Humanitarian Arms Control and Processes of Securitization: Moving Weapons along the Security Continuum

Abstract

This article undertakes a critical analysis of what have been labelled humanitarian arms control (HAC) initiatives, most notably, recent agreements to ban cluster munitions and landmines as well as efforts to restrict the proliferation of small arms. The article critiques conventional accounts that view such initiatives as illustrating the potential of global civil society to interject human security concerns into the domain of arms regulation through the exercise of bottom-up power. In order to do this, the article first outlines the concept of securitization, particularly Floyd's discussion of positive and negative forms of securitization and Abrahamson's concept of the security continuum. This is used to frame an analysis of contemporary HAC initiatives that locates them in the much longer history of pariah weapons regulation and the way it relates both to the framing of legitimized weapons and changes in the broader regulation of the conventional defence trade in different eras. In contrast to conventional accounts of the HAC agenda, it is argued that initiatives such as those on landmines and cluster munitions were successful precisely because they were consonant with the same discourse used to legitimize both post-Cold War liberal interventionism and the new generation modern high-tech weapons. Moreover, the extra-securitization of landmines, cluster munitions and small arms has been accompanied by the (relative) desecuritization of the trade in major conventional weapons and associated dual-use technologies, a process that has a number of quite negative effects in terms of arms trade regulation. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of the preceding analysis both for thinking about processes of securitization and for arms trade non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Research for this article was conducted with the aid of grants from the British Academy and the Trust for Research and Education on the Arms Trade (TREAT). I am grateful to Michael Pugh, Mandy Turner, David Mutimer, the anonymous reviewers of this special issue and participants at conferences in New York and Toronto for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

Owen Greene, ‘Examining Arms Control Processes: Reframing for Priority Setting’, Paper presented at the International Studies Association Conference, New Orleans, 2010; Nikola Hynek, ‘Humanitarian Arms Control, Symbiotic Functionalism and the Concept of Middlepowerhood’, Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2007), pp.132–155; Simone Wisotski, ‘Between Morality and Military Interests: Norm setting in humanitarian arms control’, PRIF Report No. 92 (Frankfurt: Frankfurt Peace Research Institute, 2010).

John Borrie and Vanessa Martin Randin (eds), Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: From Perspective to Action (Geneva and New York: UNIDIR, 2006); John Borrie, Unacceptable Harm: A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions Was Won (Geneva and New York: UNIDIR, 2009), p. 312; Keith Krause, Keith Krause: ‘Leashing the Dogs of War: Arms Control from Sovereignty to Governmentality*’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2011), pp.20–39.

Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Japp de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, Co: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p.24.

Ibid., p.27.

Ibid., p.25.

Ibid., p.33.

Ibid., p.33.

Ibid., p.33; Ole Wæver, ‘The EU as a Security Actor: Reflections from a Pessimistic Constructivist on Post-Sovereign Security Orders’, in Morton Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds), International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration: Power, Security and Community (London: Routledge, 2000), pp.252–3.

Wæver (note 8), p.29.

Claire Wilkinson, ‘The Copenhagen School on Tour in Kyrgyzstan: Is Securitization Theory Useable Outside Europe?’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2007), pp. 5–25.

Lene Hansen, ‘The Little Mermaid's Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School’, Millennium, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2000), pp.285–306.

Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (note 3), p.41.

Hansen, ‘The Little Mermaid's Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School’ (note 11), p.296.

Rita Abrahamsen, ‘Blair's Africa: The Politics of Securitization and Fear’, Alternatives, Vol. 30, No. 1, p.59.

Thierry Balzacq, ‘A Theory of Securitization: Origins, Core Assumptions and Variants’, in Thierry Balzacq (ed.), Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (London: Routledge, 2010), pp.1–30.

Didier Bigo, ‘Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease’, Alternatives, 27 (2002), p.73; Also see Mark B. Salter, ‘When Securitzation Fails: The Hard Case of Counter-terrorism Programs’, in Thierry Balzacq (ed.), Securitization Theory (note 15), p.117.

Ken Booth, Theory of World Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p.168.

Ibid., pp.165–9.

Ibid., p.112.

Ibid., p.167.

Matt McDonald, ‘Securitization and the Construction of Security’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2008), p. 575.

Ibid., p.573.

Ibid., p.580.

Rita Floyd, ‘Towards a Consequentialist Evaluation of Security: Bringing Together the Copenhagen and the Welsh Schools of Security Studies’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2, (2007), pp.327–50.

US Government Accountability Office, Report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Export Controls: Observations on Selected Countries Systems and Proposed Treaties (Washington: GAO, May 2010), Table 2, p.19.

Mike Bourne, ‘Controlling the Shadow Trade’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2011), pp.215–40.

William Mathews, ‘US Offers Glimpse of Plans for Export Control Reform’, Defense News, 6 September 2010, p.21.

House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills, Defence, Foreign Affairs and International Development Committees, Scrutiny of Arms Export Controls (2010): UK Strategic Export Controls Annual Report 2008, Quarterly Reports for 2009, Licensing Policy and Review of Export Control Legislation, First Joint Report of Session 2009–10, HC 202, 30 March (London: The Stationery Office Limited, 2010), p.12, para. 12.

