On April 27th, 2021, the D.C. Student Consortium on Women, Peace and Security hosted a roundtable with members from partnering universities and the Civil Society Working Group on Women Peace and Security (CSWG) with Ray Acheson, the Director of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Disarmament Program, Reaching Critical Will, on their new book, Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy.

Ray Acheson is an activist, writer, and anti-nuclear feminist. They served on the steering committee of the International Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which was the group that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for their work on The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which was signed by 122 nations. In addition to their work with WILPF, Ray is currently serving as a Visiting Research Collaborator at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Full video here.

Opening Remarks:
In summation of my opening remarks, I wanted to invite Ray to speak to students about a differing perspective on nuclear strategy and policy than we are taught at the Elliott School and most major IR institutions. When I started my graduate program, I looked forward to further examining security policy and how it intersects with Feminist I.R. theory. However, in the entire 14 weeks of the Cornerstone class, which all Master of International Affairs (MAIA) students must take, we did not cover a single piece of Feminist International Relations Theory.

This bothered me the most during the week we discussed nonproliferation and deterrence theory because not a single article we read was written by a woman. So, I took it upon myself to research whether or not there were feminist scholars who studied these topics.

To my surprise, many women studied these subjects and with a feminist lens. Unsurprisingly, most of their work challenged the traditional works such as Waltz, which heavily focused on Nuclear weapons serving a defensive purpose rather than as offensive weapons. These feminist scholars instead focused their work on the importance of disarmament rather than nonproliferation. This is how I came across Ray's work and upcoming book.

Ray's work showed me how important it is to challenge the traditional theory taught in international relations because it only includes a few perspectives. So, during my class this semester with Dr. Graham, I was asked to reach out to a professional whose work interested me. Which, in turn, is the reason for this round table.

Ray Acheson's Opening Remarks:
I got interested in feminist perspectives and gender analysis in relation to disarmament because, as we were saying before this event, it's an intentionally marginalized study of the field.

Traditional I.R. theory, like you said, doesn't account for or acknowledge feminist perspectives and often even ridicules them. I'm sure many of you have sat through I.R. courses or Political Science courses where at the end of the semester, you'll have all lumped together with the poststructuralist, indigenous, and feminist scholarship. [That's] even if you get that at all on the syllabus. Rather than it being integrated throughout a study on security, nuclear weapons, disarmament, or conflict.

Patriarchy is so bound up with militarism, racism, and capitalism. They're all connected systems of power and oppression that order our world.

I have found feminist perspectives on power and violence to be extremely useful for understanding this world. Even if the syllabus and universities don't take it seriously, when you're sitting in the U.N. trying to figure out what's going on between states, it's extremely relevant and useful to help unpack a lot of the dynamics that you see and understand the core issues behind the way our global system has ordered itself. That's also why I wrote this book. I wanted to provide a feminist history of the negotiations of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and the whole process that led up to the negotiations. I also wanted to offer not just a feminist history but also a perspective from a first-hand activist and organizer who was involved in this work from the very beginning. Often these perspectives of feminists and activists are written out of history or, at best, are included in footnotes in other people's interviews.

There's also been so much misinformation about the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons put out of out into the world. Some of it has been very deliberate misinformation meant to undermine the Treaty. Some of it has been very patriarchal and racist. Critiques of who negotiated the Treaty how it's not very important, so I wanted to offer an account that clarifies that we didn't negotiate this Treaty by accident. It wasn't a silly thing that we did that we thought would be a joke or that we thought would be symbolic. There was concerted thinking and strategy that went into crafting this Treaty and trying to make a difference in international relations and trying to disrupt and challenge how international relations and treaty-making and powers usually constituted in the U.N. and other global spaces. All of this was very deliberate on our side. I wanted to try and walk some people through it.

Finally, I hope that this book and accounting are useful for other organizers and activists working for change across any kind of social justice issue. I wanted to offer hope. That it is possible to stand up to power and work in spaces where the opposing order is more militarized, has more money, and more power in the traditional sense. I also wanted to offer some thoughts about strategy and how to navigate the activist diplomatic divide. But also to be honest about the challenges that we faced in this process. To make it clear that ICAN itself and the process to develop this Treaty were not perfect. They were all carried out by human beings. We don't get everything right all of the time. But we certainly tried new things, and the result was a new international law that is already making a difference in the world. So, all of that is the rationale and motivation for writing this book, and I certainly hope it will be useful to students, researchers, organizers, and diplomats in the future.

