Culture,Discourse,Insecurity

Quoted in Howard Michael , Clausewitz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p.73, from On War, ed. and trans. by Howard M. Paret P. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

This classification is taken from Sakamoto Yoshikazu Falk Richard “World Demilitarized: A Basic Human Need,” Alternatives, vol VI, no 1, 1980, pp.1–16. Recent literature relevant to this general theme includes: Eide Asbjørn Thee Marek (editors), Contemporary Militarism (London: Croom Helm, 1979); Kaldor Mary Eide A. (editors), The World Military Order (New York: Praeger, 1979); Kjell Skjelsback, “Militarism, Its Dimensions and Corollaries: An Attempt at Conceptual Clarification,” Journal of Peace Research, vol XVI, no 3, 1979, pp.213–229; Seymour Melman, The Permanent War Economy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974); Thompson E.P. , Exterminism and Cold War (London: New Left Books, 1982); Martin Shaw (editor), War, State and Society (London: Macmillan, 1984); Nicole Ball and Milton Leitenberg (editors), The Structure of the Defence Industry: An International Survey (London: Croom Helm, 1983); Helena Tuomi and Raimo Vayrynen, Transnational Corporations, Armaments and Development (New York: St. Martins Press, 1982); S.G. Neuman, “International Stratification and Third World Military Industries,” International Organization, vol 38, no 1, Winter 1984, pp. 167–197; Andrew J. Pierre, The Global Politics of Arms Sales (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982); David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 2nd edn. (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1984); the special issue on “Militarization and Society” of Alternatives, vol X, no 1, Summer 1984; and World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook 1985 (London: Taylor and Francis, 1985).

For a version of this argument see Derrida Jacques , “No Apocalypse, Not Now (full speed ahead, seven missiles, seven missives)”, Diacritics, vol 14, no 2, Summer 1984.

For a short discussion see Freedman Lawrence , “Nuclear Weapons in Europe: Is There an Arms Race?” Millenium: Journal of International Studies, vol 13, no 1, Spring 1984, pp.57–64.

Brodie Bernard (editor), The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946), p.83.

My usage of the term culture here is informed by the historical stance adopted by Raymond Williams, for whom it is less a clearly definable concept than the site of unresolved historically constituted contradictions. See Williams , Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Culture (London: Fontana, 1981); and Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, 2nd edn (London: Fontana, 1983), pp.87–93. See also Walker R. B. J. , “World Politics and Western Reason: Universalism, Pluralism, Hegemony” in: Walker (editor), Culture, Ideology and World Order (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), pp.182–216.

Luckham Robin , “Of Arms and Culture,” Current Research on Peace and Violence, vol 7, no 1, 1984, pp.1–64 and “Armament Culture,” Alternatives, vol X, no 1, Summer 1984, pp. 1–44. Luckham's analysis can usefully be read in conjunction with Joel Kovel, Against the State of Nuclear Terror (London: Pan, 1983), and Stuart Ewan, “Mass Culture, Narcissism and the Moral Economy of War,” Telos, vol 44, Summer 1980, pp.74–87.

The connection between strategic theory and American strategic policy has been of particular concern here. See e.g. Freedman Lawrence , The Evolution of Strategic Thought (London: Macmillan, 1982); Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983); Robert Scheer, With Enough Shovels (New York: Random House, 1982); Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982); Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentricism (New York: Homes and Meier, 1979).

Aubrey Crispin (editor), Nukespeak: The Media and the Bomb (London: Comedia, 1982); Chomsky and E. Herman, After the Cataclysm (Boston: South End Press, 1979).

Wagar Warren W. , Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982); I.F. Clark, Voices Prophesying War, 1763–1984 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966); Humphrey Nicholas Lifton Robert Jay (editors), In a Dark Time (London: Faber and Faber, 1984).

Visvanathan Shiv , “Atomic Physics: The Career of An Imagination,” Alternatives, vol X, no 2, Fall 1984, pp. 193–236.

Enloe Cynthia , Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives (London: Pluto, 1983); Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race (London: Pluto, 1983).

Kaldor Mary , The Baroque Arsenal (London: Deutsch, 1982).

Some analyses include Barnett Anthony , Iron Britannia (London: Allison and Busby, 1982); Alan Wolfe, “Nuclear Fundamentalism Reborn,” World Policy Journal, vol II, no 1, Fall 1984, pp.87–108; Richard J. Barnet, Roots of War (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971); Jerry W. Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger and the Legitimation of Containment Militarism (Boston: South End Press, 1982).

The classic text here is Horkheimer Max Adorno Theodor , Dialectic of Enlightenment, Cumming J. trans. (New York: Seabury Press, 1972). More accessible discussions relevent to this general theme are Geoffrey Hawthorn, Enlightenment and Despair: A History of Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) and Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1977).

