Postcolonial perspectives on weapons control

Abstract

Several months ago, I received an invitation from the editorial board of the Asian Journal of Political Science to serve as a guest editor for a special issue of this journal. This unexpected invitation came as a pleasant surprise when I was mulling over the possibilities of postcolonial interventions to decolonize practices of arms control and disarmament. The efforts to decolonize cannot be undertaken alone but need a forum and multiple voices that can collectively represent the efforts of postcolonial scholars to engage with the problem of weapons. The scholars contributing to this special issue have long struggled individually to represent the subalterns struggle for equality and justice within the field of arms control and disarmament. It is now that they come together collectively with their myriad perspectives to interrogate contemporary practices of weapons control. This undertaking is critical especially at a time when the field of International Relations is being critiqued for its Eurocentrism and there is a resurgence of populist civilizational discourses juxtaposing the West and the Rest. This appears as an opportune moment in history to accept the challenge of decolonizing practices of arms control and disarmament. It is not simply a cliché that the field of arms control and disarmament has long been defined and dominated by the West’s military superiority in arms. The struggle against this dominance has been launched by critical security studies scholars that question practices of Orientalism in warfare but refrain from probing more specifically into the problem of weapons. Postcolonial interventions are an exercise in responsibility as they engage with civilizational discourses of difference articulated in terms of race, technology, law and culture. A study of the performative power of these civilizational discourses of difference is critical to cultivate understandings of not only how differences reinforce hierarchies but also to generate reflexivity on the struggles for power, justice and emancipation waged continuously by the subaltern. This Special Issue of the Asian Journal of Political Science is an effort to make more visible the engagement of postcolonial scholars with the problem of arms control and disarmament. It is an effort to resist a resurgent tide of dominant discourses seeking to constitute and reconstitute the field of arms control and disarmament representing the interests of the West to address problems of nuclear proliferation, counterproliferation and nuclear terrorism. While these efforts have their own niche in the field of security studies they cannot be guided by assumptions representing the West as the vanguard of maintaining order and stability in the international system. These dominant representations of the West as the guardian and custodian of the field of arms control and disarmament have often blighted and marginalized contributions of the Global South to weapons control. These efforts have been further stymied and marginalized as some actors from the Global South have striven to join the nuclear club and their practices have been typologized as co-optation or imitation of the behaviour of great powers in the international system. It is under these circumstances that we invited scholars to not only acknowledge and build upon the postcolonial legacies of Bandung and the Non-Aligned movement but also further investigate and explore discourses on identity, power, hierarchy, marginalization and interventions in an effort to decolonize arms control and disarmament. We invited scholars to