Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory: Chapter 5

Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory

Richard Wyn Jones

1999

5. Technology: Reconceptualizing Strategy

As Chapter 4 has demonstrated, an expanded conceptualization of security is rendered necessary, even perhaps inescapable, by at least two impulses. First, it is made necessary by empirical practice. All attempts by traditional security specialists to constrain the realm of what is conceived of as the legitimate concern of security studies are subverted by the actual usage of the term in everyday security discourse. Note, for example, the way in which a broader conceptualization has been long been in use in Southeast Asia (discussed in Booth and Trood 1998). Both politicians and social movements regularly use the term in relation to threats across a whole range of what Buzan has termed “sectors.” As even many security specialists are beginning to acknowledge, attempts to constrict the realm of security studies to the study of military security are untenable. To do so is to ignore a whole range of issues that most governments, let alone individual human beings, regard as real security concerns.

The same argument also holds true for all attempts to constrict the term to a particular privileged referent object, namely, the state. To adopt Wæver’s terminology, other actors securitize and are securitized. Once again, this is a point that is slowly being grasped by Western academic international relations security specialists. For example, as was noted in Chapter 4, Buzan, through his collaboration with the Copenhagen School, has tried to develop society as an additional referent object, even though this effort creates substantial problems for his original conceptualization of security. The same author now also admits the need for an “opening up to the fact that the domestic agenda has become the primary military forum in some parts of the world” (Buzan and Herring 1998). The increased attention that has been paid to “internal conflicts” (i.e., intrastate conflicts), such as the war in the former Yugoslavia and the rise of so–called warlordism in some Third World countries, has led more mainstream security specialists to focus on referents other than the state (see, for example, Herbst 1996–1997; Howe 1996–1997).

Efforts to uphold a constrictive definition of security as national security defined in statist, militarized terms seem bound to fail, despite the efforts of the traditionalists (see, for example, Walt 1991; Morgan 1992; Garnett 1996). Even when understood in narrowly military terms, security is not simply the concern or preserve of states.

A second pressure that further reinforces the case for an expanded conceptualization of security arises from the epistemological and political arguments that I have already put forward in this book for an emancipation–oriented approach to the study of the social world. As I argue in Chapter 4, security and emancipation are dialectically interrelated. Security in the sense of the absence of the threat of (involuntary) pain, fear, hunger, and poverty is an essential element in the struggle for emancipation. And security is both a means and an end. The achievement of enhanced security can be emancipatory in itself in a context characterized by chronic insecurity. Bearing in mind that emancipation is a process rather than an end point, however, security is also a vital precursor to the fuller development of human potential. If this viewpoint is accepted, then it is clear that the conceptualization of security will expand to include all those threats to human well–being and development.

This argument in favor of an expanded conceptualization of security—a concept that is both broadened and extended—does generate at least two potential problems for those attempting to develop critical security studies. There is the question of whether by expanding the conceptualization of security, its study becomes the study of everything, and hence, effectively, nothing; and there is also the issue of whether an expanded conceptualization of security inevitably leads analysts to pay less attention to military issues.

Does the expanded notion of security lying at the heart of critical security studies lead to a research project that lacks analytical rigor and bite? This does not seem to be a serious cause for concern. The case for an expanded conceptualization of security, and hence an expanded understanding of the scope of security studies, can be argued on two grounds, one negative and the other positive.

In a negative vein, as I argue at length in Chapter 4, the relatively focused nature of traditional security studies was based on a conceptualization of security that was far too narrow. The traditional state–centric, militarized, and largely apolitical understanding of security is theoretically and politically deficient. Although it may have suited the disciplinary purposes of traditional security studies in the battle for both academic and politico–military recognition, it has always been reifying, unhistorical, intellectual nonsense. So an expanded conceptualization of security is an improvement on the traditional version simply because it is more logically defensible. Whatever parsimoniousness was enjoyed by traditional security studies was purchased at the price of rigor and intellectual coherence.

A more positive response to the charge of “loss of focus” is that far from being a problem, an expanded conceptualization of security and a concomitant widening of focus actually facilitate the overcoming of the most damaging binary division afflicting the social sciences—that between the domestic (intrastate) and the international (interstate). In recent years this divide has been challenged from both sides. Those disciplines that have traditionally focused on the domestic—for example, sociology—have started to incorporate the international into their analysis (Giddens 1985 is an important landmark in this respect). In the field of international relations, events such as the oil shocks of the 1970s and the end of the Cold War have underlined the futility of attempting to analyze international politics without reference to domestic factors. This blurring of the distinction between what R. B. J. Walker has termed the “inside” and “outside” can be seen most clearly in the burgeoning contemporary literature on globalization. Although some of the globalization literature betrays a tendency toward faddism and hyperbole, taken as a whole, it does indicate a growing realization that the traditional distinctions between the domestic and the international, the political and the economic, and the natural (environment) and the social (society) are untenable.

The trend toward a more holistic approach—an attempt to understand the social totality—is in keeping with the spirit of critical theory (if not to the practice of its notoriously Eurocentric proponents). An expanded conceptualization of security provides an ideal means through which this more expansive perspective may be developed. The understanding of security developed in Chapter 4 links together consideration of military force with issues in political economy, environmental science, psychology, anthropology, ethics, and so on. This eclectic focus on linkages and interrelationships across arbitrary disciplinary boundaries is wholly in accord with the understanding of social science championed by Horkheimer in “Traditional and Critical Theory.”

