Small Arms Control and the Reproduction of Imperial Relations

Abstract

Small arms feature prominently on the post-Cold War international security agenda as the common factor in a range of forms of organized violence. The dominant mode of understanding is focused on human security and the links between conflict, security and development. Yet small arms control efforts are failing to live up to their promise. In attempting to remedy this, scholars argue that small arms control requires better conceptualization and operationalization. This article engages with the conceptualization of small arms control, arguing that small arms control serves to reproduce imperial relations in a number of ways. It is characterized by four key analytical themes – the blurring of the distinction between state, non-state and civilian actors; the increasingly fuzzy line between conflict and crime; the pacific nature of development; and the desirability of a Weberian monopoly on violence – that are derived from an idealized reading of the European historical experience and applied to the contemporary South. This conceptual Eurocentrism is furthered by the exclusion of wider questions of the world military order and militarism through a geographical and technological selectivity and the absence of a single analytical frame, as well as North—South hierarchies in the institutional formation of policymaking. Overall, small arms control serves to reproduce the South as a site of benevolent Northern intervention, contributing to the mutual constitution of both.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Tarak Barkawi, Beate Jahn, Anna Leander, Jan Selby, Lisa Smirl, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts, and to Neil Cooper, David Mutimer, and other project participants for a stimulating environment in which to work.

Notes

‘Small arms and light weapons’ (SALW) refers to military-style weapons and commercial firearms that can be carried by either a single person or several people serving as a crew, based on the 1997 UN Report of the Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms. See Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2001. Profiling the Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.8. Here, the term ‘small arms’ is used to cover both categories. See also Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009. Shadows of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.8–11, for a discussion of issues around defining this category of weaponry.

See, for example, Michael Bourne, Arming Conflict: The Proliferation of Small Arms (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007); Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Missing Pieces. Directions for Reducing Gun Violence through the UN Process on Small Arms Control (Geneva: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, undated), at: http://www.hdcentre.org/files/Missing%20Pieces.pdf; Jayantha Dhanapala, ‘Multilateral Cooperation on Small Arms and Light Weapons: From Crisis to Collective Response’, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2002), pp.163–71; Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Organised Violence in a Global Era, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2005: Weapons at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chap.7; Unicef, No Guns, Please. We Are Children! (New York: UNICEF, 2001), at: http://www.unicef.org/emerg/files/Emergencies_No_guns_please_leaflet.pdf

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, ‘Supplement to an Agenda for Peace: Position Paper of the Secretary-General on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations’, Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 3 January 1995, A/50/60-S/1995/1, at: http://www.un.org/Docs/SG/agsupp.html

Lore Lumpe, Sarah Meek, and R. T. Naylor, ‘Introduction to Gun-Running’, in Lumpe (ed.), Running Guns. The Global Black Market in Small Arms (London: Zed Books, 2000), pp.1–12, p.1.

Bourne, Arming Conflict (note 2), p.3.

Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, ‘Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and International Relations’, Millennium, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2002), pp.109–27, pp.110–1.

Saferworld and SEESAC, South Eastern Europe Small Arms and Light Weapons Monitor 2006 (London and Belgrade: Saferworld and SEESAC, 2006).

Robert Muggah and Keith Krause, ‘Closing the Gap between Peace Operations and Post-Conflict Insecurity’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.16, No. 1 (2009), pp.136–50; pp.136–7, p.139.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2006. Unfinished Business (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.263.

Mark Knight and Alpaslan Özerdem, ‘Guns, Camps and Cash: Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reinsertion of Former Combatants in Transitions from War to Peace’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2004), pp.499–516, p. 501.

Kathleen M. Jennings, ‘The Struggle to Satisfy: DDR through the Eyes of Ex-Combatants in Liberia’, International Peacekeeping, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2007), pp. 204–18, p. 211.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2007. Guns and the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 333–4.

Oliver Jütersonke, Robert Muggah and Dennis Rodgers, ‘Gangs, Urban Violence, and Security Interventions in Central America’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 40, Nos 4–5 (2009), pp. 373–97, p.384, pp.390–1.

Ibid., pp.390–1.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8).

Owen Greene, Duncan Hiscock, Catherine Flew, ‘Integration and Co-ordination of DDR and SALW Control Programming: Issues, Experience and Priorities’, Thematic Working Paper, University of Bradford and Saferworld, July 2008, p.72.

Ibid., p.70.

Bourne, Arming Conflict (note 2), pp.6–7.

Denise Garcia, Small Arms and Security. New Emerging International Norms (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), p.50.

