Description
Recent work has examined the concept of a 'global nuclear order' through a critical lens that takes power and hegemony seriously, drawing in part on the negotiation of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This paper takes the analysis of a 'global nuclear control order' (Ritchie, 2019) further by examining changes in the core formal and informal institutions of nuclear order over the past 25 years. The period is relevant because it marks the period from the permanent extension of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1995 to the 50th anniversary of its entry into force in May 2020 as one of the core institutions of nuclear order. This has also period been of considerable flux in US hegemonic power from the highs of unipolarity in the mid-1990s to the transactional primacy and burgeoning multipolarity of today. Yet the nuclear order as a hegemonic structure of power with the US at its heart has proved remarkably resilient. The research will better explain what nuclear order is and the relationship between US power, the changing distribution of power in global politics, and nuclear order as a hegemonic structure of power.
