Description
This article discerns between the securitisation moves of
nuclear deterrence and a securitisation of ‘humanity’, holding implications
for disarmament proposals – particularly those that seek to delegitimise
or devalue thermonuclear weapons (e.g. Ritchie, 2013; Kurosawa, 2018).
The Russo-Ukrainian war and strained NATO-Russia relations serves as
the case for this investigation. Great-power competition inhibits the
pursuance of existential security – outlined by Nathan Sears (2020;
2021) – due to greater prospects of nuclear use. Establishing existential
security would come at significant cost, however, incurring its own
securitisation risks. Nonetheless, it is an ideal state of being for humanity
at the onset of the Third Nuclear Age. The article’s theoretical
contribution consists of developing Sears’ frame of existential security in
a nuclear politics context whilst also elaborating on a concept of securitisation 'depth'. The ethicopolitical dilemmas of deterrence are shown to
obfuscate an objective existential threat to the species – which should not
be overridden by any states’ interests. This threat is poorly articulated in
speech acts alone, otherwise the scholarly focus of securitisation analysis. The normative argument of the article derives from a
discrepancy between, and conflation of, these ‘symbolic’ and ‘real-
physical’ existential threats in deterrence practice – gambling with
humanity’s long-term trajectory.
