The parable of the metal: depleted uranium, NATO and the issue of ‘environmental security’

Abstract:

In this article, we present a parable about how a metal, depleted uranium (DU), became linked both with a security organization, NATO, and a security concept, 'environmental security', and did so in a most dramatic, if short-lived, manner during late 2000 and early 2001. A parable involves the telling of a story for didactic purpose. It might even be considered a kind of 'continued metaphor', to use the expression sometimes reserved for that related device, allegory. By this is implied that we resort to parable when we want to get across a message, one that seems, on the surface, to be about something else altogether. Partly we do this for the dramatic effect produced; partly we do it because it is an economical way of expressing meaning. As a variant of metaphor, parable enables us to see what might otherwise have been obscured, because as the philosopher Earl Mac Cormac reminded us, 'explanations without metaphor would be difficult if not impossible, for in order to describe the unknown, we must resort to concepts that we know and understand, and that is the essence of metaphor - an unusual juxtaposition of the familiar and the unfamiliar'.