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2 - Controlling Scientific War

International Air Police and the Reinvention of Disarmament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2021

Waqar H. Zaidi
Affiliation:
Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
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Summary

Chapter Two explores British discourses on disarmament and international organization in the 1920s. Its central argument is that conceptualizations of disarmament and collective security were transformed by internationalists searching for broader solutions to the problems of international affairs. Internationalists such as Philip Noel Baker and David Davies came to envisage armaments as products of modern science, and so to see disarmament itself as an increasingly technical and scientific project requiring the guidance of experts schooled in international relations or with a specialized understanding of armaments. Disarmament and collective security came to be seen also in broader political and institutional terms – intimately connected to and dependent on a powerful international organization to organize, operationalize and police them. Aviation was central to this transformation. Apparently successful in policing and controlling vast imperial territories cheaply and effectively, to most observers aviation promised not only connectivity and internationality, but military domination too. Thus for internationalists it came to represent the only weapon capable of giving international organization the teeth required to build legitimacy, enforce international law, and police arms control.

Type
Chapter
Information
Technological Internationalism and World Order
Aviation, Atomic Energy, and the Search for International Peace, 1920–1950
, pp. 49 - 73
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Controlling Scientific War
  • Waqar H. Zaidi, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
  • Book: Technological Internationalism and World Order
  • Online publication: 25 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108872416.003
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  • Controlling Scientific War
  • Waqar H. Zaidi, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
  • Book: Technological Internationalism and World Order
  • Online publication: 25 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108872416.003
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Controlling Scientific War
  • Waqar H. Zaidi, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
  • Book: Technological Internationalism and World Order
  • Online publication: 25 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108872416.003
Available formats
×