Dr. Kevin Bustamante: The Myth of Nuclear Prestige
Dr. Kevin Bustamante will discuss his research on the role of nuclear weapons as international status symbols. Drawing on the sociology of fashion, he develops a theory of status symbol emergence and collapse. Then, using case studies and computational text analysis, he demonstrates that nuclear weapons failed to emerge as a status symbol because of global opposition and divided superpower messaging over the meaning of the bomb.
Nuclear weapons are considered a prominent international status symbol that signal military strength, technological prowess, and a state’s association with the great power club. This idea of “nuclear prestige” has affected our understanding of proliferation, nonproliferation, and nuclear modernization. Debate rages on whether nuclear prestige still exists. I contribute to this debate by arguing that nuclear prestige has never been symbolically dominant in the international community’s understanding of the bomb. I offer a theory of status symbols and demonstrate that global opposition and divided superpower messaging prevented the rise of nuclear prestige. I test my argument with a case study of contestation over the meaning of the bomb and pair it with a discourse analysis of 10,000 hand-coded observations of nuclear mentions in United Nations General Debate speeches (1946 – 2025). I contribute to our understanding of nuclear symbolism, the effectiveness of the NPT, and to our understanding of international status.
Kevin Bustamante is the MacArthur Hennessey Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame where he earned his Ph.D in August 2024. His research focuses on racism and international security and his work has been previously published at Security Studies. His current research focuses on the symbolic politics of nuclear weapons with a particular focus on how racial logics have shaped the nuclear age.
Kevin Bustamante is the MacArthur Hennessey Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame where he earned his Ph.D in August 2024. His research focuses on racism and international security and his work has been previously published at Security Studies. His current research focuses on the symbolic politics of nuclear weapons with a particular focus on how racial logics have shaped the nuclear age.