CRITIQUE/PROLIFERATION IMAGE

IMPACT: USE OF THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE CREATES ENEMIES AND OPPONENTS

THE PROLIFERATION IMAGES CREATES ENEMIES TO BE OPPOSED

DAVID MUTIMER, Prof. Political Science York University, 2000; THE WEAPONS STATE: PROLIFERATION AND THE FRAMING OF SECURITY // VT2002 acs p. 97

The proliferation image constructs states in the Third World as outsiders. Even if they do not become rogues, they are not permitted inside the privileged Northern club; if they do behave in ways that cause concern to the privileged, they are labeled enemy and heavily sanctioned. Not surprisingly, not all Third World states are entirely happy with the "proliferation" construction. Iran, for example, finds itself abiding by the rules of NPT membership, rules that are supposed to guarantee its access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Nevertheless, its behavior-in this case, the domestic politics of government-causes concern among members of the supplier groups, and so it is sanctioned. India has established itself as the preeminent critic of the proliferation discourse in the Third World. India does not accept the problem as it has been constructed by the insiders, and it does not accept the practices to which the construction has given rise. In Chapter 6 1 examine the alternative framings produced in this resistance and elsewhere to see the possible objects and identities hidden by the "proliferation" image that could serve as a basis for political opposition to that image.

THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE CREATES OTHERS THROUGH AN IDENTITY/DIFFERENCE PROCESS, WHICH THE DISARMAMENT ISSUE DOES NOT

DAVID MUTIMER, Prof. Political Science York University, 2000; THE WEAPONS STATE: PROLIFERATION AND THE FRAMING OF SECURITY // VT2002 acs p. 117

By framing the objects of the problem in different ways, these two images also construct a different range of identities in relation to that problem. As we saw in Chapter 5, the "proliferation" image constructs suppliers, recipients, and rogues or outlaws. This identity set can easily be read from the linear relationship between technology and weapons: the technology originates at a source (suppliers) and spreads outward (recipients); if left uncontrolled, it gives rise to problematic weaponry (roguesoutlaws). The "disarmament-development" image, by contrast, begins by constructing identities around axes of armed-unarmed and developedundeveloped. In this framing the armed have an obligation to disarm, and the developed an obligation to aid in the development of the less developed-an obligation now phrased in terms of the need for an open and growing economy at the global scale. Suppliers and recipients are recast in the familiar terms of global capital, and the security problem is the armed state. Indeed, it would not be difficult to label the identity of the security problem as the weapon state, not in Krauthammer's terms but in the more intuitive formulation of the state with the largest number of weapons.

THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE CREATES CATEGORIES OF ACTORS AND OUR RESPONSE TO THEM

DAVID MUTIMER, Prof. Political Science York University, 2000; THE WEAPONS STATE: PROLIFERATION AND THE FRAMING OF SECURITY // VT2002 acs p. 157

An image that frames a problem produces more than the objects of that problem, it also peoples its world in particular ways. "Proliferation" is no different, as it produces three classes of subjects in its discourse. Again, because of the construction of the problem in terms of underlying technologies, the first of these subjects is suppliers. These suppliers gather in groups to impose restrictions on the movement of technologies to the second set of subjects, the recipients. I have shown that the creation of these groupings is not a mere reflection of some pregiven capacity but rather is an active process of identification, with clear political consequences. Suppliers are not those states with the capacity to supply; rather, they are the states of the advanced industrialized world and those of the former Eastern bloc that the West has been aiding in their conversion to market economies and liberal democracies. Recipients, by contrast, are those outside the privileged few identified as suppliers, even if they are capable of supplying technology to others. Indeed, if recipients do supply technology to others, they may then be identified in the third class of subject: the rogue state, the villain of the "proliferation" frame. Importantly, the image includes no account of this move from recipient to rogue. The "proliferation" image provides no explanation for why states might build arsenals; weapons are simply the inevitable outcome of unchecked technological spread.