Ramesh Thakur and William Maley, ‘The Ottawa Convention on Landmines: A Landmark Humanitarian Treaty in Arms Control?’, Global Governance, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1999), p.296.

Nobel Women's Initiative, ‘Statement of the Nobel Women's Initiative to the Lima Conference on Cluster Munitions’ (2007 May 23), see http://www.nobelwomensinitiative.org/news?start=330; Stephen D. Goose, ‘Cluster Munitions in the Crosshairs: In Pursuit of a Prohibition’, in Jody Williams, Stephen D. Goose, and Mary Wareham (eds), Banning Landmines: Disarmament, Citizen Diplomacy and Human Security (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008); Stephen D. Goose, ‘Cluster Munitions: Ban Them’, Arms Control Today. January and February 2008, at: http://www.armscontrol.org.act/2008_01-02/goose

Suzette R. Grilot, Craig S Stapley, and Molly E. Hanna, ‘Assessing the Small Arms Movement: The Trials and Tribulations of a Transnational Network’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 27, No.1 (2006), p.70.

Shamima Ahmed and David M. Potter, NGO in International Politics (Bloomfield, IN: Kumarian Press, 2006), pp.153–63.

David Roberts, Human Insecurity: Global Structures of Violence (London and New York: Zed Books, 2008); Richard A. Mathew and Kenneth R Rutherford, ‘The Evolutionary Dynamics of the Movement to Ban Landmines’, Alternatives, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2003), pp.29–30.

Lloyd Axworthy, ‘Towards a New Multilateralism’, in Maxwell A. Cameron, Robert J Lawson, and Brian W. Tomlin (eds), To Walk Without Fear: The Global Movement to Ban Landmines (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.451; Antonio Franceschet, ‘Global Legalism and Human Security, in Sandra J Maclean, David R Black, and Timothy M. Shaw (eds), A Decade of Human Security: Global Governance and New Multilateralisms (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 33–4.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2009: Armaments. Disarmament and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p.438.

Landmine Monitor, Landmines Monitor Report 2009: Towards a Mine-Free World. Special Ten Year Review, 2009, at: http://www.the-monitor.org/lm/2009/res/Landmines_Report_2009.pdf; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2009 (note 35), Table 2A.2, p.70.

Landmine Monitor, Landmines Monitor Report 2009 (note 36)

Richard Dean Burns, The Evolution of Arms Control: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Praeger Security International, 2009); Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (London: Overlook Duckworth, 2009).

Janet M. Manson, ‘Regulating Submarine Warfare’, in Richard D. Burns (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (New York: Scribner's, 1992).

Noel Perrin, Giving Up The Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543–1879 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979).

Cited in Stuart Croft, Strategies of Arms Control: A History and Typology (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p.24.

Manson, ‘Regulating Submarine Warfare’ (note 39), p.741; Admiral William V. Pratt, ‘The Setting for the 1935 Naval Conference’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1934), pp.545–6.

Cited in Burns (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (note 39), p. 1329.

British Plenipotentiaries to the Marquis of Salisbury, Brussels 25 February 1890, in F.O. 881/6197, Part II: Further Correspondent Respecting the Conference Relating to the Slave Trade held at Brussels, 1890, (London: National Archives), No. 111 p.111.

Keith Krause and Mary K. MacDonald, ‘Regulating Arms Sales Through World War II’, in Burns (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (note 39), p.712.

Cited in Clive Trebilcock, ‘Legends of the British Armament Industry 1890–1914: A Revision’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1970), p.19.

Patrick M. Cottrell, ‘Legitimacy and Institutional replacement: The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and the Emergence of the Mine Ban Treaty’, International Organization, 63 (2009), pp. 217–48.

Perrin, Giving Up The Gun (note 40), pp.25–33.

Croft, Strategies of Arms Control (note 41), p.24.

Cited in R. W. Beachey, ‘The arms trade in East Africa in the late nineteenth century’, The Journal of African History, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1962), p.453.

William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since AD 1,000 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp.67–82.

Jonathan A. Grant, Rulers, Guns and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp.47–64.

Ralph Payne-Gallwey, The Crossbow: Its Military and Sporting History, Construction and Use (Ludlow: Merlin Unwin Books, 2007), p.34.

Perrin, Giving Up the Gun (note 40).

Duncan Redford, The Submarine: A Cultural History from the Great War to Nuclear Combat (London: Tauris Academic Studies 2010), p.59.

Eric Prokosch, The Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Antipersonnel Weapons (London: Zed Books, 1995), p.98.

Michael Krepon, ‘Weapons Potentially Inhumane: The Case of Cluster Bombs’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 52, No. 3 (1974), p.600.

Ibid.

Borrie, Unacceptable Harm (note 2), pp.11–16.

Naom Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo (London: Pluto Press, 1999).

James Der Derian, Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network, 2nd ed (New York and London: Routledge, 2009, 2nd edn); Christopher Coker, Humane Warfare (London and New York: Routledge, 2001).