Arden Haselmann-President of the Georgetown Chapter of the Consortium:
Can you discuss the importance of adopting The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in July of 2017 and its impact on the international community and nuclear strategy around the globe?
Ray Acheson: One of the main impacts that the Treaty has had on the world and within the U.N. itself but more broadly, is it challenges the nuclear orthodoxy to deterrence theory. Which is this idea that might equals right. And that not everyone is equal before the law is sort of, you know, the hierarchy of power that's constituted in global nuclear governance regimes like the nonproliferation treaty (NPT).

The Treaty challenges the idea that only certain militarily active states or nuclear-armed states can discuss nuclear weapons. It was a way to elevate the voice of governments and activists in countries that don't possess nuclear weapons and have actively renounced nuclear weapons, and have policies against deterrence. It's also the first feminist law on nuclear weapons that we've ever had. I describe it as being feminist both in process and in the product. In terms of process, it is a treaty negotiated in the U.N. General Assembly, the most Democratic forum in the U.N. system where every state, regardless of size, has an equal vote.

The process was deliberately framed to be inclusive of and amplify the perspectives of countries that have been affected by nuclear weapon testing countries. And have not been within the nuclear disarmament discourse internationally because of where they are historically with colonialism or other oppressions from militarism. It's the first Treaty that recognizes the gender impacts of nuclear weapons. It also acknowledges the disproportionate effects of nuclear weapon activities on indigenous communities. The Treaty encourages governments to ensure gender diversity in terms of participation in future meetings. So, it's also been impactful in that it's revitalized the humanitarian, environmental discourse on nuclear weapons, which was dominant in the 1960s to 1980s but slipped away at the end of the Cold War.

Ursula Knudsen-Latta- The Legislative Representative for Peace Building on the Friends Committee on National Legislation:
The broader Quaker community and many other activists have long worked to dismantle the racism, sexism, and militarism entrenched in American culture and institutions – especially our security sector. Could you talk a bit about how disarmament should be pursued in the "context of a broader movement for social, environmental, and economic justice and equality" – what does that look like, or how does that change how the work is currently being done?[1]
One of the most important things for this work is to encourage solidarity across all movements. We can already see this, of course, with the Quakers. They are a great example of this. But we see it also within the anti-war and climate justice movements. We also see this with the prison reform movement and the movement on the border against ICE.

Nuclear weapons fit very strongly within all of these structures. In terms of the funds, sometimes the specific corporations working on nuclear weapons are also building the border surveillance apparatus or making the weapons used for wars abroad that get sent home for use by police departments domestically. There are all kinds of material connections between these movements that are important to account for when understanding these subjects.

I think we need to strengthen and solidify our movements. This isn't to say that every person has to work on every issue. It's more about being aware of the connections and supporting the work that we're doing in each of these different segments. So, suppose there's a boycott and divestment initiative from the police and prison abolitionists. In that case, it may be the same company that we would want to target from an antiwar perspective, anti-nuclear perspective, or a border enforcement perspective. Figuring out where those materials' actions are and how we can support each other is vital. There's a lot of strategies or tactics that work across these issues. We need to learn from each other and be attuned to what each other is doing to support that work.

Noelle Cohn- Vice President of the Consortium:
In the introduction to Beyond Arms Control[2] and elsewhere, you have written that nuclear-armed states offer rhetoric about their commitment to nuclear disarmament as a future goal while working to maintain an unequal order of nuclear "haves and have-nots" through the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This is true even after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. How do gendered power dynamics and feminist theory explain the current global order concerning nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament?
It is essential to understand that the militarized conceptions of security where violence equals strength are very patriarchal. Nuclear weapons in this context are tools to hold and exercise power. They are the sort of pinnacle of violent potential that a state has prepared.

