Considine, L. orcid.org/0000-0002-6265-3168 (2025) Thinking through and beyond survival in a nuclear age. Review of International Studies. ISSN 0260-2105
Abstract
This article investigates the assumption that survival should form the goal of the politics both of nuclear weapons and of International Relations (IR). Rather than being a self-evident grounding upon which political contest then plays out, survival has its own implications and limitations in the thermonuclear age, in which survival has become premised on the threat of total annihilation. As such, nuclear weapons allow us to unpack ‘survival’ in a unique way because they have the power to destroy everything: to end all survival. Yet at the same time, nuclear weapons have become deeply embedded into our world. In an age of thermonuclear weaponry, survival through annihilation has thus become a paradox that structures the ambivalence of nuclear technology and the tensions of nuclear politics. The article first establishes the nature of assumptions of survival as a taken-for-granted goal of IR and nuclear weapons politics. It then argues that the paradoxical logic of survival as annihilation that accompanied the nuclear era has resulted in a politics of repetition in which both deterrence and disarmament actors have become trapped. The article ends by outlining the limits of understanding whose survival is at stake in nuclear weapons discourse and why this matters.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The British International Studies Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. |
Keywords: | IR theory; nuclear deterrence; nuclear disarmament; nuclear revolution; nuclear weapons; survival |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 17 Mar 2025 16:33 |
Last Modified: | 17 Mar 2025 16:33 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/s0260210525000105 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:224503 |
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