Nuclear taboo

Extract

[...] Upholding the taboo was essential to validating this identity.”[34] The Gulf war also displayed the first appearance of the permissive effects of the taboo, the “legitimation of other forms of destruction.”[35] America's air bombardment of Iraq was strategic in character, destroying not only military targets but Iraq's economic infrastructure as well. [36]Around 70,000-90,000 civilians were killed as a result of damage to Iraqi infrastructure, while only a total of 3,000 Iraqi military and civilian personnel died in the air attacks themselves. Tannenwald's research on the existence of a nuclear taboo is a significant contribution to the analysis of American nuclear restraint. Her historical insights to the emergence of the taboo, and its hold on American interests ever since, are informative accounts on the normative facilitation of nuclear inhibition. [...]

[...] second point that nuclear weapons states have failed to deter attacks from non-nuclear states is evidenced by the war in Vietnam, the Gulf War, and many other similar scenarios including the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan. Lastly, the historically recent repudiation of nuclear weapons by South Africa, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus defies the presumptions of nuclear deterrence theory. Tannenwald believes the inability of nuclear deterrence theory to explain the aforementioned anomalies is rooted in its exclusive treatment of materialist factors. Because deterrence theory is “primarily materialist” it tends to “emphasize the effect of material power” at the expense of normative factors.[3] Further, the underlying influence of realism as the theory's progenitor serves to cement its anti-normative foundations. [...]

[...] She refers to the NPT mandate, which forces nations other than original nuclear powers to forswear nuclear weapons, as “patent inequality.”[41] Tannenwald goes on to say that the refusal of the nuclear powers to allow other nations nuclear weapons rights and the ensuing conflict between the “goal of equality and the pursuit of security interests” suggests powerful pull of the notion equality.”[42] Her statements intimate that either the US abolish all its nuclear weapons, or allow every nation party to the NPT nuclear weapons rights. [...]

[...] Fervid domestic political opposition to the war, as well as McNamara's push for dependence on conventional forces versus tactical nuclear arms ensured the US would proceed cautiously with regard to its vast nuclear arsenal. In the years up to the end of the Cold War, the nuclear taboo was institutionalized by myriad international agreements. These agreements mirrored the vast structural changes that had transformed the international context since the end of WWII. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 codified the first real concerns over the spread of nuclear weapons to new actors. [...]

[...] Division refers to situation marked by fragmented topography.”[38]This variable is needed to determine how the physical environment “impedes or facilitates human mobility and thus interaction.”[39]Without its explanatory power, Tannenwald cannot accurately determine whether American refusal to use nuclear weapons on Iraqi troops in Kuwait was due to a taboo or the smooth topography of the desert that facilitated mobility and hence easy conquest. Secondly, Tannenwald's critique of deterrence fails to mention the absence of violence interdependence. Although she traces the emergence of the taboo through growing social interaction and interdependence among the global community, not at any time does she incorporate the role of technology in strengthening the capacity of actors to unleash harm on one another. [...]