From a critical theory perspective, the obvious overlaps between the research agenda generated by an expanded understanding of security and the sociological analyses of the “risk society” pioneered by Ulrich Beck are not a cause for concern or intellectual demarcation disputes but rather an occasion for celebration. The two approaches have much to learn from each other. For example, those whose intellectual biography has led to their identification (and self–identification) as security specialists can profit from Beck’s sophisticated treatment of environmental risk (see Beck 1995). Equally, Beck and his collaborators can benefit from the understanding of interstate dynamics, particularly security regimes and the international politics of risk management developed by international relations specialists. The point is that far from lacking rigor and bite, an expanded conceptualization of security actually facilitates studies relevant to the real world and invaluable intellectual cross–pollination.

A second concern that arises from the adoption of an expanded conceptualization of security is the possibility that the broader agenda that inevitably results from this expansion will somehow lead analysts to pay less attention to military issues. An associated assumption may be that even when analysts do give attention to the so–called military instrument, they will do so in a hopelessly idealistic manner. This concern would be valid if a broader notion of security implied an unwillingness or inability to think seriously about the military dimension of the theory and practice of world politics. But as I will seek to demonstrate in this chapter, this is not the case. Instead, I will argue that the outlook and assumptions outlined in the previous chapters actually generate a framework for the analysis of military force that is potentially richer and more sophisticated than that utilized by traditional security studies.

Security and Strategy

Buzan’s work provides a useful starting point for attempts to think through the military dimension of world politics. Given the criticisms advanced against his work in Chapter 4, this may seem a somewhat surprising suggestion. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Buzan’s broader conceptualization of security was a fundamental assault on the tendency of traditional security studies to conflate consideration of issues relating to military security with security per se. One result of this conflation was that Buzan had to consider how military force might be conceptualized when it is understood as a part—rather than the whole—of what has become known as the “security problematique.” He first attempted to do so in his 1987 book An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military Technology and International Relations (Buzan and Herring 1998 is its anointed successor). Therefore, despite objections to other basic assumptions underpinning Buzan’s work—including, until very recently at least, his state–centrism and what may be termed, after Horkheimer, as his “traditional” epistemology—his conceptualization of the military dimension remains a useful point of departure.

In contrast to the tendency of analysts to use the terms “security studies” and “strategic studies” interchangeably, Buzan wishes to draw a strong distinction between the terms (Buzan 1987; also 1991: 270–291). Specifically, he attempts to reserve the latter term for the study of the role of military force in international relations; or, to use the terminology of People, States and Fear, Buzan argues that strategic studies should concern itself with the “military sector” of the security problematique. Therefore, in disciplinary terms, Buzan regards strategic studies as a subset of what he terms “international security studies,” which is in turn a subset of the study of international relations.

Turning to the specific consideration of strategy, Buzan argues that its subject matter “arises from two fundamental variables affecting the international system: its political structure, and the nature of the prevailing technologies available to the political actors within it” (Buzan 1987: 6). Given Buzan’s neorealist inclinations, it is not surprising that he views the political structure as an epiphenomenon of global anarchy. As a result, he posits the following relationship between both variables:

Anarchy creates the over–all need for strategy, and sets the conditions that determine the ends for which force is used. Technology is a major factor in determining the scope of military options, the character of military threats, and the consequences of resorting to the use of force. Technology, in other words, is [a] major variable affecting the instruments of force available to political actors. The nature of those instruments sets a basic condition of strategy, and one that is subject to continuous pressure of technological change. (Buzan 1987: 6–7)

Furthermore, because Buzan believes that “the raw fact of anarchy is in many ways a constant within the international system,” he argues that strategists should focus on military technology (Buzan 1987: 9). Thus, according to this view, the correct conceptualization of strategy is as a focus on the impact of military technology on interstate relations.

The publication of An Introduction to Strategic Studies and a subsequent critical review by Lawrence Freedman in the journal International Affairs generated a lively debate among strategists, or at least among those working in the United Kingdom (Freedman 1988a). Unusually, this controversy was not confined to the pages of academic journals but also included a debate between the proponents of the various viewpoints conducted under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) (Segal 1989 provides an edited transcript). This debate provided a fascinating snapshot of the differing perceptions of the scope and purpose of strategy in the mid– to late 1980s.

The most frequent criticism of Buzan’s conceptualization of strategy was that it was too narrow. This judgment represents a considerable irony given that the most common criticism of People, States and Fear was that it cast a conception of security that was unmanageably broad. Nevertheless, when Buzan attempted to conceptualize the place of strategy within this broader framework, the resulting definition was considered to be overly restrictive. Indeed, if those participating in the RIIA debate are representative, then the majority of strategists working in the United Kingdom seem to have regarded Buzan’s understanding of strategy as a conceptual regression from the classical Clausewitzian focus on the interrelationship between political ends and military means. In this vein, Ken Booth, for example, argued that strategy should focus on “the relationship between the threat and use of force and politics. The title of Bernard Brodie’s, War and Politics, should be regarded as synonymous with strategic studies” (Segal 1989: 18).