The ideas, concepts, and theories that got us to 80,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War are all part of a patriarchal system of violence and power. These theories render invisible the actual violence and the capabilities of these weapons.

Carol Cohn, in the 80s, writes about how looking at the techno strategic discourse is meant to abstract and dilute the actual inherent violence with nuclear weapons. The traditional discourse treats them as these magical tools that will somehow preserve peace and security globally, despite the fact that they can annihilate all of us. The ways that patriarchal techniques are used to quell debate, like gaslighting and victim-blaming, are utilized frequently in the United Nations. We hear it all the time when we're told that by focusing on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons that we are emotional, irrational, or naïve.

It's a massive feat of gaslighting to attribute responsibility for the challenges we face on other people and then be told that they maintain the right to essentially execute all of us in a moment in order to maintain the stability of the situation.

The situation that nuclear states have created doesn't make sense if you don't have a feminist analysis. In my opinion, if you don't use a post-structural analysis and anti-imperialist analysis, it's much harder to come from the position inside this system of global power. When you don't have these tools and understandings, you cannot see how this whole construction has been fabricated to suit the interests of the few.

Bejanchong Foretia, MPH-AMCHP Program Analyst for Women's and Infant Health and G.W. Member of the Consortium:
What was the significance of having atomic bomb survivors such as Setsuko Thurlow from Hiroshima as a part of the process of adopting the Treaty? Why is it important to include survivors in the creation of the post-conflict peace process?
For the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, survivors offered motivation, clarity, and guidance.

Their testimony and their experiences helped to drive the work forward. It provided an alternative picture to that which is presented by the usual discourse around deterrence. They disrupted this picture or portrayal of the bomb as an instrument of peace and security. Survivors could speak from a place of the lived experience of what nuclear weapons did to their bodies, cities, and to their lives intergenerationally.

We can learn from survivors and affected communities about the systems we need to survive so systems of mutual aid or transformative justice can hold each other accountable in ways that don't rely on violence or that could catch create more harm. Many of these systems are set up by survivors of conflicts or those harmed by nuclear weapons to survive within our communities. Involving those perspectives in a peace process or treaty negotiation is important to ensure that we reflect on their experiences and learn.

Nick Zuroski- President of the Consortium:
Could you speak to how nuclear weapons disproportionately affect women, specifically indigenous women, and why it is essential to include more women in the conversation surrounding disarmament and nuclear policy? How can the U.S. rectify injustices caused by its legacy of nuclear weapons production, testing, and waste storage?[3]
Ionizing radiation affects women's and girls' bodies differently due to tissue absorption and reproductive systems. This has been seen in studies in the aftermath of Hiroshima that Nagasaki.

Certain social practices can lead to disproportionate gendered impacts. For example, a few years ago, the United Nations ran a study on U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. It found that men and women were differentially impacted by the testing because of the different social practices. Traditionally, in the Marshall Islands, women and men eat different parts of a fish. The parts that the women ate contained more radiation than the parts consumed by men.

I think these gendered impacts are important. However, I get a little wary of it just because it's quite binary. While these findings are important for understanding radiation and the impacts of nuclear weapons, it's also important to take an intersectional look and their impacts.

Most nuclear weapon activities have taken place on indigenous lands and waters. Whether that's been uranium mining, weapons production, or nuclear testing through radioactive waste storage. In the U.S., a lot of this occurs on the Navajo Nation or the Western Shoshone Lands and other nations around the country.

One thing that the U.S. could do is provide victim assistance and environmental remediation to invest in clean-up to fulfill its human rights obligations in relation to where it's conducted nuclear weapon testing. They can do this both abroad and domestically. But also about other aspects of the nuclear weapon enterprise.

If these countries aren't ready to join the TPNW, they can positively advance the environmental remediation and victim assistance provisions outside the Treaty. We could envision the TPNW as being a vehicle to push this work forward and provide an institutional structure for that work, so we're trying to do.