On this general theme see Falk Richard A. , “Nuclear Weapons and the Death of Democracy,” Praxis International, 1982, pp.1–12; Falk, “Nuclear Weapons and the Renewal of Democracy,” Praxis International, 1984; and Joel Kovel, Against the State of Nuclear Terror. Interesting discussions of the British case include John Dearlove and Peter Saunders, Introduction to British Politics (Oxford and Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), pp.115–168; Pryns G. (editor), Defended to Death (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983); and Duncan Campbell, War Plan U.K. (London: Hutchinson, 1982). An additional complexity is added by the way in which large states intervene in smaller states; a particularly interesting case here concerns American-Australian relations; see e.g. Richard Hall, The Secret State (Stanmore, N.S.W.; Cassell Australia, 1978); and Desmond Ball, A Suitable Piece of Real Estate (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1980).

For a recent attempt to rethink the meaning of the concept of security in the international context see Buzan Barry , People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1983); and Buzan, “Peace, Power and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations,” Journal of Peace Research, vol 21, no 2, 1984, pp.109–125.

Ahmed Eqbal , “The Peace movement and the Third World,” END: Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament, vol 15, April-May 1985, p.14. For a parallel set of considerations see Ferenc Feher and Agnes Heller, “On Being Anti-Nuclear in Soviet Societies,” Telos, vol 57, Fall, 1983, pp.144–162. See also R.B.J. Walker, “East Wind, West Wind: Civilizations, Hegemonies and World Orders” in: Walker (editor), Culture, Ideology and World Order, pp.2–22.

For a useful brief discussion, see Galtung Johan , “Social Cosmology and the Concept of Peace,” Journal of Peace Research, vol 18, no 2, 1981, pp.183–199.

For brief discussions of this theme see Smith Dan Smith Ron , The Economics of Militarism (London: Pluto Press, 1983); and Tamas Szentes, “The Economic Impact of Global Militarization,” Alternatives, vol X, no 1, Summer 1984, pp.45–73. For an important recent addition to the large literature on the historical relationship between military requirements and economic development see Gautam Sen, The Military Origins of Industrialization and International Trade Rivalry (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984).

Lifton Robert Jay Falk Richard , Indefensible Weapons (New York: Basic Books, 1982); Lifton, The Broken Connection (1979); Kovel, Against the State of Nuclear Terror..

For a good selection of writings on the complex theme see Shapiro Michael (editor), Language and Politics (Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1984).

Chilton Paul , “Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Culture and Propaganda,” in: Aubrey (editor), Nukespeak: The Media and the Bomb, pp.94–112. See also Paul Chilton (editor), Language and the Nuclear Arms Debate: Nukespeak Today (London: Francis Pinter, 1985).

Hook Glenn D. , “The Nuclearization of Language: Nuclear Allergy as Political Metaphor,” Journal of Peace Research, vol 21, no 3, 1984, pp.259–275. See also Hook “Making Nuclear Weapons Easier to Live With: The Role of Language in Nuclearization,” International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Report 9/84; and Hook, Language and Politics: The Security Discourse in Japan and the United States (Syuppan; Kurosio, 1986).

The broad context of this issue is discussed in Morgenthau Hans J. , “The Fallacy of Thinking Conventionally About Nuclear Weapons,” in: Carlton David Schaerf Carlo (editors), Arms Control and Technological Innovation (London: 1977). On some of its contemporary consequences see Ken Booth and Phil Williams, “Fact and Fiction in U.S. Foreign Policy: Reagan's Myths About Detente,” World Policy Journal, vol II, no 3, Summer 1985, pp.501–532.

The best known statement of this theme in the context of international politics is Said Edward , Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978). See also Lata Mani and Ruth Frankenburg, “The Challenge of Orientalism,” Economy and Society, vol 14, no 2, May 1985, pp.174–192.

Foucault Michel , Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan A. (New York: Vintage, 1979); The History of Sexuality, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978 and forthcoming).

“Realism, Change and International Political Theory,” International Studies Quarterly (forthcoming); “Contemporary Militarism and the Discourse of Dissent,” in: Walker (editor), Culture, Ideology and World Order, pp.302–322; “The Territorial State and the Theme of Gulliver,” International Journal, vol 39, no 3, Summer 1984, pp.529–553. See also Richard K. Ashley, “The Power of Power Politics: Toward a Critical Social Theory of International Politics,” forthcoming in: T. Ball (editor), Social and Political Inquiry..

In this context see the important discussion of the cultural politics of Indian resistance to colonialism in Nandy Ashis , The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983); and Nandy, “Oppression and Human Liberation: Toward a Third World Utopia,” in: Walker (editor), Culture, Ideology and World Order, pp.149–179.

See, as just one example among many, Art Robert J. Ockender Stephen E. , “The Domestic Politics of the Cruise Missile Development, 1970–1980,” in: Betts Richard K. (editor), Cruise Missiles: Technology, Strategy, Politics (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1981), pp.349–415. More generally see Desmond Ball, “Nuclear Strategy and Force Development,” in: Ball (editor), Strategy and Defence: Australian Essays (Sydney: George, Allen & Unwin, 1982).

For a succinct account of this theme see Brubaker Rogers , The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber (London: George, Allen & Unwin, 1984). A comparative reading of two of Weber's seminal political essays is particularly instructive in this respect: “The National State and Economic Policy” (1985) Economy and Society, vol 9, no 4, 1980, pp.428–449; and “Politics as a Vocation,” in: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. Gerth H.H. Mills C. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp.77–128. See also David Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985).