Partial Test Ban Treaty Theme of National Identity

Home, home on the (testing) range: the idea of "national identity" is present in a lot of different ways when it comes to the Partial Test Ban Treaty. First and foremost, national identity is linked to patriotism. All three of the original parties that authored the PTBT were busy at work developing nuclear weapons on their home turf in order to protect it. For each of them, protecting their respective countries from an attack by an outside force was the ultimate goal.

Nuclear weapons are designed to hit your enemy where it hurts, and doing damage to another's homeland is an effective way to crumble that enemy's power. The PTBT recognizes this deadly arrangement as a motivation for why it was written. The PTBT also acknowledges that not everyone considers the national identities and homelands of others as important as their own, but it attempts to equally protect the nations of the whole world.

Finally, we have the idea of the planet as being a universal place that includes all of humanity. Earth is home to everyone, regardless of national identity, so to poison even part of it with radioactive debris is to poison all of it. Along the same lines, to attack one population with nuclear weapons is to attack all people with nuclear weapons.

1. Is it possible that the idea of national identity contributed to the international conflicts of the Cold War? Think about the role of national identity during World War II.
2. How might the concept of "home" differ within capitalist and communist ideological contexts?
3. Consider the UK's historical position as a major colonial empire. How does the idea of "home" change for the colonizers and the colonized?
4. Is the ability to protect one's home worth the risk of destroying all other homes? How might this situation play out in the long run? Think about the long-term effects of complete isolation.

The concept of "home" is vastly different in Western and Soviet contexts because the two have vastly different ideas about private property, yet the original parties were able to agree upon an ideal notion of "home" for the benefit of humankind and the ratification of the PTBT.

The notion of "homeland" leads to extreme nationalist thinking and unavoidable international political crises as is evidenced by the history of the 20th century, from 1939 (the beginning of World War II) until 1992 (the end of the Cold War).