GOVERNANCE VS ABOLITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: THE PEACE STUDIES APPROACH

Abstract

This article explores how peace studies deal with two interrelated issues: nuclearism
and militarism. Nuclearism assumes the practice of spreading nuclear threats
along with the security thinking and power structures that surround the doomsday
weapons. Militarism is about the deeply embedded belief that military power (including
the nuclear one) is the only way to preserve one’s national security. In short, today’s
world deals not only with stockpiles of existing weapons but also with the way of thinking
about their use, reduction or abolition. The general hypothesis is that the academic
and intellectual efforts invested in these issues are (self) limited and developed in a
climate of self-censorship and organized hypocrisy. This makes them not only ineffective
but also prone to the preservation of the global status quo as the best solution for peace in
the world. Scientists are involved in the technical aspects of the weapons management.
But scholars from the social sciences and humanities (i.e. where the peace researchers
mostly come from) are expected to deal with the deconstruction of the dominant way of
thinking (both in academia and out of it) and promotion of the idea that a different world
is possible. Or the alternative is nuclear holocaust.