Booth’s critique may be rephrased in terms of the critique of instrumental rationality that was advanced by Adorno and Horkheimer and reconstructed in Chapter 2. Buzan wants strategists to regard the ends pursued by the use of military force as a given (and in his schema they are given by the dynamics that are an inherent, and ultimately inescapable, feature of the international system) and concentrate wholly on the military means themselves. Although he recognizes that the ends pursued are the legitimate concern of international relations scholars—indeed, he posits a division of labor between international relations specialists and strategists on this score—Buzan’s formulation of strategy as a subject that ignores ends provides what may be considered a paradigmatic example of instrumental rationality (Segal 1989: 3–6). This formulation, in critical theory terms, represents the atrophy of reason: a pathology, a moral blindness, the type of thinking that was exhibited in the mechanized slaughter at Auschwitz. In this context it is perhaps instructive to recall the title of Fred Kaplan’s study of the architects of nuclear deterrence—The Wizards of Armageddon (1983).

To find such an explicit call as Buzan made for a conceptualization of strategy that ignores the ends—the human results—of military force is particularly disturbing given the destructiveness of the means under consideration. So, superficially at least, it might seem heartening that the overall tenor of the RIIA meeting was hostile to Buzan’s formulation. For these participants, the concern with ends was a vital element of strategy. The following passage from one of Freedman’s contributions is indicative of the general view:

Strategic studies is an outcrop not of international relations, but of political theory, because the great political theorists were also preoccupied with this question of how it is that people relate ends and means. One is trying to understand how it is that people go about defining objectives and then obtaining them. That seems to me to be what strategic studies is about, and that is what I find so interesting. (Segal 1989: 2)

But despite Freedman’s eminent position in the strategic studies communities of both Europe and North America, to conclude from this statement and the tenor of the RIIA debate that the study of strategy is not the preserve of instrumental rationality would be wrong.

Rather, as so many critics of strategic studies have pointed out, the subject has been dominated by an approach that disregards the ends for which military force is utilized and tends to ignore or gloss over the human and environmental consequences of its use (there are numerous critiques of the hegemonic view of strategy, including Rapoport 1960, 1964, 1970, 1978; Green 1966, 1973; Cohn 1987; Lawrence 1985, 1988; Klein 1994). Although the proponents of traditional security studies have invoked the Clausewitzian conceptualization of warfare, this invocation has been almost entirely ritualistic and lacking in any real substance. Strategy has tended to be the preserve of the bean counters and those whose parameters extend little further than a detailed knowledge of the capabilities of the latest weapons system. It is this narrowly instrumental focus of strategy that allows Buzan to defend his conceptualization of the subject on the ground that it “matches pretty much what the field actually does” (Segal 1989: 3). Though this hardly represents an overwhelming argument in favor of his position, it seems to me that Buzan’s bald and concise conceptualization of strategy at least has the merit of laying bare the reality of contemporary strategic theory. I doubt very much that Clausewitz, with his speculative bent and his interest in Hegelian dialectics, would have ever made the grade in postwar traditional security studies.

How, then, can one develop an approach to strategy that is congruent within the overall set of assumptions that frame critical security studies? One obvious point of departure would be to subject traditional security understandings of strategy to an immanent critique that compares the field’s self–image, which in Europe, at least, regards a concern with ends and consequences as an inherent part of the enterprise, with the instrumental, means–fetishism of so much strategy. If such a critique could be successfully coupled with a move to critique the actual ends pursued—the privileging of the state, for example—then it would certainly be a notable improvement on the current situation.

But the critical theory argument reconstructed in the first three chapters of this book is not that proponents of traditional theory are all conservative, although some may be, or that they are moral inadequates, although doubtless some are, but rather that the epistemological assumptions underlying their work leads to analysis that is pro–status quo and amoral. According to this perspective, strategy cannot be redeemed or reconstructed simply by attaching a concern with ends onto the actual practice of contemporary strategic thought. The atrophy of strategy—the tendency to concentrate solely on means—is a result of the assumptions made by strategists about what constitutes knowledge: most important, the relationship between fact and value and subject and object. Thus to transform strategy in a direction more attuned to the approach of critical security studies requires a fundamental transformation of the epistemological basis of the enterprise (see Bonß’s critique of Horkheimer in Chapter 2).

Parenthetically, I submit that concern with epistemology points to the difference between critical security studies and much of peace research, two approaches that seem to have much in common. According to a critical theory–informed perspective, the attempt to utilize traditional methodology within a broader normative, peace–oriented framework—an approach that is prevalent in peace research—simply generates a contradictory intellectual project that must eventually succumb to conformism if the methodological logic is allowed to dominate or will collapse into pure idealism if the normative program is not supported by a different mode of analysis.

What is required, therefore, is a mode of analysis that recognizes two points: that it is not enough to combine traditional modes of analysis with a commitment to emancipation, and that ends and means are not somehow casually related but are mutually implicated. As a result of such recognition, analysis will focus on the actually–existing possibilities for change arising from a hardheaded, historically grounded reading of the present. I argue that a particularly useful model for such an approach in the field of strategy is provided by Andrew Feenberg’s critical theory of technology (see Chapter 3).

