Description
Existing research on nuclear weapons explores how their material and discursive elements influence states, but it did not fully explore the generative role of nuclear weapons in our knowledge of war. In an attempt to problematise the term ‘Cold’ War from the perspective of weapons, the following question is posed: How do material and discursive elements of nuclear weapons affect our understanding of war? I answer the question by developing the notion of a hierarchy of war, indicating that potential nuclear wars between the United States and the Soviet Union are prioritised while other actual conventional wars are marginalised. Utilising the concept of martial empiricism, I analyse 132 official American presidential documents published by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations during the Korean War. I propose three logics of a hierarchy of wars – relegation, subjugation, and alienation – during the Korean War: how the Korean War is relegated to police action; subjugated to nuclear wars in terms of mobilisation strategies; and alienated by the presumption that its mobilised resources are merely a fraction of those for nuclear wars. During this process, the coldness of war as a dominant discourse is conceptualised. In the end, my research illuminates the role of nuclear weapons in generating a hierarchy of war and conceptualising the coldness of war.
