Irreversibility and Nuclear Disarmament: Unmaking Nuclear Weapon Complexes

ABSTRACT This article develops a framework for examining “irreversible nuclear disarmament” by drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS). It argues that maximising the irreversibility of nuclear disarmament is about the “unmaking” of a nuclear weapons complex understood as a large socio-technical system. This entails the discontinuation, or unravelling, of the system’s network of materials, competencies, meanings and institutions, the erosion of tacit knowledge, the discursive reframing of nuclear weapons, and new governance processes to manage discontinuation. The article applies this framework to the experiences of the US nuclear weapons complex in the aftermath of the Cold War to illustrate the ways in which the weapons complex of an established nuclear-armed state could come apart.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament

• Publication date

  2023-07-03

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/25751654.2023.2282737
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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