Revisiting Nuclear India: Strategic Culture and (In) Security Imaginary, by Runa Das

Following a critical social constructivist approach, Runa Das affirms in Revisiting Nuclear India that India’s nuclear decisions are a product of the state’s strategic culture, which is generated by its ‘security community’ not only as a response to ‘real politics’ but also are articulated and re-interpreted within an ‘political-ideological-cultural space’ carved out by the discursive practices of the security community. For Das, strategic cultures are not culturally-conditioned or historically determined but socially constructed. She uses the critical constructivist concept of ‘security imaginary’ as defined by Himadeep Muppidi to whom the term denotes a ‘field of meanings and social power’ providing an ‘organised set of interpretations for making sense of a complex international system’ and which produces ‘distinctive social identities’ (p. 10).