The papers compiled in this report attempt to determine under what conditions and to what extent cultural factors make a difference in the elaboration and execution of non-proliferation, arms control, and disarmament (NACD) policies. They seek to clarify a concept of security cultures that draws upon the diplomatic, political, strategic, and social elements that go into security policy-making. Culture, as it refers to NACD issues, consists of those enduring and widely-shared beliefs, traditions, attitudes, and symbols that inform the ways in which a state's or society's interests and values with respect to security, stability and peace are perceived, articulated, and advanced by political actors and elites. The papers cover a range of states and regions: south-east Asia, China, India, Latin America, and the Middle East. Each examines a range of concrete issues and cases connected with NACD issues, and orientations towards security more generally.

Gizewski, P.: Nuclear disarmament. - S.1-12. Cameron, J.: An outsider's critique of the '93+2' Programme. - S.13-24. Keeley, J. F.: Stretching the envelope? - S.25-34. ... Fraser, D.: Operationalizing verification. - S.55-58. ... Acharya, A.; Boutin, J.D.K.: Nuclear-weapon-free zones in the New World Order. - S.117-144. Deibert, R.J.: Enclosed encounters: The politics of planetary Surveillance. - S.145-168. ... Krause, K.: Cross-cultural dimensions of multilateral non-proliferation and arms control dialogues. - S.181-206.

A comprehensive and empirically rich set of case studies that examine the impact of socio-cultural influences on multilateral arms control and security-building processes around the world.

This book seeks to decolonize practices of arms control and disarmament. In this endeavor it seeks to problematize our understanding of time and civilization as rhetorical resources. The need for such an undertaking can be premised on the claim that while problems of modernity, ethnocentrism and universalism are now a central concern within the field of international relations, these ideas are scarcely debated or contested within the field of arms control and disarmament. The singular focus on technological innovations and specific policy-oriented agreements in practices of arms control and disarmament appears to stymie the need for such engagements. This book is an invitation to explore intersecting discourses on colonialism, racialism, nationalism and humanitarianism within a historically grounded terrain of weapons control. An understanding of these practices is vital not to prescribe any standards of civilization or exceptionalism in weapons control but to be cognizant through critique of the dangers embedded in any effort at reconstellating the constitutional nuclear order.

The book interrogates the disciplinary biases and firewalls that inform mainstream international relations today, and problematises the several tropes that have come to typify the strategic histories of post-colonial societies such as India. Questioning a range of long-held cultural representations on India, the book challenges such portrayals and underscores the centrality of context and contingency in any cultural explanation of state behaviour. It argues for a historico-cultural understanding of power and critiques IR’s tendency to usher in a selective ‘return of history’. Taking two contrasting case studies from medieval Indian history, the book assesses the success and failure of the grand strategy pursued by the Mughal empire under Akbar. The study emphasises his grand strategy of accommodation, defined by the interplay of critical variables such as distance and the vast military labour market. The book also looks at his conscious attempt to indigenise power by projecting himself as the personification of the ideal Hindu king. This case study helps to contextualise the many critical transitions that occurred in international relations: from medieval empires to the modern state system, and from an indigenised, experiential understanding of power to its absolute, abstract manifestations in the colonial state.