Power, violence, and nuclear weapons

Abstract

This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the role of the thermonuclear revolution in realist thought and the viability of nuclear disarmament. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, it develops an immanent critique of balance-of-power theories of international politics. Immanent critique is a diagnostic process. It takes a thought system on its own terms and by revealing its contradictions from within, opens up new possibilities for transformation. This critique reveals how the ontological assumptions Kenneth Waltz makes about the nature of power allowed him, in the guise of an apolitical theory, to transform the violence of nuclear weapons from a threat to humanity into a source of security, and therefore a normative good. According to the logic of this argument, thinking past the limits of this thought system will necessarily need to include questioning and otherwise disrupting the tight association between violence and power.