This article proposes the notion of a security imaginary as a heuristic tool for exploring military isomorphism (the phenomenon that weapons and military strategies begin to look the same across the world) at a time when the US model of defence transformation is being adopted by an increasing number of countries. Built on a critical constructivist foundation, the security-imaginary approach is contrasted with rationalist and neoinstitutionalist ways of explaining military diffusion and emulation. Merging cultural and constructivist themes, the article offers a 'strong cultural' argument to explain why a country would emulate a foreign military model and how this model is constituted in and comes to constitute a society's security imaginary.
The European Union has long sought to raise its profile as a significant actor in the global effort to curtail the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). From this perspective, the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference represented a pivotal event where the EU could demonstrate the strength of its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). During a monthlong negotiation at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the representatives of state parties to the treaty-including all the EU countries-struggled to build a consensus on the final document that would assess recent progress and outline the steps to be taken in the next review period.In the end, the 2015 NPT Review Conference failed to build such a consensus. The final stumbling block turned out to be the question of the Middle East and the planned WMD-free zone therein; however, there were also serious clashes over many other substantive issues within the three pillars of the NPT: disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful use of nuclear energy. Disarmament stood, once again, at the forefront of these debates. The majority of non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pace and scope of disarmament measures by the five nuclear weapon states (NWS) recognized by the treaty-the United States, Russia, the UK, France and China, which are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (P5). Criticism of the lack of progress on the disarmament pillar has now gained strong momentum in the Humanitarian Initiative, a recent development in NPT discourse that seeks to frame the urgent need for the abolition of nuclear weapons through the lenses of human security, international humanitarian law, and new scientific findings related to the horrific consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. 1 The aim of this article is to examine the role of the EU and its member states in the deliberations of the 2015 NPT Review Conference. I draw on research based primarily on direct on-site observation; statements of the EU and its member states in the general debate, main committees and subsidiary bodies; 2 working 1 See John Borrie, 'Humanitarian reframing of nuclear weapons and the logic of a ban', International Affairs 90: 3, May 2014, pp. 625-46; Tom Sauer and Joelien Pretorius, 'Nuclear weapons and the humanitarian approach', .959753; Rebecca Johnson, 'The humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons: an imperative for achieving disarmament', Irish Studies in International Affairs 25: 1, 2014, pp. 59-72. 2 For an overview of organizational matters and the structure of negotiations at the 2015 NPT Review Confer-
American plans for Missile Defence (MD) and the weaponisation of space should be analysed in the larger framework of the contemporary Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).1 Soviet military analysts have written about this revolution from as early as the 1970s, but it was the application of information age technology (IT) in the 1991 Gulf War that captured the imagination of military planners and policy makers, especially in the US. The US is actively pursuing an RMA, conceptualised as integrating new IT into weapons systems and integrated command, control, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) and, in turn, doctrinal, operational and organisational change in the military to take advantage of information dominance on the battlefield. This relates to MD and the weaponisation of space in two ways. Firstly, very few countries have the financial and technological capability to modernise their defence forces along the lines of a US-defined RMA, which means that they may resort to so-called asymmetric means to exploit the vulnerabilities or weaknesses of a strong, conventional power. Ballistic missiles (in association with chemical, biological or nuclear payloads) are one of the asymmetrical threats most commonly cited in speeches and military documents of the US and used as justification of MD. Secondly, the RMA increases the US military's reliance on space-based military assets for C4ISR. Placing weapons in space to protect these assets is seen as a logical step to ensure a key aspect of US dominance on the battlefield. This paper a The author would like to express her sincere thanks to Prof Bruce Larkin and Peter Wright for 'musings' on earlier drafts of this article, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs for providing a forum where earlier drafts were presented, the reviewers and Editor of Scientia Militaria for very useful comments and to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) for the funding of my graduate research on which this article is partially based. The views expressed are the author's and not attributable to the CSC. 73explores the extent to which the strategic framework of the RMA has a bearing on US MD and space weaponisation arguments.
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