The Small Arms Survey, a project of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, is probably the best available resource on small arms proliferation and its control, operating at the intersection of the academic and policy worlds. Its annual Small Arms Survey is a collective endeavour; while chapters have principal authors, they are often multiple and are not named up-front. In this article I cite Small Arms Survey as the author of various Survey chapters.

Michael T. Klare ‘The Global Trade in Light Weapons and the International System in the Post-Cold War Era’, in Jeffrey Boutwell, Michael T. Klare, and Laura W. Reed (eds), Lethal Commerce. The Global Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1995), pp. 31–43.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2007 (note 12), p.320.

Bourne, Arming Conflict (note 2), pp.185–6.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.219.

Ibid., ch.5.

United Nations, ‘SALW Control, Security and Development’, in Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards, Module 4.11 (New York: UNDPKO, 2006), pp.12–13, at: http://unddr.org/iddrs/04/download/IDDRS_411.pdf

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.161.

For example, in contrast to widely used definitions that focus only on groups outside of state control, the Small Arms Survey favours ‘a broader definition that includes groups linked to the state’, allowing a focus on ‘the relationships between groups, states, and populations that determine the degrees of coercive monopolization’; Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2006 (note 9), p. 248.

Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, Volume 2: A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (Cambridge: Polity, 1985).

Patricia Owens, ‘Distinctions, Distinctions. “Public” and “Private” Force?’, in Alejandro Colas and Bryan Mabee (eds), Mercenaries, Pirates, Bandits and Empires. Private Violence in Historical Context (London: Hurst, 2010), pp.15–32.

Tarak Barkawi, ‘On the Limits of New Foundations: A Commentary on R. Harrison Wagner, “War and the State”’, International Theory, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2010), pp.317–332; p. 325, emphasis in original. Also Tarak Barkawi, ‘State and Armed Force in International Context’, in Colas and Mabee (eds), Mercenaries, Pirates, Bandits and Empires (note 30), pp.33–53.

Garcia, for example, argues that arms transfers to non-state actors are particularly harmful, despite historical examples in which they have been ‘the correct course of action’. Further, she describes transfers by Arab states to non-state Palestinian actors as support for ‘antiestablishment terror groups.” While she may be correct that such transfers undermine the institutionalization of Palestinian government, such descriptions belie the intensely political contestation over forms of political community at stake in such struggles. Denise Garcia, ‘Arms Transfers Beyond the State-to-State Realm’, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2009), pp.151–68.

International Committee of the Red Cross, Arms Availability and the Situation of Civilians in Armed Conflict: A Study Presented by the ICRC (Geneva: ICRC, 1999), p.8; E. G. Krug, K. E. Powell, and L. L. Dahlberg, ‘Firearm-Related Deaths in the United States and 35 Other High- and Upper-Middle-Income Countries’, International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 27, No. 2 (1998), pp.214–21; Wendy Cukier and Victor W. Sidel, The Global Gun Epidemic: From Saturday Night Specials to AK-47s (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2005). The debate around the relationship between levels of gun ownership and homicide / suicide / injury levels is complicated and politicized; see for example the special section on ‘Small Arms Dialogue’, SAIS Review, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Winter and Spring 2003). The point I wish to make here is the exclusion of Northern societies from the internationalization of measures adopted to tackle the seemingly universal threat posed by small arms possession, and the resultant international public policy focus on Southern societies.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), pp.178–9.

Ibid., p.2, p.77.

See the Regional Approach to Stockpile Reduction website at: http://rasrinitiative.org/; Suzette R. Grillot ‘Guns in the Balkans: Controlling small arms and light weapons in seven Western Balkan countries’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2010), pp.147–71.

US Government Accountability Office, Firearms Trafficking. U.S. Efforts to Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico Face Planning and Coordination Challenges, GAO-09-709 (Washington, DC: USGAO, 2009), at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09709.pdf; Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Merida Initiative: Myth vs. Fact, (Washington, DC: US Department of State, 23 June 2009), at: http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/fs/122395.htm

Mary Kaldor, ‘Old Wars, Cold Wars, New Wars, and the War on Terror’, International Politics, Vol. 42, No. 4 (2005), pp.491–498; Kaldor, New and Old Wars (note 2); Herfried Münkler, The New Wars (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), Donald M. Snow, Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996).

