Introduction

Abstract

Today the use of nuclear weapons is practically unthinkable. It is hard to imagine a circumstance in which the use of such weapons could be politically or morally justified. Yet the spectre of nuclear war ending history itself casts a surprisingly small shadow over how we have constructed the ethics of twentieth century foreign affairs. Cold War narratives have traditionally placed great emphasis on the idea that credible threats of mutually assured destruction explain the puzzle of ‘non-use’ since 1945. In so doing they uphold the realist account of time as one in which material power and military force shape past and present. Or in plainer terms, meaning is power and Thrasymachus was right in seeing visions of imaginative civilising action as illusory.

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness.

Eph: 6: 12