Marianne Hanson is a migrant to Australia of Sri Lankan and Irish descent, who has always been interested in International Relations, Peace, and Conflict Studies. However, coming from a family from a very low socio-economic background, nobody she knew ever went to university. It was not until she was almost 30, therefore, that she realized that she could, and should, get a tertiary education. Hanson completed a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours at the University of Queensland, after which she received a scholarship to complete a Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy in IR at Oxford University. Her first academic position, as soon as she finished her Doctorate, was Lecturer at Magdalen College, Oxford University where she taught Politics and IR. She then returned to the University of Queensland where she has taught for 28 years. Her focus has been on international security, emphasising international law and organisations, norms, human rights and humanitarianism, and especially the control and abolition of inhumane weapons. She has published widely in these fields, and her latest book, Challenging Nuclearism: A Humanitarian Approach to Reshape the Global Nuclear Order, was published by Manchester University Press in 2022.She also works as an advocate for civil society groups, including the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN), Australia (an organisation that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017). She has spoken at the United Nations on the need for education in peace studies and is an invited member of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network.
Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?
I think that interesting research is being done on resistance to dominant narratives, especially in the field of security. There has been interest in this for a few decades of course, especially the focus on critical security studies. What strikes me is how little the actual practice has changed. That is, in the world of politics, very poor decisions, domestically and globally continue to be taken. Why is there no progress on addressing climate change? Why are we closer to nuclear weapons being used now than we have been in over 30 years? Why do the great powers (or some of them anyway – and here I have in mind particularly the US – make so many poor strategic decisions, such as invading Iraq, expanding NATO repeatedly, which I’ve long argued needlessly provokes Russia; a pan-European security system is a much better strategy than NATO, in my view), and why are governments not addressing what people – especially young people – desperately want them to address? I don’t know the answer to these questions, except to say that political decisions have been captured by specific groups with vested interests and make it almost impossible for good policies to be implemented. This is a pessimistic conclusion, because it suggests that fossil fuel groups, a military industrial complex, etc. are shaping politics. If that’s the case, then where does that leave democracy? There is some work on this vexed issue, but I think there needs to be a lot more. Please note: I am of the view that what we do in universities should be related to the broader goal of the greater good, i.e., of advancing knowledge and making the world better, more just, more peaceful, more equitable etc. So, this is why this question – of who has agency and how/why are our systems of democracy being corrupted by vested interests – is important to me.
How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?
Related to my answer above, I would suggest that, unlike the optimism that we had at the end of the Cold War, power has actually been wrested away from people more than ever before. It’s insidious – and not so insidious in some cases – but the extractive industries, weapons corporations, neoliberal economic advocates etc., have been able to wield enormous influence over domestic and global politics, especially in the last 30 – 40 years. This poses a dilemma for me as an academic – it has made me think about how we actually achieve positive change against such enormous barriers. As a result, I’ve also become a little frustrated with academia at times. Sometimes it seems like academics are focusing on fairly abstract issues, and the aim is to publish in top ranking journals, etc., but these writings are usually only read by fellow academics, and they remain obscure to many. I’m not knocking it completely; I understand there is a place for knowledge for its own sake.
But I’ve become more inclined towards using my skills as an academic – teaching and researching – to trying to achieve positive change. And we’re not achieving change today. Given the (very negative and undemocratic) elements of agency in politics today, I see a real need for greater advocacy on the part of academics. Instead, the trend is for governments – and not just in populist countries – to disregard academics, specialists, scientists etc. Meanwhile vested interests make a fortune. I find that disturbing. What’s the point of us being involved in academia, unless we call this out and argue more strongly for peace, the health of our planet and the well-being of our fellow humans?
To what extent does nuclear warfare represent a humanitarian threat and the undermining of rights for future generations? How has the notion of ethics in world politics been absent for nuclear strategy debates in the past? To begin with, we have placed too much faith in nuclear deterrence always working – one day, it won’t. This is why we have to consider the consequences of nuclear use. The focus on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons has been key to getting a treaty in the UN which now renders them illegal. This is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The nine nuclear weapon states, and especially the P5, have of course resisted any such treaty. They didn’t mind chemical weapons and biological weapons being made illegal, but the other kind of weapon of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – was sacrosanct. And so it took 72 years since the first nuclear weapon was dropped for the world to get a treaty outlawing these weapons.
Interestingly, the way that happened was that non-nuclear states (guided by civil society) eventually decided they would just have to go ahead and do it on their own. In the past, we tended to hope that the major powers – especially the US, Russia, Britain, – would drive the development of international law. They did, with regard to chemical and biological weapons, bilateral arms control agreements etc. But then we saw the US actively resisting the formation of international law: Washington refused to join the International Criminal Court, the Comprehensive (nuclear) Test Ban Treaty, the landmines treaty, cluster munitions treaty, and the Arms Trade Treaty. I’m not saying Russia and China have signed all those – in some cases they haven’t. But the US stands out as being against attempts to bring international law into politics most of all.........