ABSTRACT
Austria is the best example of a state seeking to completely change the global nuclear order by its staunch opposition not just to nuclear weapons but also to the use of nuclear energy. In this way, policy elites in Vienna are representative of a growing number of officials in other parts of the world (as well as a number of prominent NGOs) that seek to reorganise – and upend – the current architecture of global nuclear politics. Austrian officials seek to change the nuclear status quo that has, in their view, represented the preferences of a small group of nuclear-armed states and their allies. The approach of the Austrian government is to facilitate a discursive shift in the perceived role of nuclear weapons. This discursive shift seeks to recast nuclear weapons as a primary source of insecurity while simultaneously foregrounding the potential humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons use in order to situate nuclear weapons within the boundaries of international humanitarian law. Austrian officials seek to achieve these goals by financially and politically supporting anti-nuclear civil society organisations and coalitions of states in various multilateral fora – most notably through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Austria’s pathway to security in the Third Nuclear Age therefore reflects a radical rejection of both nuclear weapons and nuclear technologies.
