positive Obligations
team, Matthew Bolton played a crucial role ensuring the treaty included
provisions on assistance to victims of nuclear weapons use and testing and
remediation of contaminated environments. Key to ICAN’s success was
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viii TELLING DISARMING STORIES: FOREWORD
insisting that negotiations on nuclear disarmament must be inclusive of all
states, particularly those which have rejected nuclear arsenals, as well as
civil society and those people most affected by nuclear devastation—the
survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the communities exposed to
nuclear testing. Later that year, ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
for our “work to draw attention to the catastrophic consequences” of
nuclear weapons and our “ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-
based prohibition of such weapons.”
As Matthew narrates in this book, ICAN and other global advocacy
campaigns on landmines, cluster munitions and the arms trade have suc-
ceeded at radically changing the global policy discourse around indiscrimi-
nate weapons. What we have been told was impossible by diplomats,
soldiers, policy wonks and defense intellectuals, has often turned out to be
quite possible. Military forces’ supposed legitimacy relies on their claim to
use violence with proportionality, discrimination and a sense of humanity.
By calling on governments to account for the devastating humanitarian,
human rights and environmental harm of their arsenals, campaigners have
made some of society’s most violent institutions accept lifesaving limits.
Achieving such changes is not easy. It takes unglamorous legwork and
organizing—calling hundreds of people, sitting in long meetings, arguing
about strategy and raising funds. It requires us to confront our own com-
plicity in the systems we seek to change, from where we invest our money
to the language we use. Those privileged by gender, race, class and citizen-
ship must step aside and create space for those whose stories are too often
ignored. Ultimately, it requires a determined commitment to struggle for
what is right in the face of denial and stonewalling.
In a time of growing cynicism about the possibilities of coexistence,
Matthew’s book challenges us to speak anew the enthralling tales of peace.
He wants us to look beyond the narrow bounds of nationalism to work
with those around the world who seek a more just and humane future. He
calls us to act in solidarity with those most bruised by violence. In ICAN’s
successful pursuit of a ban on the most inhumane weapons, I have seen
what regular people can do together when we dream seemingly impossible
dreams of a better world, share them with others and fight to bring them
into being.
Geneva, Switzerland Beatrice Fihn
C C : P
asT oF haraCTers reFaCe
Each night, to save her own life, Shahrazad spins a web of enthralling tales
around her murderous husband, the king. She is spared by her discursive
skill, persuading an arbitrary ruler to stay her execution. This ancient story,
from the 1001 Nights, is a potent metaphor for disarmament advocacy,
which seeks to persuade violent people to moderate their behavior.
Activists and diplomats seeking limits on technologies of violence—from
landmines to nuclear bombs—have intuited that weapons are artifacts
embedded in mythology and mystique. It is not coincidental that weapons
are dubbed Reaper, Taranis or Poseidon. Arsenals do discursive and sym-
bolic work beyond the physical violence they deploy. Arms are props in a
theater of war that casts the world as filled with monsters, from whom we
must seek protection by relying on military heroism. We, the public, are
lulled with reassurances that everything is under control and any attempt
to disrupt our reliance on killing machines would be “unrealistic.” But the
successful campaigns that banned landmines, cluster munitions and
nuclear weapons have imagined that other worlds are possible. They tell
humanizing stories of those affected by weapons and those who heal them.
They draw on religious and mythic texts to prophesy and condemn harm.
They aim to stay our collective execution.
This book engages with emerging theories of international relations
(IR) that explore the role of meaning, discourse and imagination in global
political change. Each chapter reflects on an aspect of contemporary disar-
mament activism through encounter with an analogous story from literary
tradition. Throughout, the book advocates an approach to IR that is
ix
x CAST OF CHARACTERS: PREFACE
humanistic and humane, alive to affect and dreaming. In doing so, it
challenges readers to pursue disarmament’s quixotic “impossible dream.”
