This paper sets out to evaluate the influence of Russia’s increasing levels of hegemonic masculinity upon the erosion of the nuclear taboo in relation to increased threatening rhetoric, military preparedness, targeting of nuclear facilities, and withdrawal from existing arms control legislation which indicates potential first-use employment of nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Utilizing a dual research methodology of comparative process tracing and critical discourse analysis, gender theory is applied to assess various critical junctures and political focal points that contributed to a dual-partite path dependency of increasing hegemonic masculinity, coupled with the feminized securitization of Ukraine, and retaliatory masculinity as performed via state-sponsored employment of conflict-related sexual violence and nuclear posturing against Ukraine. The alternative explanation of “Escalate to De-escalate” is critically investigated; however, the empirical analysis provided by this paper suggests that the lack of gender-sensitive evaluation within this explanation fails to adequately account for the effect of increasing domestic hegemonic masculinity within Russia. Increased perception of an existential threat against Russian masculinity was found to contribute to an increased dependency on nuclear weapons. Ultimately, this paper forwards a novel explanatory causal mechanism, providing one of the first analyses of the nuclear taboo in relation to a gender-sensitive lens.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-529697 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Haughey, Orla |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för freds- och konfliktforskning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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