See, for example, Rohan Gunaratna, ‘Terrorism and Small Arms and Light Weapons’, Paper presented at the Symposium on Terrorism and Disarmament, New York, 25 October 2001, at: https://grippublications.eu/bdg/pdf/g3062.pdf; Melvyn Levitsky, ‘Transnational Criminal Networks and International Security’, Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2003), pp.227–40; Michael A. Levi and Michael O'Hanlon, The Future of Arms Control (Washington, DC, Brookings Institution Press, 2005); Matthew Schroeder, ‘Small Arms, Terrorism and the OAS Firearms Convention’, Federation of American Scientists Occasional Paper No. 1, Federation of American Scientists, March 2004, at: http://fas.org/asmp/library/OAS/FullReport.pdf; Wendy Cukier and Antoine Chapdelaine, ‘Small Arms, Explosives and Incendiaries’, in Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel (eds), Terrorism and Public Health: A Balanced Approach to Strengthening Systems and Protecting People (New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2002), pp. 155–74.

The focus of this article is the dominant liberal orientation towards small arms control, but it is important to note that there is not a single, monolithic Northern community. The NRA and it international counterpart, the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities (WFSA), are a conservative counterpart to the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). The NRA has been integrated into the US government's position at UN, and exercises a conservative vision of individual rights, protection against the state, and an emphasis on national state sovereignty. On the NRA's activism, see Clifford Bob, ‘Packing Heat: Pro-gun groups and the governance of small arms’, in Deborah D. Avant, Martha Finnemore, and Susan K. Sell (eds), Who Governs the Globe? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.183–201.

See statements in relation to the UN Programme of Action, at http://www.poa-iss.org/poa/poa.aspx (accessed 12 July 2010). Policy examples include international action on MANPADS, the Regional Approach to Stockpile Reduction in the Balkans, the ASEAN Plan of Action to Combat Transnational Crime, and the Organization of American States Firearms Convention.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), p.144; also Jütersonke et al., ‘Gangs’ (note 13), p.374.

Emile LeBrun and Robert Muggah (eds), ‘Silencing Guns: Local Perspectives on Small Arms and Armed Violence in Rural Pacific Islands Communities’, Small Arms Survey Occasional Paper No. 15, Small Arms Survey, Geneva, 2005, p. xv.

Bourne, Arming Conflict (note 2), p.194.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), pp.140–1.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.219.

Ibid., p.220.

See, for example, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Missing Pieces (note 2), p.16.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.221.

Ibid., p. 228.

UNDP, Securing Development: UNDP's Support for Addressing Small Arms Issues (New York: UNDP, 2005). p.12.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.228.

Ibid., p.232.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), p.144. See also Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2003. Development Denied (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 25–7; Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2006 (note 9), p.146; Geneva Declaration, Global Burden of Armed Violence (Geneva: Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2008).

Christopher Cramer, Violence in Developing Countries. War, Memory, Progress (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), pp.73–4.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.164; Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2007 (note 12), ch.7.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2007 (note 12), ch.7.

Control Arms, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives (London and Oxford: Amnesty International, IANSA and Oxfam, 2005); Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, In the Line of Fire: Gender Perspectives on Small Arms Proliferation, Peace Building and Conflict Resolution (Geneva: WILPF, 2010). For an overview of academic research and public policy efforts, see Vanessa Farr, ‘Scared Half to Death: The Gendered Impacts of Prolific Small Arms’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2006), pp.45–59.

Cramer, Violence in Developing Countries (note 55), p.72.

Ibid., p.85.

Anna Stavrianakis, Taking Aim at the Arms Trade. NGOs, Global Civil Society and the World Military Order (London: Zed, 2010), ch.2.

Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p.138.

Simon Bromley, Rethinking Middle East Politics. State Formation and Development (Cambridge: Polity, 1994).

Norbert Elias, Edmund Jephcott (trans.), The Civilizing Process. The History of Manners (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp.xiv–xv.

Ibid., p.xvi.

For a critique of this aspect of the new wars thesis, see Edward Newman, ‘The “New Wars” Debate: A Historical Perspective is Needed’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2004), pp.173–189, p.181; and Stathis Kalyvas, ‘“New” and “Old” Civil Wars. A Valid Distinction?’, World Politics, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2001), pp.99–118, p.114.

Kofi Annan, We The Peoples. The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century (New York: United Nations, 2000), p.52; ‘In-depth: Guns Out of Control: The continuing threat of small arms’, IRIN News, 9 May 2006, at: http://www.irinnews.org/IndepthMain.aspx?reportid=58952&indepthid=8

Cate Buchanan, ‘Armed Violence, Weapons Availability and Human Security: A View of the State of Play and Options for Action’, Paper Presented at the Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy, Helsinki, July 2004, p.4, at: http://www.helsinkiprocess.fi/netcomm/ImgLib/24/89/cate%20buchan_dec.pdf

Bourne, Arming Conflict (note 2), p.4.

