CRITIQUE/PROLIFERATION IMAGE

SOLVENCY: WE CAN CONTEST AND REPLACE THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE

CONTESTING THE DOMINATION OF THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE CAN BE EFFECTIVE

DAVID MUTIMER, Prof. Political Science York University, 2000; THE WEAPONS STATE: PROLIFERATION AND THE FRAMING OF SECURITY // VT2002 acs p. 116

The indefinite extension of the NPT has been seen as the heart of the new proliferation agenda. The United States and its Northern allies worked hard to ensure that the 1995 conference produced the result they wanted. The debate over the future of the NPT that necessarily surrounded the extension decision provided a locus for an alternative framing of the security problems surrounding military technology. This reframing, contesting the 46 proliferation" image, draws on other resources inherited from the Cold War framings of weapons and associated technologies. To date, it has not been articulated as a coherent alternative to "proliferation," but in this chapter I show how such an articulation is possible, drawing on some of the most powerful resources of contemporary international political discourse.

THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE FRAMES OUR CURRENT POLICIES, BUT CAN BE CONTESTED AND REPLACED

DAVID MUTIMER, Prof. Political Science York University, 2000; THE WEAPONS STATE: PROLIFERATION AND THE FRAMING OF SECURITY // VT2002 acs p. 156

These common features create a narrowly constrained universe within which to debate the politics and policy of proliferation control. New responses at the global, regional, or national level can be proposed, and the relative merits of various suggested agreements can be debated. The scope and efficiency of the many supplier regimes are investigated, and amendments are proposed and debated. Put another way, the practices I discussed earlier, most prominently in Chapter 4, constitute the universe of possible responses to the problem of proliferation, and the debate centers on how best to manage and amend those practices. The object of this book has been to question the boundaries of this problem, to reveal them as products of acts of interpretation rather than as features of the world. These common features inform the "proliferation" image, an image shared by policymakers and scholars who contribute to policy debates. It is an image that frames the world in a particular way and in doing so produces a world that appears natural and within which only certain actions become possible. Once it is recognized as a product, however, the "proliferation" image can be contested in a much broader fashion.

WE MUST IMAGINE AND CREATE OTHER IMAGES AND FRAMES FOR NUCLEAR ISSUES

DAVID MUTIMER, Prof. Political Science York University, 2000; THE WEAPONS STATE: PROLIFERATION AND THE FRAMING OF SECURITY // VT2002 acs p. 75-76

The possibility for opposing dominant framings is one of the most important reasons for developing alternatives. Unless the objects of both academic analysis and policy are first recognized as constructed in the images and practices to which they give rise, such opposition becomes much more difficult. Opposing the proliferation discourse, for example, comes to be seen as arguing in favor of proliferation and all of the ills that image ascribes to proliferation. The fact that military technology has been imagined in these various other ways, however, provides a powerful rhetorical tool for the critic to argue that it can now be imagined in other ways.