Traditional IR has focused on the role of “hard power”—military and
economic might—as the driver of change in the global system. However,
scholars and practitioners of disarmament, arms control and non-
proliferation—a rather positivistic and utilitarian community—are increas-
ingly realizing the role of narrative and imagination in shaping what is
seen as possible. Therefore, this volume aims to provoke consideration of
the implications of the “discursive turn” in social science on the global
politics of arms control. In doing so, it draws on ethnographic fieldwork
in communities affected by weapons, as well as participant observation in
disarmament advocacy at the United Nations.
In “Act 1. Shahrazad: Disarming Charm”, Shahrazad, convenor of the
1001 Nights, opens the book, helping the reader to explore the role of the
beguiling story in global politics. Over the last 20 years, progressive non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), academics and activists have offered
an alternative narrative to militarism, one that frames weapons themselves
as threatening our security. Their advocacy has successfully persuaded vio-
lent people to accept limits on technologies of killing. The chapter reviews
the literature on discursive power in IR and outlines the book’s theoretical
and methodological approach.
Given the scale of global weapons stockpiles, it may seem deluded for
unarmed civilians to confront the military. However, disarmament cam-
paigns disrupt how we perceive specific weapons, transforming them
from “protectors” into “monsters” that are mala in se—“evil in them-
selves.” They do this through the “magic” of symbolic interventions and
performance. To understand these ritual dimensions of disarmament, in
“Act 2. Quixote: Tilting at Landmines” I draw on themes in Cervantes’
Don Quixote to frame a discussion about seemingly “hopeless quests.”
The Knight of the Sorrowful Figure was dismayed by modern weapons’
degradation of chivalrous conduct in war. Similarly, campaigners’ “tilt-
ing at landmines” challenges the notion that the development of weap-
ons technology is an inevitable force beyond human control. Reading
Don Quixote in the minefields offers us insight into revolt against deper-
sonalized killing. It shows the transformative potential of “magical
thinking” and absurd gestures, which undermine the rationalist assump-
tions of IR.
CAST OF CHARACTERS: PREFACE xi
The causes of the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece have long
obsessed IR scholars, who tell undergraduates that Thucydides’ proto-
realist History is the definitive ancient account. But not everyone in
Athens agreed with Thucydides’ bleak view that fear of the Other inevi-
tably leads to violence. “Act 3. Lysistrata: Meaningful Human Control”
reflects on Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata, in which the title character intu-
its that the war between Athens and Sparta has roots in political processes
that divide people along gender and cultural lines. Lysistrata organizes
women from all over Greece to occupy public spaces and refuse to have
sex with men until they end the war. I use the themes in Lysistrata to
illuminate the role of protest, economic divestment and social non-coop-
eration in disarmament campaigns, including on killer robots and nuclear
weapons. In doing so, the chapter draws on the insights of feminist IR
theory and the story of women’s occupation of the Greenham Common
nuclear weapons base.
The humanitarian discourse used to ban indiscriminate weapons has
colonial undertones, suggesting that “civilized nations” abstain from
“barbaric” ways of killing. This same “standard of civilization” language
was used to justify conducting Pacific nuclear testing in indigenous com-
munities. Portraying Pacific peoples as “primitive” and nuclear weapons as
evidence of a country’s “civilization,” colonialism and nuclear testing were
intricately intertwined. The final chapter, Act 4. Caliban and the Nuclear
Ban, uses Shakespeare’s The Tempest to demonstrate how a demeaning
“tropical island imaginary” shaped colonizers’ interactions with Pacific
peoples. But in the character of Caliban, one sees possibilities of “talking
back” to the oppressor. By the end of the play, Caliban is free and Prospero
resolves to destroy his magical staff. In pursuing nuclear disarmament,
Pacific intellectuals, diplomats and advocates have flipped the “standard of
civilization” script. The chapter questions the territorialist assumptions of
IR, exploring the contributions of post-colonial theory.
In lieu of a traditional conclusion, the book closes with an attempt to
engage directly with the creative process of storytelling. Even though I
have been trained to write social science rather than works of imagination,
in the process of writing this book, I have learned that I need to take art
seriously. It is not an indulgence to speak one’s dreams. To hide behind
the pretense of science can sometimes be cowardice. I therefore offer a
brief reimagining of the Sphinx, wondering how the myth would have