Technology and Strategy

Feenberg’s conceptualization of technology is relevant in at least two ways. First, few would doubt that the implications of various military technologies are, quite legitimately, a central concern of strategists. True, in the context of the RIIA debate referred to earlier, Freedman did attempt to pour scorn on Buzan’s emphasis on military technology:

I cannot see why... military technology itself stands out as being the key variable. I can see a case for a focus upon military aspects of power. But the study of military technology is not going to explain an awful lot about, for example, the Iran–Iraq war.... There is a regular source of new thinking derived from new technologies, but that is not the same as saying that, in the end, the basic calculations with which people go to war have been changed that much simply by technology. (Segal 1989: 10)

However, the fact that Freedman’s major work The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (1987) deals with some of the implications of nuclear weapons technology in terms of force structures, doctrines, and the rest tends to suggest that this comment is more polemical than seriously meant.

Despite the fact that strategists have focused on military technology, their theoretical understanding of technology qua technology has been deficient. Despite the obvious parallels and overlaps, strategists have paid almost no heed to work in the fields of the history and sociology of technology (a point central to the argument in Flank 1993–1994). Buzan’s An Introduction to Strategic Studies is an excellent example of the unwillingness of a strategist to take technology seriously. This may seem a somewhat paradoxical claim given that Buzan defines strategy in terms of the study of the effect of military technology on interstate relations. Yet in An Introduction to Strategic Studies he does not refer to any of the standard works on technology (see Buzan 1987: 302–319). So, despite making technology the key variable in his conceptualization of strategy, Buzan does not attempt to use the extensive social science literature on the subject. Even his most recent (joint) work on strategy makes no serious attempt to engage with this literature; a fact made all the more disappointing because of the avowed intention of the authors to place more emphasis on “the interaction of choice, politics and values with technology” (Buzan and Herring 1998).

Buzan is not alone in ignoring the work that has been carried out in other social science disciplines—the same is also true of the overwhelming majority of strategists (another good example is Garnett 1987b). This inattention would perhaps be excusable if strategists had developed their own sophisticated conceptualization of technology. But they have failed to do so: Their understanding of technology has been confused, crude, and unreflective. Thus one benefit of adopting Feenberg’s critical approach to technology is that it is based on a detailed—and, to my mind, persuasive—reading of the voluminous literature on technology. As such, it brings a welcome broadness and sophistication to a field where these qualities have been absent.

A second feature of Feenberg’s work that renders it particularly instructive in the attempt to reconceptualize strategy is his view of technology as the realm of ambivalent processes and possibilities. By stressing ambivalence, Feenberg’s approach serves as a salutary reminder of the role of human agency in decisions relating to military technology. By focusing on human beings, and more specifically human subjectivity, in relation to the military realm, analysts are encouraged to recognize that ethical concerns and considerations are not extrinsic to the business of strategy but are a central part of strategic practice. This in turn invites strategic theory to scrutinize and evaluate those concerns and considerations not as additions or optional extras to real strategic analysis but as necessary conditions for such analysis. As I argue in Chapter 4, a critical theory perspective suggests that this scrutiny and evaluation should take place from the perspective of emancipation, for which individuals are the ultimate referent.

Indeed, Feenberg’s work gives concrete indications of how a concern with emancipation can become part of the analysis of military technology. As already discussed, Feenberg analyzes technology in terms of processes embodying ambivalent possibilities and attempts to highlight the most progressive among them. Obviously, military technology, geared as it is toward the generation of slaughter and suffering, hardly lends itself to a progressive reading. Nevertheless, as I will demonstrate in the final section of this chapter, when viewed through the lenses of a critical theory of technology, even military technologies reveal an ambivalence that can be directed in ways that form a potentially useful part of a wider emancipatory project.

Nuclear Weapons as Technology

By focusing on nuclear weapons in this section, I will seek to demonstrate the utility of Feenberg’s critical theory of technology for the reconceptualization of strategy. Nuclear weapons are a good case for consideration because they are a hard case, for two reasons. First, they have been a central focus—often the only focus—of postwar strategists. Nuclear deterrence theory was the central achievement of strategy, and as such, basing, procurement, force postures, declaratory policies, and the rest became its basic bread–and–butter issues. If a critical theory–influenced approach can say something new and meaningful about nuclear weapons—or, perhaps more realistically, if it can make new sense of some of the things that have already been said—then this new understanding may constitute at least a prima facie case for using this approach.

A second reason for concentrating on nuclear weapons is the widespread perception that they represent a major change, indeed a revolution, not only in warfare but also in the relationship between “men and machines.” Even after the first successful testing of a nuclear weapon, but before their deployment against human beings, Winston Churchill reportedly exclaimed: “What was gunpowder? Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. This Atomic Bomb is the Second Coming in Wrath” (Freedman 1987: 16). Since their use against Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which resulted in the instantaneous slaughter of at least 68,000 civilians (Glasstone and Dolan 1977: 541–574), such biblical imagery has been a recurring feature of attempts to make sense of the awesome destructive power unleashed on that unsuspecting Japanese city.

