Description
Nuclear responsibility has become a pervasive theme and loaded term within global nuclear politics and diplomacy. While the extant scholarship around nuclear responsibility addresses the status, role conception and branding of ‘responsible nuclear weapon states’, and of nuclear responsibilities as a norm or discourse, little attention has yet been paid to nuclear responsibility as practice. Drawing upon practice theoretical approaches from IR and critical sociology, this paper analyses nuclear responsibility as an evolving, and increasingly contested part of a constellation of practices associated with nuclear deterrence. It highlights how nuclear responsibility has shifted from being a practice for performing stable deterrence, to a practice of justification and critique, performed by nuclear weapon states to sustain the status quo within the global nuclear order. The paper argues that while discursive acts that reiterate nuclear responsibility and irresponsibility as practices of justification and critique continue, the competence, validity and legitimacy of nuclear responsibility as a practice of stable deterrence will increasingly be brought into question and dispute. The paper thus recommends the need for an urgent rethink in how nuclear weapon states are utilizing ‘responsibility’ and ‘irresponsibility’ in practice-terms.