Keith Krause and Andrew Latham, ‘Constructing Non-proliferation and Arms Control: The Norms of Western Practice’, in Keith Krause (ed.), Contemporary Security Policy. Special Issue: Culture and Security: Multilateralism, Arms Control and Security Building, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1998), pp.23–54.

Michael Howard, The Invention of peace and the Reinvention of War, revised and extended edition (London: Pine Books, 2002), pp.54–5.

Robert E. Harkavy, The Arms Trade and International Systems (Cambdidge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1975) p.35.

Keith Krause, Arms and the State: Patterns of Military Production and Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p.41.

Carlo M. Cippola, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400–1700 (Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1965), p.45.

Ibid., p.63, footnotes 1 and 2.

Edward A. Kolodjiej, Making and Marketing Arms: The French Experience and its Implications for the International System (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), p.28; Rachel Stohl and Suzette Grillot, The International Arms Trade (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), p.14.

H. C. Englebrecht and F.C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1934), pp.75–8.

Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, ‘Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations: Reconsidering Scale in Securitisation Theory’. Review of International Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2009), p.269.

Harkavy, The Arms Trade and International System (note 64), p.224.

Ibid., p.36.

Kolodjiej, Making and Marketing Arms (note 68), p.28.

Harkavy, The Arms Trade and International Systems (note 64), p.222.

Neil Cooper, The Business of Death: Britain's Arms Trade at Home and Abroad (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997); Theo Farrell, Weapons Without a Cause: The Politics of Weapons Acquisition in the United States (London: Macmillan, 1997).

Aaron Karp, ‘The Trade in Major Conventional Weapons’, in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook of World Armaments and Disarmament, 1998 (London: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp.197–8.

House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘Global Security: Non-Proliferation’, Fourth Report of Session 2008–2009, HC 222 (London: The Stationery Office, 2009), p.25.

Rachel Stohl, US Policy and the Arms Trade Treaty, Working Paper 10-1, Project Ploughsares, Ontario, 2010, p.35.

Mathews, ‘US Offers Glimpse of Plans for Export Control Reform’, (note 27).

Saferworld, Independent Audit of the 2001 UK Government Annual Report on Strategic Export Controls (London: Saferworld, 2003), p.9.

Stohl and Grillot, The International Arms Trade (note 68), p.69.

Paul Ingram and Roy Isbister, Escaping the Subsidy Trap: Why Arms Exports are Bad for Britain (BASIC, Saferworld, Oxford Research Group, 2004), at: http://www.saferworld.org.uk/smartweb/resources/view-resource/185; Malcolm Chalmers et al., ‘The Economics Costs and Benefits of UK Defence Exports’, in Research Monograph Series 13 (University of York: Centre for Defence Economics, 2001).

William Hartung, ‘The International Arms Trade’, in Paul D. Williams (ed.), Security Studies: An Introduction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p.351.

Joanna Spear and Neil Cooper, ‘The Defence Trade’, in Alan Collins (ed.), Contemporary Security Studies, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp.394–412.

Tor Egil Førland, Cold Economic Warfare: COCOM and the Forging of Strategic Export Controls, 1948–1954 (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters Publishing, 2009).

Neil Cooper, ‘Chimeric Governance and the Extension of Resource Regulation’, Conflict, Security and Development, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2006), pp.315–35.

Alex Vines, ‘Can UN Arms Embargoes in Africa be Effective?’, International Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 6 (2007), pp.1111.

John Duncan, ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, Defence Management Journal, 40 (2008), p.8.

David R. Stone, ‘Imperialism and Sovereignty: The League of Nations’ Drive to Control the Global Arms Trade', Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2000), p.218.

Cited in ibid.

Ibid., p.218.

Krause and MacDonald, ‘Regulating Arms Sales Through World War II’ (note 45), p.717.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2009 (note 35), p. 179.

Paul Holton et al., ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2009’, SIPRI Fact Sheet, March 2010, at: http://books.sipri.org/product_info?c_product_id=404

Stephanie G. Neumann, ‘Power, Influence, and Hierarchy: Defense Industries in a Unipolar World’, Defence and Peace Economics, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb. 2010), p.115.

Anna Stavrianakis, Taking Aim at the Arms Trade: NGOs, Global Civil Society and the World Military Order (London: Zed Books, 2010).

UK Working Group on Arms Export Control, ‘Written Evidence Submitted by the UK Working Group on Arms’, in House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills, Defence, Foreign Affairs, and International Development Committees, Scrutiny of Arms Export Controls (2010): UK Strategic Export Controls Annual Report 2008, Quarterly Reports for 2009, Licensing Policy and Review of Export Control Legislation, First Joint Report of Session 2009–2010, HC 202, March (London: The Stationery Office, 2010), p.12, para.12.

‘Push onto Protect New Troops from IEDS’, USA Today, 14 April 2010, at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-04-18-mrap_N.htm

Richard Perkins and Eric Neumayer, ‘The organized Hypocrisy of Ethical Foreign Policy: Human Rights, Democracy and Western Arms Sales’, Geoforum, Vol. 41, No. 2 (2010), p.254.

Stavrianakis, Taking Aim at the Arms Trade (note 96).