According to the Book of Revelations, the Second Coming is to be accompanied by a final battle at Armageddon on Judgment Day. This will be the battle to end all battles, in which, according to the apocalyptic vision, the world will be shaken by “flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, like none before in human history, so violent it was” (The New English Bible with the Apocrypha 1970: 330). The use of this type of imagery in relation to nuclear weapons is extremely suggestive. It indicates a belief that the attempt to harness the tremendous energy unlocked during nuclear fission, the physical process initiated by the detonation of an atomic bomb, and the even greater amounts of energy unleashed during nuclear fusion, utilized in hydrogen bombs, have released a kind of technological genie that is beyond human comprehension. Furthermore, such imagery suggests that the development of nuclear weapons represents a fundamental shift in the relationship of the human species with technology per se. Raymond Aron laments that as a result of the development of nuclear weapons, humanity now inhabits an age of “virile weapons and impotent men” (Herken 1985: 343). Again, this serves to make nuclear weapons a particularly challenging case for a critical approach to technology.

As I discussed in Chapter 3, Feenberg differentiates between three conceptualizations of the relationship between technology and society: the instrumental, the substantive, and the critical. To reprise them, the instrumental view posits that technology is a neutral medium or means; the substantive view argues that, far from being neutral, technology inexorably determines social relations in a particular way; the critical view holds that technology is an ambivalent process that contains a number of possibilities and that the decision over which of these possibilities is realized depends on a complex of (contestable) power relations.

Given the tendency to view nuclear weapons in apocalyptic terms, it would be reasonable to expect that most of the strategic literature on the implications of nuclear weapons would view them in substantive or critical terms. After all, these are the approaches that view technology as non–neutral, and the apocalyptic rhetoric strongly suggests that something fundamental changed with the advent of nuclear weapons. Surprisingly, therefore, as the following brief survey of the literature demonstrates, despite this rhetoric, many of those writing and thinking about nuclear weapons have perceived them in instrumental terms. Further, most of the writing on nuclear weapons adopts either the instrumental or substantive conceptualization of technology, with relatively few adopting the critical approach.

Instrumental Approaches to Nuclear Weapons

The instrumental approach argues that technology does not affect the social, political, and cultural fundamentals in either domestic or international politics. This “deep assumption” is held with regard to nuclear weapons technology by a rather unlikely group of people. For example, it seems that Colin Gray, the arch proponent of a “nuclear war–fighting” strategy, John Mueller, the proclaimer of the “essential irrelevance” of nuclear weapons, and Mao Tse–tung all share the same broad assumptions about the implications of nuclear weapons technology. Although they would all hold highly dissimilar views on the nature and trajectory of global social and political relationships, they would all agree that nuclear weapons do not significantly alter those relationships.

Gray and the nuclear war fighters have viewed nuclear weapons in what may be termed the “National Rifle Association perspective” (see Chapter 3). To paraphrase this view, “It’s not the nuke, it’s the person (state) holding the nuke.” That is, in the hands of the free, civilized, and democratic Western powers, nuclear weapons could be deployed in such a way as to deter a potential aggressor, or if deterrence was unsuccessful, to defeat an adversary. However, those very same weapons in the hands of the aggressive, expansionist, even evil Soviets are inevitably dangerous and provocative. Thus nuclear weapons did not alter what were seen as the fundamental traits of Soviet behavior nor the goals of the Soviet Union; rather, nuclear weapons merely gave the Soviets a new (potentially very dangerous) means of pursuing those goals. Gray contemptuously dismisses those who argue “that all weapons are created equal and have equivalent consequences according to their technical qualities but regardless of their political ownership” (Gray 1993: 155).

For Gray and the other war fighters close to the Reagan administration in the early 1980s, the possibility that the Soviets might acquire a first–strike capability was intensely worrisome, but such a capability in the hands of the United States could be viewed benignly. Similarly, the development and deployment of the Soviet SS18 missile was regarded as a highly dangerous development, whereas the technically similar U.S. MX was dubbed the “peacemaker” (the significance of the language deployed in relation to the theory and practice of security is discussed further in Chapter 6). Thus “It isn’t the gun, it’s the person holding the gun” or, as Gray titled one of his works, Weapons Don’t Make War (1993).

John Mueller’s view of the nature of the Soviet Union and the essence of the East–West relationship since 1945, as advanced in his article “The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons,” differs fundamentally from that of Gray and the war fighters (Mueller 1988; see also 1990). He argues that a “general stability” existed in East–West relations, a stability created by a complex of sociopolitical and economic factors and a stability upon which nuclear weapons had no effect. Thus, despite their different interpretations of the nature of the Soviet Union, Gray and Mueller share the same conception of the role of technology in the superpower relationship. Both reject “the fallacious idea that weapons or technologies move history along” (Gray 1993: 155). According to Mueller, “nuclear weapons have changed little except our way of talking, gesturing, and spending money” (Mueller 1988: 68).

