Bandung, the Global South and Nuclear Disarmament

Nuclear studies tend to centre on nuclear weapons technologies and doctrines, the theory and practice of nuclear deterrence, strategic stability and arms control, nuclear non-proliferation and counter-proliferation, East-West strategic competition, extended deterrence and alliance dynamics. 

The historiography of the nuclear age is generally one of the Manhattan Project and WWII leading into the Cold War, threats of nuclear use associated with proxy wars such as Korea and Vietnam, the NPT and periods of detente and arms control negotiations, through to the post-Cold War period of ‘rogue’ states, nuclear terrorism, and now the geopolitics of nuclear multipolarity. 

What tends to get left out are the experiences, perspectives and agency of states, organisations and people that are not part of the central cast of the Northern nuclear Cold War story, notably women and people, and the states and organisations of the global South.

The purpose of this section is to introduce you to the central connections between anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism and anti-nuclearism, the idea of non-alignment as a political force in world politics, especially in the Cold War, and what  its champions had to say about nuclear weapons and disarmament.  

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