Nuclear weapons in the light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

A postcolonial perspective

Abstract

Using postcolonial theory, this research note invites a challenge to Western hegemony on knowledge by arguing that, due to problematic Eurocentric assumptions, nuclear weapons proliferation is one of the greatest threats to global security, as opposed to a guarantor of it. The case study this note uses is Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine and the three key Eurocentric assumptions are ahistoricism, denial of agency to the Other and the Self/Other distinction. This research note demonstrates that NATO’s understanding of nuclear weapons as a deterrent and its holders as post-imperial, responsible actors has led to similar assumptions about Russia’s nuclear weapons policy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reveals the contrary - Russia’s nuclear proliferation is motivated primarily by imperial ambitions, recklessness and nuclear intimidation. The paper concludes that it is the one-sided Western knowledge and Russia’s exclusion from postcolonial thought that enabled this distortion, the price of which is one of the greatest global geopolitical crises since the Second World War. The solution, this note concludes, is to finally recognise Russia as a colonial perpetrator and to recognise the Second World’s knowledge and being.