Mao Tse–tung was another proponent of the instrumental approach to technology in relation to nuclear weapons. His oft–stated belief was that no weapons system, no matter how sophisticated the technology incorporated within it, could alter the fundamental political and economic “correlation of forces.” Thus Mao argued:

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the US reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible but in fact it isn’t. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon. (Mao 1968: 8)

Mao was convinced that the correlation of forces favored the socialist bloc and was concerned that those ensconced in the Kremlin would squander the historic opportunity offered by such apparently propitious circumstances because of their fear of these paper tigers. Indeed, he seemed convinced that not even a nuclear war could derail the global advance of Marxism–Leninism. In a discussion titled “We Must Not Fear Nuclear War,” Mao remarked, “If the worse came to the worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist” (Mao 1968: 409; see also 1977: 152–153). Again, Mao’s argument was that technology, even nuclear technology, could not affect the fundamental patterns of political and social relations, which Mao believed were heralding the inevitable triumph of socialism.

Examining nuclear technology from the perspective of underlying assumptions about that technology, we find that those who rang alarm bells about windows of opportunity seem to have shared the same deep assumptions as those who were sanguine about the intentions of the Soviet leadership. Similarly, we find an avowed defender of U.S. values like Colin Gray in the same camp as the author of the famous little red book.

Substantive Approaches to Nuclear Weapons

The substantive approach argues that technology has an autonomous logic of its own that determines a particular form of social organization. As was the case with proponents of the instrumental approach, when those who share a substantive approach to nuclear technology are gathered together, an unlikely combination emerges: in this case, McGeorge Bundy, the exponent of “existential deterrence,” Kenneth Waltz, a supporter of (gradual) nuclear proliferation, and E. P. Thompson, one of the most indefatigable antinuclear campaigners.

According to Bundy and other proponents of existential deterrence, the very fact that a state possesses nuclear weapons is enough to ensure that other states will be deterred from threatening its vital interests no matter how hostile their political relationship. The existentialists believe that numbers, force postures, and targeting—in short, all those issues that have exercised generations of strategists and policymakers—are irrelevant. Mere possession of nuclear weapons is sufficient: or, in the words of an article by Freedman, “I Exist; Therefore I Deter” (Freedman 1988b). Bundy argues that nuclear weapons are so destructive that their mere presence will moderate state behavior because of the fear and uncertainty they introduce into any crisis situation:

A decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one’s country would be recognised in advance as a catastrophic blunder; ten bombs on ten cities would be a disaster beyond history; and a hundred bombs on a hundred cities are unthinkable. (Bundy 1969: 10; see also 1984)

Quite simply, existentialists believe that nuclear weapons technology is so lethally potent that its potential effects override all other political, social, and cultural considerations in the calculations of decisionmakers.

Kenneth Waltz’s well–known argument in favor of gradual nuclear proliferation is based on the same kind of assumptions as those underlying the existential deterrence position; he merely pushes the argument to its logical conclusion. Like Bundy, Waltz believes that the presence of nuclear weapons inevitably moderates the behavior of states: “The probability of major war among states having nuclear weapons approaches zero” (Waltz 1990: 740). He underlines that this benefit accrues whatever the political hue of the states in question: “One need not become preoccupied with the characteristics of the state that is to be deterred or scrutinize its leaders” (Waltz 1990: 737–738).

Waltz argues that because of the technologically determined, pacifying nature of nuclear weapons, their benefits should be spread throughout the international system by gradual proliferation. In a paper subtitled “More May Be Better,” he summarily dismisses the “ethnocentric views” of those wary of allowing nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of the leaders of unstable Southern states: “Many Westerners who write fearfully about a future in which third–world countries have nuclear weapons seem to view their people in the once familiar imperial manner as ‘lesser breeds without the law’” (Waltz 1981: 11). Clearly, Waltz views nuclear technology as an autonomous force that determines a particular pattern of state behavior, thereby overriding all other social and political factors.

Both the arguments put forward by the proponents of existential deterrence and Waltz’s arguments for proliferation suggest that the autonomous logic of nuclear weapons technology is benign. However, others who share a substantive understanding of the nature of nuclear technology have developed an analysis that is diametrically opposed to these arguments. In particular, many in the peace movement have argued that, to use Frank Barnaby’s words, “we are being driven toward nuclear world war by the sheer momentum of military technology” (Barnaby 1982: 35).

Arguably the most eloquent exponent of this view was E. P. Thompson. In “Sources of Exterminism,” an essay first published in the New Left Review in 1980 and subsequently reproduced as the centerpiece of a collection titled Exterminism and Cold War (E. Thompson 1982b), Thompson argued that the nuclear arms race had an autonomous, exterminist logic that would lead to the extermination of the human race. He regarded nuclear weapons in a deterministic fashion, claiming, for example, that the weapons “and their attendant support–systems, seem to grow of their own accord, as if possessed by an independent will” (E. Thompson 1982b: 5). Although Thompson called for and was a prominent participant in a movement of concerned citizens dedicated to checking exterminism, such is the autonomous power that he ascribes to nuclear weapons that it is hard to see how their deadly logic could be checked. His antinuclear activism seems to have been based on a Gramscian “pessimism of intellect and optimism of will.”

Despite the very different conclusions arrived at in their work, the common thread in the thinking of Bundy, Waltz, and Thompson is a similar, substantive approach to the relationship between human beings and nuclear technology. They all see that technology as an autonomous force shaping social relations and as a universal destiny that overrides cultural particularity.

