Arms Control for the 21st Century: Controlling the Means of Violence

Abstract

In the past two decades there has been an extensive reconceptualization of security and its associated practices, but there has been scant attention to questions of arms and their control. This article, and those which follow, seek to start a conversation about the control of the means of violence. We begin by drawing on the metaphor of arms control as science fiction in order to highlight notable features of the classical arms control literature. The article then discusses the ways contemporary arms control practice has evolved from a Cold War focus on parity and mutual vulnerability to a global control architecture characterized by the pursuit of absolute security via an ever-expanding range of non-proliferation initiatives aimed at rogues, rebels and terrorists. Consequently, in its post-Cold War, post-9/11 mode, contemporary arms control practice has been transformed into a form of global counter-insurgency. We suggest that the term controlling the means of violence (CMV) better captures the wide range of control initiatives that can be deployed to limit the instruments of armed violence. Finally, we summarize the arguments set out in the rest of the special issue and outline the future directions for research and activism suggested both by the papers collected in this volume and the broader discussions in the conferences that gave rise to them.

Notes

‘Arms Control’, special issue of Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Fall 1960); Thomas C. Schelling and Morton H. Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control (Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1985); and Hedley Bull, The Control of the Arms Race: Disarmament and Arms Control in the Missile Age (New York: Praeger, 1961).

Donald G. Brennan (ed.), Arms Control, Disarmament and National Security (New York: George Brazilier, 1961).

‘Arms, Defense Policy and Arms Control’, special issue of Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 104, No. 3 (Summer 1975); and ‘Arms Control Thirty Years On’, special issue of Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 120, No. 1 (Winter 1991).

Keith Krause and Michael Williams (eds), ‘Critical Security Studies’, special issue of Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1995); and Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (London: UCL Press Ltd, 1997).

Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p.234; and David Campbell, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp.196–200.

William R. Frye, ‘Characteristics of Recent Arms-Control Proposals and Agreements’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Fall 1960), p.741; The Harvard Nuclear Study Group, Living With Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), p. 19.

Herman Kahn, ‘The Arms Race and Some of its Hazards’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Fall 1960), p.751; Frye, ‘Characteristics of Recent Arms-Control Proposals and Agreements’ (note 6), p.736; and Harvey Brooks, ‘The Military Innovation System and the Qalitative Arms Race’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 104, No. 3 (Summer 1975), p.80.

Richard Dean Burns, The Evolution of Arms Control: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Praeger Security International, 2009).

Jerome B. Weisner, ‘Forward to the issue “Arms Control”’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Fall 1960), p.677.

Kahn, ‘The Arms Race and Some of its Hazards’ (note 7), p.778; ibid., pp.773–8; Bull, The Control of the Arms Race (note 1), p.135; Paul Doty, ‘Arms Control: 1960, 1990, 2020’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 120, No. 1 (Winter 1991), pp.33–52.

Saferworld (2008), Good Conduct? Ten Years of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports, available at http://www.saferworld.org.uk/

Forest E. Waller Jr, ‘New Directions in Strategic Nuclear Arms Control’, in Jeffrey A. Larsen and James L. Wirtz (eds), Arms Control and Cooperative Security (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner, 2009), pp.107–8; and Michael A. Levi and Michael O'Hanlon, The Future of Arms Control (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005).

Richard A. Falk, ‘Arms Control, Foreign Policy, and Global Reform’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 104, No. 3 (Summer 1975), p.48, p.46.

Ibid., pp.42–3.

Ibid., p.36.

Bull, The Control of the Arms Race (note 1), p.26.

Strobe Talbott, The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace (New York: Vintage, 1988), 174–81.

US Customs and Border Protection, Fact Sheet, October 2, 2007 (Washington, DC: US Department of Homeland Security 2007), at: www.cbp.gov; and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2009: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p.185.

James Wirtz, ‘The New Cooperative Security Paradigm’, in Jeffrey Larsen and James Wirtz (eds), Arms Control and Cooperative Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009), p.235.

Bull, The Control of the Arms Race (note 1), p. 26.

P. W. Singer, ‘Defending Against Drones: How our new favourite weapon in the war on terror could soon be turned against us’, Newsweek, 8 March 2010, at: http://www.newsweek.com/id/234114

Barack Obama, ‘Remarks By President Barack Obama, Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic, 5 April 2009’, Speeches and Remarks, (Washington, DC: Office of the Press Secretary, 2009), at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-prague-delivered

‘Arms Trade Treaty’, Remarks delivered by Special Negotiator Donaled Mahley on behalf of Ellen Tauscher, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, 18 February 2010, available at http://www.state.gov/t/us/136849.htm. These remarks included seven references to terror / terrorists / terrorism and three to rogues in a thirteen minute speech.

Schelling and Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control (note 1), p. 1.

Ken Booth and Nicolas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Colin S. Gray, House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p.97.

The phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction in slow motion’ has become almost apocryphal. For the sense, without the words, see: Kofi Annan, ‘We the Peoples’: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century (New York: United Nations, 2000), pp.52–3.

Exceptions include: Richard Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); David Mutimer, The Weapons State: Proliferation and the Framing of Security (London: Lynne Rienner, 2000).

Mandy Turner, Neil Cooper, and Michael Pugh, ‘Institutionalised and Co-opted: Why Human Security Has Lost Its Way’, in David Chandler and Nik Hyneck (eds), Critical Perspectives on Human Security: Rethinking Emancipation and Power in International Relations (London: Routledge, 2011), p.87.

Samuel J. Spiegel and Philippe Le Billon, ‘China's Weapons Trade: From ships of shame to the ethics of global resistance’, International Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 2 (March 2009), pp.323–46.

Saferworld, Good Conduct? Ten Years of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (Saferworld, 2008), at: http://www.saferworld.org.uk/smartweb/resources/view-resource/318 (accessed 12 December 2010); House of Commons, Business and Enterprise, Defence, Foreign affairs and International Development Committees, Scrutiny of Arms Export Control, ‘Scrutiny of Arms Export Controls (2009): UK Strategic Export Controls Annual Report 2007, Quarterly Reports for 2008, licensing policy and review of export control legislation’, First Joint Report, Session 2008–2009, HC 254 (London: The Stationery Office, 2009), p.65, para.135.