War and/of Words: Constructing WMD in US Foreign Policy

Abstract This article provides an examination of the use of concepts— specifically “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD)—in security discourse. There are two key aspects to this discussion. First, the paper disputes current perceptions of WMD conceptual meaning. By analyzing the origins of the concept within the context of US foreign policy c.1945–48, it will be shown that, far from the fixed concept this has been assumed to be, WMD has been defined in a wide variety of ways. Second, this paper will demonstrate that these shifts in conceptual meaning are the strategic and intentional product of security actors. In the case of the concept's emergence, US policymakers exploited the concept as a political resource where its selective definition created an opportunity to manipulate and shape the post-Hiroshima arms-control regime. This article will discuss this in relation to the work of Quentin Skinner—in particular, his conception of the “innovating ideologist.” This article is part of the following collections: A Decade of Nuclear Scholarship in Security Studies Acknowledgments Michelle Bentley is a teaching fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. Many thanks go to the editors of Security Studies and to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful, informed, and constructive comments. Notes W. Seth Carus, for example, presents this as a landmark definition, specifically setting CBRN as definitive at the international and foreign policy level. See W. Seth Carus, “Defining ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction,'” Occasional Paper no. 8 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, National Defense University Press, 2006). 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Lynn Klotz and Edward Sylvester, Breeding Bio Insecurity: How U.S. Biodefense Is Exporting Fear, Globalizing Risk, and Making Us All Less Secure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 83–84. Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, “Dismantling the Concept of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction,'” Arms Control Today 28, no. 3 (January/February 1998); Christian Enemark, “Farewell to WMD: The Language and Science of Mass Destruction,” Contemporary Security Policy 32, no. 2 (August 2011). On Dresden, see Beatrice Heuser, The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons in their Historical, Strategic and Ethical Context (London: Longman, 2000), 22. On Rwanda, see Ronald Higgins, “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Rhetoric and Realities” (London: International Security Information Service, 2002), 4. Kofi Annan, “‘We the Peoples:' The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century” (New York: United Nations, 2000), 52. On landmines as WMD, see “The Honorable John D. Holum, Director U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Remarks at the United Nations, First Committee, New York, NY,” 16 October 1996, available at http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/speeches/holum/holumun.html. On landmines as WMD in slow motion, see Kenneth Roth, “Sidelined on Human Rights: America Blows Out,” Foreign Affairs 77, no. 2 (March/April 1998): 2. John Sislin, “A Convergence of Weapons,” Peace Review 10, no. 3 (1998). On WMD's barbaric effect, see R. Everett Langford, Introduction to Weapons of Mass Destruction: Radiological, Chemical and Biological (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley Richard M. Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). Tannenwald, Nuclear Taboo, 98, 363. Price makes a similar statement with respect to including chemical weapons in the 1948 document. See Price, Chemical Weapons Taboo, 144. Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 50. Quentin Skinner, “A Reply to My Critics,” in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, ed. James Tully (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 274; Quentin Skinner, “Rhetoric and Conceptual Change,” Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought 3 (1999): 61. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 6; Quentin Skinner, “On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Action,” The Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 82 (1971). Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding;” Quentin Skinner, “Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts,” New Literary History 3, no. 2 (1972): 400–401. Quentin Skinner, “Language and Political Change,” in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 17. James Farr, “Understanding Conceptual Change Politically,” in Political Innovation, 25. Quentin Skinner, “Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action,” Political Theory 2, no. 3 (August 1974): 293. Roxanne Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Jennifer Milliken, “The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods,” European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 2 (June 1999); Lene Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2006); Charlotte Epstein, The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). Ronald R Krebs and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, “Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric,” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 1 (March 2007): 45–46. Ibid., 41. Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding,” 49; Quentin Skinner, “Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts,” The Philosophical Quarterly 20, no. 79 (April1970): 130; Quentin Skinner, “Hermeneutics and the Role of History,” New Literary History 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1975): 216. Quentin Skinner. “Seeing Things Their Way,” in Vision of Politics: Volume I, Regarding Method, ed. Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 7. Christian Reus-Smit has already highlighted that Skinner provides a valuable resource in understanding historical approaches to IR. See Christian Reus-Smit, “Reading History through Constructivist Eyes,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 37, no. 2 (December 2008). William Lang, “Archbishop's Appeal: Individual Will and Action: Guarding Personality,” London Times, 28 December 1937 (emphasis added). Michael Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press, 1994), 125. 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Leland Goodrich, “The Amount of World Organization Necessary and Possible,” Yale Law Journal 55, no. 5 (1945): 958. In “Minutes of a Meeting of the Secretaries of States, War, and Navy,” FRUS, 1947. General; The United Nations (Washington, DC: GPO, 1947), 382. Bernard Baruch, “Proposals for an International Atomic Development Authority,” Department of State Bulletin 14, no. 364 (June 1946): 1060. Ian Bellany, “Introduction,” in Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Responding to the Challenge, ed. Ian Bellany (London: Routledge, 2007), 6. Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 124–30. Baruch, “Proposals,” 1060. Bernard Baruch, Bernard M Baruch: The Public Years (London: Odhams Press, 1960), 336. 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Dean Acheson, David Lilienthal et al., “A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy,” available at http://www.learnworld.com/ZNW/LWText.Acheson-Lilienthal.html#text. “Notes of a Meeting between the United States Delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission and the United States Representatives on the Military Staff Committee,” FRUS, 1946. General; The United Nations, 885–86. James Byrnes, “World Cooperation: Address by the Secretary of State,” Department of State Bulletin 13, no. 334 (November 1945): 784. “Memorandum of Conversation, by John M Hancock of the United States Delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission,” FRUS, 1946. General; The United Nations, 803. Ibid., 815. James Byrnes, “Address by the Secretary of State,” Department of State Bulletin 15, no. 390 (December 1946): 1139. “The Secretary of War (Patterson) and the Secretary of the Navy (Forrestal) to the Secretary of State,” FRUS, 1947. General; The United Nations, 363. Acheson, “Notes,” 886. “U.S. Position on Armaments and Armed Forces within the Competence of the Commission for Conventional Armaments,” FRUS, 1947. General; The United Nation, 549. James Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (London: William Heinemann, 1947), 273. UN General Assembly, “Principles Governing the General Regulation and Reduction of Armaments,” Resolution 41(1), 14 December 1946, 65–66. Andrei Gromyko, quoted in James Ludlow, “The Establishment of the Commission for Conventional Armaments,” Department of State Bulletin 16, no. 408 (April 1947): 738. Quoted in “Minutes of a Meeting of the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy,” FRUS, 1947. General; The United Nations, 382. Ibid., 383. Ibid., 384. Matthew Ridgway, Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B Ridgway (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1974), 172. “Study Prepared by the Joint Strategic Survey Committee,” FRUS, 1947. General; The United Nations, 535. Ibid., 534–35. UN General Assembly, “Resolution of the Commission for Conventional Armaments: Definition of Armaments,” Documents on Disarmament 1945–1959 (1948). “U.S. Position on Armaments and Armed Forces,” 548. “Memorandum by the Secretary of War (Patterson) and the Secretary of the Navy (Forrestal) to the Chairman of the Joint Research and Development Board (Bush),” FRUS, 1947. General; The United Nations, 421. “Position Paper Approved by the Executive Committee on Regulation of Armaments: Objectives Re Possible GA Consideration of ‘Other Weapons Adaptable to Mass Destruction,'” FRUS, 1948. General; The United Nations 1, pt. 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1948), 420. Ibid., 423. “Memorandum by the Counselor (Kennan): International Control of Atomic Energy,” FRUS, 1950. National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1950), 39. UN General Assembly, “Prohibition of the Development and Manufacture of New Types of Weapons of Mass Destruction and New Systems of Such Weapons,” Resolution 32 (84) (A), 12 December 1977. Michelle Bentley, “The Long Goodbye: Beyond an Essentialist Construction of WMD,” Contemporary Security Policy 33, no. 2 (2012): 390–94. “Editorial Note,” FRUS, 1961–1963: Arms Control and Disarmament 7 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1963), 892. Bentley, “The Long Goodbye,” 394–98. Admittedly, this particular example of this trend is more a domestic issue than a foreign policy one, although it does play into wider debates about the War on Terror and international terrorism.