Critical Approaches to Nuclear Weapons

There can be little doubt that most contributions to the vast literature on the implications of nuclear weapons have been based on either instrumental or substantive conceptualizations of technology. For example, the recurrent debate in the United States between nuclear–use theorists and proponents of mutually assured destruction is essentially an argument between instrumentalist and substantivist positions, respectively (M. Williams 1992b). However, I would argue that those studies that have utilized a critical approach to technology—whether knowingly or not—offer the most insights into the actual behavior of nuclear–armed states.

The critical approach stresses the ambivalent nature of technology: Technology opens up a range of options or choices for society, and the options chosen depend in part on the configuration of power relations within that society and almost invariably serve to reinforce the position of the hegemonic group. Some of the studies of nuclear weapons that have adopted this type of approach fall into the broad category of “arms race literature.” These studies have placed issues like procurement decisions in the context of domestic political disputes. By doing so, they have exposed the way that these decisions often reflect bureaucratic and political power struggles rather than any rational enemy threat (a particularly sophisticated treatment of the U.S.–Soviet nuclear arms race is provided by Evangelista 1988). This theme is given a further twist by those scholars who have analyzed the role played by nuclear weapons in the construction and legitimation of the national security states on both sides of the Cold War divide (see, for example, M. Cox 1984, 1986, 1990). Such work undermines both instrumental and substantive understandings of nuclear technology and simultaneously draws out the relationship between military technology and political and socioeconomic power.

Bruce Blair’s comparative study of U.S. and Soviet nuclear forces provides further powerful support for proponents of a critical approach to technology (Blair 1993). Blair demonstrates the technological constraints within which both states had to operate. Developments in rocket technology reduced both the time needed to prepare missiles for firing and their flight time en route to their targets. These developments forced both countries to develop command and control systems that could react rapidly in times of crisis. However, the force structures developed by both sides to deal with this problem were very different and reflected their wider strategic and political cultures. The USSR, skeptical about the possibility of fighting a nuclear war and suspicious of military Bonapartism, was obsessed with retaining full political control over nuclear weapons and thus adopted a highly centralized command and control system. The United States, for its part, was deeply concerned both with the possibility of not being able to retaliate in the case of a Soviet first strike because of paralysis in decisionmaking structures and ensuring that its forces could destroy the wide range of targets allotted to them under the single integrated war plan. Thus U.S. politicians and planners adopted a highly decentralized command and control system in which the authority to launch nuclear weapons in a time of crisis was predelegated down the chain of command.

These force structures led to the development of a highly unstable system in which both sides’ configuration of hardware and doctrine seem to have been almost custom–designed to inflame the other side’s worst fears. The Soviets’ highly centralized system was difficult for the Americans to analyze, whereas U.S. efforts toward predelegation were certain to fuel Soviet fears that a U.S. surprise strike was in the offing. Blair’s analysis strongly suggests that the human race was extremely fortunate not to see the whole system break down disastrously.

The compatibility of Blair’s study with the critical approach to technology lies in the fact that both the United States and the USSR were faced with technologically constrained choices and chose particular solutions that reflected the values and interests of the ruling elites in both states. The fact that some of the most detailed and sophisticated empirical studies of nuclear weapons, including Blair’s, provide such a good fit with the critical approach to technology has broad theoretical implications for the conceptualization of strategic behavior. It also suggests a number of important political possibilities.

Theoretical implications and Political Possibilities

Superficially, the critical approach to technology, with its emphasis on the importance of culture and politics, seems to be compatible with the literature on strategic culture (for an overview, see Booth and Macmillan 1998). If the insights of the critical approach are to be fully accommodated by students of strategic culture, however, then this accommodation will require the rethinking of the notion of strategic culture itself. Once this is accomplished, a revised understanding of strategic culture can take its place at the center of the conceptualization of strategy.

In his original formulation, Jack Snyder defined strategic culture as the outcome of a “socialisation process” through which “a set of general beliefs, attitudes and behavioural patterns” achieve “a state of semipermanence that places them on the level of ‘culture’ rather than mere ‘policy’” (Snyder 1977: v). The concept has since been utilized to provide useful insights into different national styles in war and peace. Thus far, the implicit assumption about technology underlying the strategic culture literature has been instrumental. That is, analysts have concentrated their attention on the ways in which similar weapons are utilized differently by different states, reflecting different ways of warfare.

The critical approach to technology also focuses on the ways in which the usage of technology reflects different values in society, but it goes a stage further. The critical approach stresses the ways in which technology affects and shapes society. So, in the case of strategy, the critical argument is that analysts need to focus not only on the ways in which strategic culture influences decisions pertaining to the utilization of technology but also on the ways in which technological developments affect strategic culture and, furthermore, the ways in which particular technologies can actually embody social (cultural) values and power configurations. In short, the concept of strategic culture needs to be recast to include the dialectical interaction of culture and technology.

