Chapter 6 begins with the murder by police of George Floyd in May 2020, whose last words ‘I can’t breathe’ resonated across the world as people took to the streets to protest against police brutality and racism. This chapter argues that even though the police murder of a Black American citizen on the streets of Minneapolis may seem a far cry from the realm of nuclear politics, George Floyd’s death occurred due to the structural racism that permeates and shapes state institutions, global politics more broadly, and much thinking and policy about nuclear weapons. To illustrate this point the author examines the role of racism, colonialism, and orientalism in the Third Nuclear Age, as evidenced in renewed calls for the United States to test a nuclear weapon for the first time in decades on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the American atomic bombing of Japan. In tracing the linkages between the racism that underpinned the testing of nuclear weapons on indigenous lands and the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the racism that led to renewed calls to test nuclear weapons today, the chapter argues that the Third Nuclear Age cannot be understood without an interrogation of colonialism and white supremacy in nuclear politics.

Article 7 is one of the provisions not subject to derogation under Article 15 which is an indication of its importance. However, although Article 7 deals with a fundamental aspect of the principle of legality, it is subject to certain limitations. The scope of Article 7 is limited to the criminal law where judicial legislation is now uncommon. A great many different issues have arisen in relation to Article 8 which can conveniently be considered under the four headings of privacy, family life, home and correspondence. Article 9(1) makes a distinction between the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion on the one hand, and the manifestation of religion or belief on the other. Freedom of religion includes, as Article 9(1) indicates, freedom to change one's religion, as well as the freedom to teach and practise it.

Chapter 5 revolves around the purpose of humanitarian aid defined by the desire to help and argues that it leaves a key motivation out of sight: how aid is animated by its twin desire to connect. This can include first-hand contact with those they support, such as bringing supplies to schools. It can mean direct experience of aid activities, and their tangible efficacy. Establishing personal relationships across national, ethnic and cultural differences, while potentially challenging, is a key motivation for those involved. These connections are often sought with people in need, separated by geographical distance, and who may be considered ‘Other’ in some ways from everyday humanitarians themselves. The ‘impulse of philanthropy’ (Bornstein 2009), is here conjoined with a parallel, anthropological impulse to know and connect with an Other. The importance of relationships for institutionalised aid has, at least partly, been recognised. More than social relations being instrumental to successful aid practice, the chapter suggests that providing assistance to others can facilitate the making of these desired relations. Rather than assisting distant strangers, forging these connections means making relationships personal. This can lead to long-term connections between people, regular visits and contact with overseas supporters. The desire to connect unsettles notions of the ‘distant stranger’ as the archetypical humanitarian object, highlighting the familiarity and closeness just as important for motivating assistance to others.

Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 relates to property rights. Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 provides: 'No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.' Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 provides: 'The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.' Article 1 of Protocol No. 6 reads as follows: 'The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed.'

The introduction establishes the context for the book, as well as the central argument: that the world is racing towards unparalleled catastrophe by entering a dangerous Third Nuclear Age that cannot be understood simply by focusing on the realm of the ‘high politics’ of state leaders, techno-strategic developments and military doctrine. Instead, the work of the peace activist and historian E. P. Thompson on the concept of exterminism is introduced in order to demonstrate how an attention to the broader cultural politics and lived experiences of the Third Nuclear Age can help us to understand and address the challenges that now confront us. This chapter highlights how the book builds upon and extends a burgeoning field of research on critical nuclear studies, before providing an outline of the book.

The 'Partnership for Peace' programme of the NATO alliance embraces such traditionally neutral countries as Sweden and Switzerland. Historical perspective, however, must lead to instant suspicions of any claims of the death of neutrality. The period from approximately the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth has witnessed, overall, an advance of the position of belligerents at the expense of that of neutrals. The world may be entering a period somewhat like the early and mid-nineteenth century, in which the absence of protracted great-power warfare led to a general belief that the balance of legal power was swinging in favour of neutrals and against belligerents. That hope on the part of champions of neutral rights proved misplaced at that time. And it could very easily prove misplaced again now.

The first part of the introduction provides an overview of the problems that this book is addressing, offering an ethnographic account of everyday moralities, rather than normative ethics. It outlines the research agenda, and its origins in a study of international aid workers as mobile professionals. The second part of the introduction explains how Cambodia matters as a research location, and what makes it a particularly appropriate site for everyday humanitarianism to flourish. These include its recent violent past, a subsequent influx of overseas aid, as well as being a popular tourist destination.

