This article analyses the security practices of the anti-nuclear movement in
the post-Cold War period through the prism of securitisation theory. By exploring
Buzan and Wæver’s conceptual developments on macrosecuritisations, the
practices involved in the struggle against the Bomb are interpreted as securitising
moves, in which the anti-nuclear movement is the leading securitiser. In the capacity
of securitising actors, nuclear abolition activists argue that nuclear disarmament,
under a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC), would be the only way to
protect humankind from the threat posed by the existence of nuclear weapons.
The empirical analysis of these non-state actors and their campaign for a NWC
shows that, despite uttering security, the anti-nuclear movement has so far failed
to achieve the proposed security measure, that is, nuclear disarmament. Nonetheless,
securitisation has been instrumental for these non-state actors as a way of raising an issue on the agenda of decision-makers and urging them to take action.