Definitionally, such a recasting is relatively unproblematic. Indeed, some current definitions of strategic culture can be read in a way that incorporates a focus on technology in the manner suggested here. Take, for example, Ken Booth’s definition:

The concept of strategic culture refers to a nation’s traditions, values, attitudes, patterns of behaviour, habits, symbols, achievements and particular ways of adapting to the environment and solving problems with respect to the threat or use of force. (Booth 1990: 121)

It does not require a leap of imagination to incorporate a critical concern with technology into this formulation: Technological possibilities can be seen as part of the environment to which the nation is reacting; particular ways of developing, configuring, and deploying technology can be seen as part of the nation’s patterns of behavior. One might conclude, therefore, that no major intellectual reorientation is necessary. But this conclusion would be mistaken. Booth hints at the difficulties that exist in such a reorientation:

A strategic culture defines a set of patterns of and for a nation’s behaviour on war and peace issues. It helps shape but does not determine how a nation interacts with others in the security field. Other explanations (e.g. technological push) play a greater or lesser role in particular circumstances. (Booth 1990: 121)

The reference to a “technological push” indicates the way in which the notion of strategic culture has developed as a response to, and partly as a rejection of, technological explanations. Thus, a move to a conceptualization that recognizes the mutual implication of technology and culture—a conceptualization that recognizes their dialectical interdependence rather than collapses one into the other or draws strict dividing lines between them—requires a major shift. Though the definitional implications may be limited, the change in intellectual horizons required is substantial.

The benefits that can accrue from such a transformation are significant. If the critical approach to technology is integrated into a broader conception of strategic culture, this integration will allow connections to be made between some of the most sophisticated empirical accounts of the development of particular weapons (for example, Blair 1993; Evangelista 1988) and the most sophisticated studies of strategic behavior. Furthermore, it should encourage long overdue cross–pollination between the study of military technology with the more general literature on the relationship between technology and society (among the few studies to make this link are Flank 1993–1994 and De Landa 1991)

As should be evident from Part 1, a critical theory perspective must be concerned with more than methodological sophistication; such sophistication is viewed as a necessary prerequisite for its ultimate purpose, emancipation. Another advantage of using a critical approach to technology as part of a reconceptualization of strategy is that it can aid in the highlighting of emancipatory possibilities.

By refusing to reify technology and instead viewing it as a process with ambivalent possibilities, the critical approach encourages analysts to look for alternative outcomes and to problematize the stability of the process itself. This point is illustrated by Steven Flank’s discussion of the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology (Flank 1993–1994). Reflecting upon the examples of India and South Africa in particular, Flank stresses that the “difficult task of assembling nuclear weapons requires constructing large and stable networks,” and that the “list of allies promoting that construction extends beyond security threats and foreign assistance” (Flank 1993–1994: 277). Thus the infrastructure necessary to underpin the development of nuclear weapons is not merely physical; the political, cultural, and economic underpinnings are equally important. In other words, nuclear weapons technology is a process embodying all these elements.

The political implications of this conclusion are highly significant. As Flank points out, if these elements are not reproduced, then “large technological systems” that make nuclear weapons possible “disintegrate” (Flank 1993–1994: 277). This puts the commonsense argument against disarmament on the grounds that nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented into a new light. As Donald MacKenzie points out, in a passage quoted approvingly by Flank:

Outside of the human, intellectual, and material networks that give them life and force, technologies cease to exist. We cannot reverse the invention of the motor car, perhaps, but imagine a world in which there were no car factories, no gasoline, no roads, where no one alive had ever driven, and where there was satisfaction with whatever alternative form of transportation existed. The libraries might still contain pictures of automobiles and texts on motor mechanics, but there would be a sense in which that was a world in which the motor car had been uninvented. (MacKenzie 1990: 426)

Nuclear weapons could also become a historical curiosity with a similar lack of real–world relevance—but with inferior aesthetic qualities—as intricate medieval suits of armor. But this is less likely to occur if those analysts concerned with their study continue to treat nuclear weapons as immutable givens rather than as what they are in reality: the result of a rather fragile “interplay of professional, technical, economic, and political factors” (Bijker and Law 1992: 3) and the product of a coalition of interests and alliances that will disintegrate if not constantly reproduced.

Examined through the lenses of the critical approach to technology, nuclear weapons do not become less dangerous. But if the fetishism of nuclear weapons is rejected and they are conceived as a product of human endeavor that can be unconceived, then it becomes apparent that technology is not destiny; the specter of nuclear weapons can be removed from world politics. Furthermore, proponents of critical security studies have a potentially useful role to play in “denaturalizing” nuclear weapons and military technologies. Flank makes this point well in relation to his own work:

Ultimately, this analysis should not stop at deconstruction. What might be called “reconstruction” is a purposive, positive undertaking, in contrast to the sometimes nihilistic dismantling of deconstruction. Instead of being left with scraps of the story in a chaotic pile on the cutting room floor, I want to put them back together in a new way, in the form of a story that can be used for something, namely, actively changing the world. When reconstructing weapons of mass destruction, I want to reassemble their histories in order to help us disassemble the weapons themselves. (Flank 1993–1994: 281)

By denaturalizing and exposing the processes (the interplay of interests, institutions, and technical possibilities) from which nuclear and other weapons emerge, critical intellectuals can play an important role in the struggle for emancipation. It is this role that will form the central theme of the next chapter.