Sam Barnes- Member of the G.W. Chapter:
How can U.N. Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security support/be better implemented to support the movement towards disarmament/anti-nuclear world?
I think it really builds off of what I was saying about it can't just be about including women or others in structures of violence and militarism that we have no. Unfortunately, many of the ways that the Women, Peace and Security resolutions have been implemented has gone in that direction to add women to the military or national security structures. National action plans, in terms of WPS., have become accounting projects which look at how many women were in military ads this year, their participation percentage, and that kind of thing.

The originators of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda wanted it to be about conflict prevention. It wasn't about protecting women in conflict. That is what came to be. But the women who dreamed up the resolution[s] tried to do the advocacy. Originally for them, it was about preventing conflict and preventing harm rather than protecting women from harm in conflict. We need to be listening to anti-militarists and anti-nuclear organizers to look at how we're implementing these resolutions and where we can go from here. Focusing on preventing conflict is important. This means looking at international systems and stopping arms transfers that fuel conflict and can be attributed to gender-based violence or other human rights violations.
Cynthia Enloe has a great quote; she says, "you can militarize anything, even equality." And it's so true. It's not just about women's participation. We can see these diversity and inclusion efforts regarding the police or military contractors showing up to Pride marches and stuff like that. We can see it in all the different ways that there is an attempt by military men in power to accommodate and incorporate everyone into its system as a way to prevent us from challenging it from the outside. I think all of that is important to keep in mind when discussing wanting peace and security and the United Nations.

Noelle Cohn- Vice President of the Consortium:
One of the things that now we've done as a Consortium is that we have brought you to speak to students at the University and how as students within International Relations can we encourage diversity of thought. But also, more scholarship on topics such as disarmament in our program?
I agree that students have a role to play here. I think in terms of demanding a diverse curriculum, this is important, and it can often be hard for a student to know. You're not getting the full picture because all of it is new, and so it seems like it could be. I remember this very well. You don't know what literature exists. So, you don't see what's out there.

One thing that you can do is when you get a syllabus for courses, check the authorship of the assigned readings. Are they all white men, and where are they situated? Are they all affiliated with University programs or think tanks that are funded by the military-industrial complex?

You should ask for readings by Women, Indigenous Folks, and people from affected countries and communities in the Global South. You should be a bit annoying in your class.

I try and talk to the faculty as well. We developed at Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security a collection of resources that could be pulled into different syllabi depending on how the course is being structured. We hope this will be useful for faculty when preparing their syllabi and for students who want to investigate what's missing from the syllabi, they've been assigned. It tries to feature voices of marginalized communities from various perspectives to confront the dominant narrative. It's not complete, and we are adding to it all the time.

Dr. Shirley Graham- Director of GEIA and G.W. Professor of International Affairs:
Do you have any other examples from the process you went through with the Treaty regarding lessons learned [or] particular examples when working with governments, organizations, and groups of individuals when you were not taken seriously? Also, concerning gaslighting and this whole issue of not being taken seriously within these spaces, were there times you experienced pushback? [4]
One of the main lessons that I learned from this process is the importance of relationship-building through building trust and camaraderie with the people who are also doing the work.

There's a lot I think left out of what we're taught in University from the I.R. textbooks and other things about structures and systems. Traditionally, states are this monolithic entity, and the state decides what's best. This is even in the way that we report on what happens at the United Nations. States aren't monolithic actors, they're made up of individuals, and for this project, a lot of the initial work, almost a decade's worth of work that went into this specific Treaty was finding the people within the government systems that wanted to make a change, and that could see how the current system was unjust.

I think a lot of the specific language, certainly when we were called emotional and irrational, came from France and Russia. They were sort of the most aggressive in that patriarchal framing. In terms of victim-blaming, some states told us that negotiating this Treaty would make it more likely that they would use their nuclear weapons. That we were going to destabilize the international order so much that they would have no choice but to use nuclear weapons.

[1] Question was written by Ursula Knudsen-Latta, The Legislative Representative for Peace Building on the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
[2] Acheson, R. (2010). Introduction. In Beyond Arms Control: Challenges and Choices for Nuclear Disarmament (pp. 1-4). New York, NY: Reaching Critical Will.
[3] Question was reframed by Corey Greer, WAND’s Director of Communications.
[4] Question was asked by Professor Graham during the event, but edited for the purpose of clarity.