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Power, luck, and scholarly responsibility at the end of the world(s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2020

Benoît Pelopidas Open the ORCID record for Benoît Pelopidas [Opens in a new window]
Benoît Pelopidas*
Affiliation:
Sciences Po, Center for International Studies (CERI), CNRS, Paris, France
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This contribution argues that the concept of protean power opens a space to think about the limits of control and knowledge about catastrophic possibilities such as nuclear war. To do so, it offers the first distinctive definition of nuclear luck, which has long been acknowledged by policy and military leaders but remains unaccounted for in scholarship. It further shows that the nuclear realm is defined by two key unknowables. However, it argues that protean power perpetuates a survivability bias which has characterized scholarship so far, before suggesting ways to overcome that bias and modify scholarly ethos to acknowledge such catastrophic possibilities.

Keywords

nuclear weaponsluckscholarly responsibilitycollapseexistential threats
Type
Symposium: Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics: Edited by Jacques E. C. Hymans
Information
International Theory , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2020 , pp. 459 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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