A counter-revolution in military affairs: Rancièrian theory of international politics and the introduction of humanitarian dissensus into the police order of the Non-Proliferation Treaty

The article shows how Jacques Rancière’s theory of politics can be used to analyze the politics of nuclear weapon possession, the most extreme form of great power symbolism and hierarchy. This approach to order and its disruption within international organization runs counter to the Schmittian nomos of the Earth and its spatialized imaginary that rests on notions of sovereignty and of the political as defined by enmity and amity. Accordingly, this understanding of politics is able to operate within the deconstructed anarchy problematique of International Relations. To show the usefulness of this Rancièrian approach, the article examines the Humanitarian Initiative and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons from this viewpoint. The focus is on what the initiative did in relation to the common sense of nuclear non-proliferation and how it made the prohibition treaty possible by disrupting the established sense of how things have to be and how they are “counted.” The initiative brought in an incommensurate element into the count of the Non-Proliferation Treaty review process. The introduction of “dissensus” into the process provided a voice for those who were not counted in this regime: non-nuclear-weapon states that were not allowed a voice with regard to the legitimacy of weapon possession nevertheless spoke to ban nuclear weapons. This made non-nuclear weapon states political subjectivities in the realm of nuclear weapon possession, which produced a counter-revolution in military affairs by delegitimizing nuclear weapon possession for all.