Tomonori Teraoka on "Transnational Networks of Poly-Centralized Governance in Nuclear Arms Control"

I have been considering the manifestations of the rise of polycentric global governance systems, ones that have challenged the once unquestioned monopoly of the state as the sole legitimate global governance actor. E.g., Larry Catá Backer,  On the Tension between Public and Private Governance in the Emerging Transnational Legal Order: State Ideology and Corporation in Polycentric Asymmetric Global Orders.I have posited global governance orders as increasingly grounded in fracture, Larry Catá Backer, "The Structural Characteristics of Global Law for the 21st Century: Fracture, Fluidity, Permeability, and Polycentricity," 17(2) Tilburg Law Review 177 (2012). 

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2012)

My student and research assistant, Tomonori Teraoka (Penn State SIA '2013 expected), has been considering the implications of fractured and polycentric global orders in the context of nuclear power.  He has written a paper Transnational Networks of Poly-Centralized Governance in Nuclear Arms Control: Shift from State-Centered to Transnational Discourse and Gaze in which he develops his views on the profound changes that fractured power is having on the conventional state based architecture for the regulation of nuclear power and arms.  .  The abstract and a short excerpt follows. The paper may be accessed HERE.

Transnational Networks of Poly-Centralized Governance in Nuclear Arms Control: Shift from State-Centered to Transnational Discourse and Gaze
Tomonori Teraoka

ABSTRACT: This paper aims at creating a new discourse of global nuclear arms control based on transnational networks of poly-centralized governance in nuclear arms control. This discourse is only possible through what I call a transnational gaze as opposed to a state-centered gaze represented by both Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” and Obama’s Prague speech. “Gaze,” according to Jacques Lacan, is a process where the object makes the subject look. Although the dominant discourse of nuclear arms control has changed from nonproliferation to disarmament, by being caught by the state-centered gaze, disarmament governance is framed in the structure where an aggregation of states dominates all the nuclear activities including non-state actors. Transnational Networks of Poly-Centralized Governance in Nuclear Arms Control is consisted of what I call nuclear power, employing the concept of Foucault’s power: nuclear powers consist of non-state clandestine, transgovernmental, global nuclear energy, global judicial, and other networks. Among these powers, states lose their status as primary actors in nuclear arms control. Rather than states dominant control over nuclear arms which state-centered gaze supports, the current global reality of nuclear arms control has created poly-centralized governance networks in which each nuclear power has its own autonomy and is functionally differentiated, yet profoundly intertwined with one another. Thus, in order to grasp the whole picture of nuclear power, a transnational gaze and discourse is necessary.

 
Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... 3
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 4
PARTI
FROM NONPROLIFERATION TO DISARMAMENT .......................................................... 6
RHETORICAL SITUATION .......................................................................................................................... 6
THE “ATOMS FOR PEACE” ........................................................................................................................ 7
OBAMA’S PRAGUE SPEECH ..................................................................................................................... 10
POWER ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................... 13
CURRENT DISCOURSES OF NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL .......................................................................... 16
PARTII
STATE-CENTERED GAZE AND DISCOURSE ................................................................... 19
TRANSNATIONAL GAZE AND DISCOURSE: EVOLUTION OF NUCLEAR POWER 23
NON-STATE CLANDESTINE NETWORKS: TERRORIST AND NUCLEAR TRAFFICKING .............................. 23
Terrorist Networks ............................................................................................................................. 24
Nuclear Trafficking Networks ............................................................................................................ 28
Terrorist Networks and Nuclear Trafficking Networks ...................................................................... 31
TRANSGOVERNMENTAL NETWORKS ...................................................................................................... 33
GLOBAL NUCLEAR ENERGY NETWORKS: NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE OR NOT? ...................................... 35
GLOBAL JUDICIAL NETWORKS: ICJ ADVISORY OPINION WITH REGARD TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS ...... 39
OTHER NETWORKS ................................................................................................................................. 45
Global Zero As Transnational Advocacy Networks ........................................................................... 45
NPO networks ..................................................................................................................................... 48
PARTIII
TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS OF POLY-CENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE IN
NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL ................................................................................................. 50
CONCLUSION: RECESSION OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY AND THE FUTURE OF
NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT ................................................................................................... 54

Introduction

“I think that what has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been
deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it’s been memory.
The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.” (John Hersey, The Art of Fiction
No. 92)

It has been 67 years since the first use of nuclear weapons, by the U.S. upon Japan. After World War II, the spread of nuclear weapons across the world, as well as the drastic increase of nuclear stockpiles has been one of the most important issues for the human race. Despite the various efforts to fight the issues surrounding nuclear weapons over the past half-century, there are still many nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the entire world several times. However, through its cultivation in the Cold War framework, nuclear weapons are unique in a way that they function in a symbolic way rather than in actual material way which makes human attempts at abandoning the weapons frustrating. In other words, in order to achieve total abandonment of nuclear weapons, discourse of nuclear arms control must be directed in the right path.

This paper aims at creating a new discourse of global nuclear disarmament governances or what I call transnational networks of poly-centralized governance in nuclear arms control.” The current discourse on disarmament, including both favorable and unfavorable ones have been stimulated by the U.S. President Obama’s Prague speech, which showed a clear shift away from the non-proliferation discourse, whose discursive framework can also be seen in the U.S. President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech. Although it is very favorable for the world to attempt serious nuclear disarmament, the current discourse of disarmament reflected by Obama’s speech seems to dismiss the dynamics of global nuclear realities regardless of its intention. Therefore, the primary question in this paper are: 1) of what do the dynamics of global nuclear realities consist; 2) how ought we consider these realities and create new ways of discourse of them, while most have been dismissed so far. As evidence for the current dominant discourse, this paper starts to examine both Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech and Obama’s Prague speech, which are the explicit examples of traditional discourse in nuclear arms control.