{"id":321,"date":"2012-11-13T13:06:41","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T12:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nuclearphilosophy.org\/?p=321"},"modified":"2014-10-13T11:12:38","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T11:12:38","slug":"deterrence-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/?p=321","title":{"rendered":"Deterrence Ball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-322\" title=\"Deterrence Ball\" alt=\"Deterrence Ball\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Deterrence-Ball1.png\" width=\"483\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/nuclearphilosophy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Deterrence-Ball1.png 483w, https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/nuclearphilosophy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Deterrence-Ball1-300x288.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/nuclearphilosophy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Deterrence-Ball1-311x300.png 311w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 483px) 100vw, 483px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>US Strategic Command, the institutional owner and conductor of the American nuclear arsenal, gives out knick-knacks at its (semi)public events: pens, desk toys, lapel-pins \u2013 what Lynn Eden refers to as \u201ctchotchke\u201d and I prefer to think of as \u201cswag&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I learned this a few months ago, at &#8220;StratCom\u2019s&#8221; annual \u2018Deterrence Symposium\u2019 in Omaha, Nebraska, where the senior suits and brass of the US nucleocracy gather to reassess and reaffirm their <em>raison d&#8217;\u00eatre<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>These goodies appeal to me in a sardonic sort of way. To my mind, at least, their mundanity\u00a0belies StratCom&#8217;s\u00a0apocalyptic\u00a0purpose, and testifies to the intellectual distance that nuclear interlocutors have created between themselves and their abysmal subject matter. I spent my breaks amassing a small arsenal of swag, most of which now adorns my apartment in Bristol.<\/p>\n<p>Pride of place in the new collection is a &#8216;stress ball&#8217; painted like a globe with StratCom\u2019s logo on it: a miniature world you can hold in the palm of your hand and casually crush when you\u2019re under pressure.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone at the symposium in search of a metaphor would not have had to look far.<\/p>\n<p>The ball reminds me of Weber&#8217;s misgivings about bureaucracies and their structural indifference to moral purpose.\u00a0Deterrence and introspection have never been compatible. Omaha is littered with missile silos, each controlled by uniformed men and women who pack the kids off to school every morning and then report to their bunkers for duty, fully prepared to end the world should duty require. The organization to which they report hands out branded stationary.<\/p>\n<p>We traditionally think of the advent of nuclear weapons as a problem for security researchers, but perhaps the most pressing questions it \u00a0raises are sociological and anthropological. They have to do with our relationships with institutions, and our institutions&#8217; relationships with the societies they ostensively serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US Strategic Command, the institutional owner and conductor of the American nuclear arsenal, gives out knick-knacks at its public events: pens, desk toys, lapel-pins \u2013 what Lynn Eden refers to as \u201ctchotchke\u201d and I prefer to think of as \u201cswag&#8221;. I learned this a few months ago, at &#8220;StratCom\u2019s&#8221; annual \u2018Deterrence Symposium\u2019 in Omaha, Nebraska, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,50,47,46,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deterrence-2","category-john","category-lagniappe","category-marginalia","category-nuclear-security"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3CaZH-5b","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}