The thermonuclear revolution and the politics of imagination: realist radicalism in political theory and IR
| Author | Rens van Munster,Casper Sylvest |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117818789746 |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117818789746
International Relations
2018, Vol. 32(3) 255 –274
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117818789746
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The thermonuclear revolution
and the politics of imagination:
realist radicalism in political
theory and IR
Rens van Munster
Danish Institute for International Studies
Casper Sylvest
University of Southern Denmark
Abstract
Both within political theory and International Relations (IR), recent scholarship has reflected on the
nature and limits of political realism. In this article, we return to the thermonuclear revolution and
the debates it spurred about what was real and possible in global politics. We argue that a strand of
oppositional and countercultural thinking during this period, which we refer to as realist radicalism,
has significant theoretical and practical relevance for current scholarship on political realism. Indeed,
debates during the thermonuclear revolution speak to questions about the nature of realism and
whether it is possible to develop a realism that is attuned to progressive or emancipatory ambitions.
By focusing mainly on two radical American intellectuals – C. Wright Mills and Lewis Mumford – we
show how their responses to the thermonuclear, superpower standoff challenged conventional
understanding of realism and utopianism. By harnessing the concept of the imagination, they called
into question pre-existing conceptions about politics and reality. The contribution of the article is
twofold. First, we argue that realist political theory and IR should pay more attention to thinkers
that are not conventionally regarded as canonical but whose writings and politics interrogated
the limits and potential of political realism. Second, we demonstrate that the work of such public
intellectuals and their calls for cultivating the imagination connect directly to current debates about
political realism, including its statist bend and its (purported) conservatism.
Keywords
imagination, nuclear weapons, radicalism, realism, theory
Corresponding author:
Casper Sylvest, Department of History, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense M,
Denmark.
Email: csy@sdu.dk
789746IRE0010.1177/0047117818789746International Relationsvan Munster and Sylvest
research-article2018
Article
256 International Relations 32(3)
Introduction
On 1 March 1954, the United States conducted the Castle Bravo test of a thermonuclear
weapon on Bikini atoll. The explosive power of the device was an astonishing 12–15
megatons, more than twice the expected yield. Combined with inaccurate meteorological
forecasts of fallout patterns the test eventually led to the evacuation of military personnel
and inhabitants of islands close to the Bikini atoll as well as the radiological poisoning
of Japanese fishing men aboard the trawler Lucky Dragon, a highly publicized story that
broke in mid-March.1 More facts about the test were released in late March and early
April amid growing concern about the H-bomb. In the ensuing years, the global implica-
tions of this new device became steadily more apparent for international relations and in
relation to health and effects on the environment.
In this article, we argue that the seizures of the thermonuclear revolution during the
most perilous phase of the Cold War have considerable theoretical and practical rele-
vance for current debates about the nature and scope of political realism in both
International Relations (IR) and political theory. The revolution helped spur a strand of
oppositional and countercultural thinking that we term realist radicalism.2 When studied
in its historical context, realist radicalism connects current theoretical aspirations on
behalf of political realism with political practice. In confronting the thermonuclear revo-
lution, realist radical voices provided a critique of the power structures and ideological
skewers that produced specific conceptions of the real, while offering a constructive plea
for nurturing the human imagination and its utopian dimensions. During the 1950s and
early 1960s, realist radicals offered critical analyses of the centralization and militariza-
tion of power and the erosion of democracy. Finally, they challenged a purported, con-
ventional (state-centric) realism which in turn kicked off a struggle over the nature of
political reality. Realist radicals asked their readers to imagine nuclear destruction in
order to escape the narrow confines of state-centric realism and to promote a new out-
look that was global in reach and took the interests of future generations into account. As
a form of political thinking, the anti-nuclear arguments we examine were not formulated
in the idiom of contemporary theory, and they were certainly not flawless. They are,
however, worth recovering at a time when global threats from nuclear weapons and cli-
mate change coalesce with old and new challenges to democracy that range from the
politics of fear and militarization to ‘fake news’ and post-factual fabrications of political
reality. Their work highlights the need to think about politics beyond the state and shows
the benefits of expanding our purview of thinkers worthy of serious attention.
Furthermore, the historical study of realist radicalism is theoretically relevant for cur-
rent attempts to harness and scrutinize the progressive dimensions of political realism by
rethinking and reformulating realism’s understanding of utopianism and the faculty of
imagination.3 This theoretical ambition is primarily associated with the work of Raymond
Geuss, who has recently pointed to the imagination as a potential escape hatch from an
amoral realism of the status quo. His discussion of the concept of the imagination remains
underdeveloped, however, particularly in light of the rich debates about realism and the
imagination during the thermonuclear revolution. Those debates add historical texture to
the role of imagination in politics. They also posit a direct challenge to the statist focus
of much contemporary realist theory and underline the need for a realism that is attuned
to the globality of contemporary politics.
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