Greene et al., ‘Integration and Co-ordination’ (note 16), p.11.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), p.139.

DfID, Tackling Poverty by Reducing Armed Violence. Recommendations from a Wilton Park Workshop, 14–16 April 2003 (London: DfID, 2003; Geneva Declaration, Global Burden of Armed Violence (note 54).

See, for example, Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2003. Development Denied (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), ch.4.

See Garcia, Small Arms and Security (note 19); Keith Krause, ‘Norm-Building in Security Spaces: The Emergence of the Light Weapons Problematic’, REGIS Working Paper, Dépôt légal-Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, Quebec, 2001; Stavrianakis, Taking Aim at the Arms Trade (note 61), ch.6.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), p.142.

See, for example, Edward J. Laurance, ‘Light Weapons and Human Development: The Need for Transparency and Early Warning’, in Jeffrey Boutwell and Michael T. Klare (eds), Light Weapons and Civil Conflict. Controlling the Tools of Violence (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), pp185–196.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8); UNDP, Securing Development (note 51).

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), p.136.

Ibid., p.137.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.180.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), p.138; Jütersonke et al., ‘Gangs’ (note 13); Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.237.

Mark Duffield, ‘Getting Savages to Fight Barbarians: Development, Security and the Colonial Present’, Conflict, Security and Development, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2005), pp.141–59; p.142; Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed Books, 2001).

Mark Duffield, ‘War as a Network Enterprise. The New Security Terrain and its Implications’, Cultural Values, Vol. 6, Nos 1 and 2 (2002), pp.153–65; p.160, emphasis in original.

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), p.136, p.148.

International Development Committee, Conflict and Development: Peacebuilding and Post-conflict Reconstruction, Volume I, HC923-I, 25 (London: The Stationery Office, October 2006), pp.9–10, at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmintdev/923/923i.pdf

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2003 (note 73), p.128.

Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars (note 83), p.114.

Cramer, Violence in Developing Countries (note 55), p.45, p.47.

See, for example, Paul Collier, V. L. Elliot, Håvard Hegre, Anke Hoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol, and Nicholas Sambanis, ‘Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy’, World Bank Policy Research Report (New York: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003); Control Arms, Shattered Lives. The Case for Tough Arms Control (London and Oxford: Amnesty International and Oxfam, 2003).

Cramer, Violence in Developing Countries (note 55), pp.9–10.

Ibid., p.40.

Ibid., p.25.

Susan L. Woodward, ‘In Whose Interest in Security Reform? Lessons from the Balkans’, in Gavin Cawthra and Robin Luckham (eds), Governing Insecurity. Democratic Control of Military and Security Establishments in Transitional Democracies (London: Zed, 2003), pp.276–302.

Cramer, Violence in Developing Countries (note 55), pp.24–5.

Ibid., p.42.

See, for example, Bourne, Arming Conflict (note 2), p.46; Garcia, ‘Arms Transfers Beyond the State-to-State Realm’ (note 32); Francis Langumba Keili, ‘Small Arms and Light Weapon Transfer in West Africa: A Stock-Taking’, Disarmament Forum, No. 4 (2008), pp.5–11; Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), pp.140–1; Schroeder, Small Arms, Terrorism and the OAS Firearms Convention (note 39).

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2003 (note 73), p.125.

Boutros-Ghali, Supplement to an Agenda for Peace (note 3).

Torunn Wimpelmann Chaudhary and Astri Suhrke, ‘Postwar Violence’, background paper for Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey, Geneva, 2009; Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.229.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.229.

Boutros-Ghali, Supplement to an Agenda for Peace (note 3).

Muggah and Krause, ‘Closing the Gap’ (note 8), p.138, p.145.

Ibid., p.139.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.236.

Robert Muggah, ‘Rethinking small arms control in Africa: it is time to set an armed violence reduction agenda’, Conflict, Security and Development, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2010), pp.217–38; Claire McEvoy and Emile LeBrun, Uncertain Future: Armed Violence in Southern Sudan (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2010).

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.167.

Amnesty International, Blood At The Crossroads: Making the Case for a Global Arms Trade Treaty (London: Amnesty International, 2008), pp.101–5; Oxfam, Conflict's Children: the Human Cost of Small Arms in Kitgum and Kotido, Uganda. A Case Study (Oxford: Oxfam, 2001), p.34.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.167.

