Nuclear Echoes: Nuclear Weapons Pasts in the Present

NUCLEAR ECHOES is the first project of its kind to systematically study nuclear weapons commemoration and their present-day effects. We are today witnessing a global nuclear weapons revival, moving further away from the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. All nuclear weapons states are actively modernizing their nuclear arsenals and arms control agreements are being abandoned. In Europe, the War in Ukraine reinforces nuclear weapons as a core feature of extended security among NATO countries. In Northeast Asia, Japan and South Korea have deepened their extended security arrangements with the United States to face a nuclear armed North Korea and growing Chinese weapons capabilities. Amid this nuclear revival, what role does nuclear weapons history play? Which nuclear lessons are being drawn from the past for the present, what is commemorated and what is left behind? NUCLEAR ECHOES addresses these questions, with two core aims: (1) to analyse how national nuclear weapons pasts play out politically in the present; and (2) develop a global database of nuclear weapons commemoration. The project begins with a working definition of nuclear weapons commemoration as a political practice of remembering nuclear pasts in the present, from the living trauma associated with the use and testing of these weapons to the celebration of science in developing technologically sophisticated weapons. NUCLEAR ECHOES seeks to contribute to the wider ethics of memory field by building into analysis, through interviews and surveys, a consideration of the ethical dilemmas that nuclear commemoration poses for the present. Ultimately, NUCLEAR ECHOES offers a new historically informed contribution to the nuclear field on the political relevance of nuclear weapons commemoration today. At a time of nuclear revival, understanding the history and politics behind nuclear commemoration and how nuclear memories are formed in the present matters more than ever.