ABSTRACT
The Iranian nuclear crisis is a proxy arena for diverging projections of World Order. Different approaches to the Iranian nuclear crisis not only reveal different understandings of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. After an initial promotion of norms by what they call 'norm entrepreneurs', a process of socialisation sets in which they label a 'norm cascade', in which a sufficiently critical mass of actors accepts and adopts that particular norm. The Iranian nuclear crisis needs to be understood not only as a politico-legal challenge for the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) regime, but also as a proxy issue for a wider re-rethinking about world order and 'nuclear hypocrisy'. A conceptual element of a security culture between hegemony and resistance to be clarified is that of 'hegemony', 'counter-hegemony' and 'resistance'. The most influential Chinese think tanks in the realm of international relations are China Institute of International Studies (CIIS) and the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR).