Chapter 2 directly follows on from Chapter 1 by introducing recent events from the start of the Trump presidency that led to the dawn of the Third Nuclear Age. It then introduces current research on the new nuclear age, pointing out that the dangers of the new nuclear age have not gone away with the departure of Donald Trump from office, and explaining how research suggests that the Third Nuclear Age is characterised by a multipolar world of competitive nuclear relationships, potential nuclear proliferation, the development of new technologies, the unpredictable change of key concepts and theories such as deterrence, the erosion of norms around the non-use of nuclear weapons, as well as the continued persistence of dangers from earlier nuclear ages. The chapter then demonstrates how a novel approach grounded in critical nuclear studies can provide for a richer insight into the Third Nuclear Age by going beyond the state-centric focus on ‘high politics’ of current research and illuminating how the ‘low politics’ of everyday lived experiences matter. It makes the case for critical nuclear studies by drawing together a range of interdisciplinary scholarship that is attuned to the role of nuclear masculinity, nuclear imperialism, nuclear culture, and nuclear exterminism in order to analyse and address the challenges and harms of the new nuclear age.

Chapter 3 echoes a slogan which was displayed in a cafe run by a small NGO, dedicated to people with disabilities. Such emphatic commitment to the value of the single person is not unique to this constituency. The belief that ‘every person counts’ drives the initiatives at the heart of this book. This insistent focus on the individual, improving the lives of small groups of beneficiaries often shape their activities. What makes the work meaningful to them is creating a visible difference in the life of a particular person, while accommodating their limited efficacy in the context of widespread poverty. This matters not least because a focus on the small-scale runs counter to much development policy that favours ‘scaling up’, relying on large-scale approaches rather than localised interventions. Everyday humanitarians accommodate the partial-ness of their endeavours by deploying the scale of the individual. The practices carried out under this logic contain singular acts of care, and lives being transformed. This consists of distributing hot meals to those marginalised; helping a handful of students through their high school exams, or setting up a cafe to provide training for young people used to living on the street. Importantly, other scales are brought into play, such as someone ‘paying it forward’ by supporting others in turn, and effecting change in wider society. Rather than leaping from a scale of ‘the one’ to ‘the many’, humanitarian practitioners continuously interlink these. What appears as a limited act, offers pathways into the future.

The instinctive revulsion of the moralist for neutrality has manifested itself, since 1945, in two principal contexts: the UN and the Cold War. The UN system was a more thoroughgoing embodiment of the just-war outlook than the League of Nations had been. On a number of occasions since 1945, states have invoked the traditional rights of belligerents, and, conversely, duties of neutrals. This chapter looks at some of the principal instances, and also at the approach taken by the San Remo Manual on the various issues in question. The distinctive feature of the post-1945 period is the extent to which sovereign rights have become a substitute for the ordinary rights of belligerents, rather than merely a supplement to them. The chapter looks at the post-1945 practice in two areas rich in pre-1945 precedent: blacklisting and reprisal. It describes the main 'growth area' since 1945: necessity, in the context of self-defence.

Chapter 3 opens in August of 2019 with the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), which the author argues stands as the pivotal point at which the Third Nuclear Age began. The chapter analyses the significance of arms control and its recent unravelling, but goes beyond a narrow focus on the ‘high politics’ of arms control negotiations and diplomacy to demonstrate how a critical approach reveals how arms control is influenced by, and in turn shapes, broader societal norms. It argues that as the INF Treaty was the first bilateral treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapon from the USA and USSR, it worked to seriously limit exterminism during the time it was implemented. American and Russian steps to develop and deploy INF missiles after the demise of the treaty therefore demonstrate that the dangers of exterminism are once again with us. The text then elaborates on the ‘nuclear taboo’ – the norm around the non-use of nuclear weapons – and illustrates how this norm is being eroded through, for example, two statements made in August 2019: Donald Trump’s exclamation, ‘I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?’ when hurricanes were heading to the US mainland that summer, and Elon Musk’s idea to ‘Nuke Mars!’. Whilst recognising the ridiculous nature of these claims, the author argues that they reveal a worrying tendency for nuclear weapons to be viewed as a silver bullet solution to complex problems, where their existence and use then becomes normalised.