Strategic Narrative of Nuclear Order

Project Information

SNNO

Grant agreement ID: 841764

DOI

10.3030/841764

Project closed

EC signature date 11 April 2019

Start date 1 September 2019

End date 31 August 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 184 707,84

EU contribution

€ 184 707,84

Coordinated by

FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SNNO (Strategic Narrative of Nuclear Order)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2021-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

How was the European nuclear order stabilised? SNNO investigated the emergence, projection, and contestation of the strategic narrative of nuclear order in Europe. This narrative emerged in the 1960s as the ideological foundation of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, displacing alternative visions of nuclear politics such as comprehensive disarmament and a supranational European nuclear community. Navigating between the alleged extremes of immediate abolition and unrestrained proliferation, governments in Europe and North America converged on the goal of freezing nuclear politics in its current form, at any rate as an initial solution; the nuclear order-building project of arms control and deterrence followed the European Cold War logic of stabilising the status quo to eventually overcome it. For the narrators of nuclear order – influential policymakers and defence intellectuals – the primary task of any diplomatic process should be to avert disruptive changes and secure stability through managerial control. To that end, the narrators of nuclear order promoted the ideas that nuclear weapons are indispensable for the maintenance of peace, that extended nuclear deterrence provides a bulwark against proliferation, and that nuclear risks are controllable. This narrative has since been solidified through official government communication and incorporation into high-school textbooks, policy discourse, print and broadcast media, and other cultural products. The strategic narrative of nuclear order has been most powerfully projected by members and supporters of NATO. The continuation of the policies of extended nuclear deterrence, ‘nuclear sharing’, and step-by-step arms control has come to be defined as irreplaceable elements of the alliance’s material and ontological security. Since the end of the Cold War, however, the narrative of nuclear order has collided with attempts at developing an image of Europe as a human-security oriented normative power. Moreover, the prevailing narrative is currently under pressure both by norm entrepreneurs (such as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) and technological developments that challenge the sustainability of deterrence (remote-sensing techniques and cyber capabilities in particular).

The overall objective of SNNO was to trace the emergence, projection, and contestation of the narrative of nuclear order in Europe since the 1960s. The aim was to examine how governments and state apparatuses have perpetuated the status quo through narrative, and to analyse how oppositional actors have sought to challenge the prevailing logic. In a nutshell, the project asked how European nuclear security was constituted through narrative. The project’s overall objective may be broken down into three sub-objectives: First, to conceptualise and trace the emergence of the narrative of nuclear order (1960s). Second, to demonstrate how the narrative is projected and contested through official communication, institutional practice, research funding, and public education (1970s–). And third, to demonstrate how the narrative of nuclear order has influenced policy and diplomatic postures.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project involved extensive analysis of official documents, mass media output, and nuclear expert discourse. Work performed included review and analysis of large bodies of literature, text and discourse analysis of key texts, and concept- and theory development within the field of nuclear security studies.

The project resulted in seven peer-reviewed academic articles:

Egeland, Kjølv, 'A Theory of Nuclear Disarmament: Cases, Analogies, and the Role of the Non-Proliferation Regime', Contemporary Security Policy (forthcoming).
Egeland, Kjølv, ‘The Ideology of Nuclear Order’, New Political Science 43, no. 2 (2021): 208–30.
Egeland, Kjølv, ‘Nuclear Weapons and Adversarial Politics: Bursting the Abolitionist Consensus’, Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 4, no. 1 (2021): 107–15.
Egeland, Kjølv, ‘Who Stole Disarmament? History and Nostalgia in Nuclear Abolition Discourse’, International Affairs 96, no. 5 (2020).
Egeland, Kjølv, ‘How NATO became a “nuclear” alliance’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 31, no. 1 (2020): 143–67.
Egeland, Kjølv, ‘Oslo’s “New Track”: Norwegian Nuclear Disarmament Diplomacy, 2005–2013’, Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 2, no. 2 (2019): 468–90.
Egeland, Kjølv and Benoît Pelopidas, ''European Nuclear Weapons? Zombie Debates and Nuclear Realities', European Security 30, no. 2 (2021): 237-258.

The project further resulted in a number of op-eds and commentary pieces, published in a wide selection of wide-distrubution dailies, magazines, and scholarly outlets (Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament; Medicine, Conflict and Survival; Just Security; The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Moyen Orient; Morgenbladet).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project has offered six main contributions: First, SNNO provided a first application of the concept of strategic narratives to nuclear policymaking. Scond, correcting the ‘major power-centric’ bias of the literature on nuclear policymaking, SNNO has contributed to broadening the analytical scope to uncover how European actors and institutions co-narrate the prevailing nuclear order. In a broader sense, SNNO contributed to the interdisciplinary study of how international actors wield power through communication and productive power. Third, investigating the ways in which hegemonic narratives have been challenged and disrupted, SNNO contributed to the literature on hegemony, power, and agency in world politics. Fourth, SNNO deepened the critique of the rationalist bias of Security Studies scholarship on nuclear weapons. Nuclear order is often conceptualised as a nature-given, external constraint on state behaviour. Yet it seems evident that the mainstream research paradigm has failed to predict both the rate of nuclear proliferation and variations (and absence of variation) in policy over time. SNNO helped demonstrate how the perpetuation of the prevailing nuclear order depends discursive power. Fifth, SNNO furthered the nascent literature on boundary-creation and self-censorship in Security Studies.

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