Tom Sauer

The starting point for this book is the editors’ belief in the need to revive and redefine pacifist thought for the 21st century, on the grounds that just war theory (dominant in recent decades) has proved insufficient, and that rejection of any limits on warfare is obviously undesirable. Pacifism has proved inspirational in the past, so its potential should be explored.

Advocates of the TPNW know that it will not automatically lead to a world without nuclear weapons. The treaty’s main goal, the authors argue, is to stimulate a societal and political debate inside the nuclear-armed states and their allies, by strengthening the antinuclear norm and by stigmatising nuclear weapons and their possessors. This article assesses to what extent this process of stigmatisation might take place. It concludes by looking at different stigma-management approaches that could be used by the nuclear-armed states and their allies.