Ben Knighton, ‘The State as Raider among the Karamojong: “Where there are no Guns, they Use the Threat of Guns”’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 73, No. 3 (2003), p.435.

See, for example, Nat Colletta and Robert Muggah, ‘Context Matters: Interim Stabilisation and Second Generation Approaches to Security Promotion’, Conflict, Security and Development, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2009), pp.425–53.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.220.

Ibid., p.236.

Susanne Schmeidl and Masood Karokhail, ‘The Role of Non-State Actors in “Community-Based Policing” – An Exploration of the Arbakai (Tribal Police) in South-Eastern Afghanistan’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2009), pp.318–42.

Schneckener, cited in Ibid., p.337.

Diane E. Davis, ‘Non-State Armed Actors, New Imagined Communities, and Shifting Patterns of Sovereignty and Insecurity in the Modern World’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2009), pp.221–45; p.241.

Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (note 29), p.120.

Tarak Barkawi, Globalization and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), p.43.

Kaldor, ‘Old Wars, Cold Wars, New Wars, and the War on Terror’ (note 38), p.492, emphasis added.

Barkawi, ‘State and Armed Force in International Context’ (note 31).

Barkawi and Laffey, ‘Retrieving the Imperial’ (note 6), p.330.

See the Geneva Declaration website, http://www.genevadeclaration.org/

See Stavrianakis, Taking Aim at the Arms Trade (note 61), ch. 5, for further explanation of this argument.

David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge: Polity, 1999); Mary Kaldor and Asbjorn Eide (eds), The World Military Order. The Impact of Military Technology on the Third World (Macmillan: London, 1979); Jan Øberg, ‘The New International Military Order: A Threat to Human Security’, in Asbjørn Eide and Marek Thee (eds), Problems of Contemporary Militarism (London: Croom Helm, 1980).

Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War. Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), p.47.

Martin Shaw, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism: A Historical-Sociological Framework’, in Anna Stavrianakis, Jan Selby, and Iraklis Oikonomou (eds), Militarism and International Relations: Political Economy, Security, Theory (London: Routledge, forthcoming).

Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, ‘The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2006), pp.329–52; p.346.

Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp.9–11.

Keith Krause, ‘Instruments of Insecurity. Small Arms and Contemporary Violence’, in J. Peter Burgess (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of New Security Studies (London: Routledge, 2010), pp.27–38; p.33, p.28.

Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.232.

Barkawi and Laffey, ‘The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies’, (note 126), p.333.

One of the interesting characteristics of international action on small arms is this ambivalent relationship with liberalism, in that it that simultaneously promotes individual security, human rights, liberal democratic forms of political community, protection of property etc, and yet is also pro-state. I am grateful to Tarak Barkawi for pointing out this tension.

Quoted in Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2009 (note 1), p.181.

David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, ‘Time for an arms trade treaty’, The Guardian, 11 November 2009.

Between 2001 and 2007 DfID disbursed £11,542,677 from the Global Conflict Prevention Pool (pooled DfID, FCO, and MoD resources) to UK-based NGOs for small arms projects. DfID, ‘Global Conflict Prevention Joint Pool – Small Arms and Light Weapons Projects’, Freedom of Information response to author, 29 October 2007.

Neil Cooper, ‘The Pariah Agenda and New Labour's Ethical Arms Sales Policy’, in Richard Little and Mark Wickham-Jones (eds), New Labour's Foreign Policy. A New Moral Crusade? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp.147–67.

See successive Saferworld audits: Saferworld, Independent Audit of the 2001 UK Government Annual Report on Strategic Export Controls (London: Saferworld, 2003 and subsequent years).

Tim Williams ‘Exporting Arms, Importing Standards’, Defence Management Journal, No. 38 (August 2007), at: http://www.sbac.co.uk/pages/59626406.asp

Defence Manufacturers' Association, ‘Arms Trade Treaty’, DMA News, No. 35, January 2006, p.4; BAE Systems, ‘Stakeholder Engagement’, Corporate Responsibility Report 2008, at: http://www.baesystems.com/BAEProd/groups/public/documents/bae_publication/bae_pdf_cr08_stake_engage.pdf

Bob, ‘Packing Heat’ (note 40), p.188.

See Stavrianakis, Taking Aim at the Arms Trade (note 61), ch. 6, for more detail.

Krause, Norm-Building in Security Spaces (note 74), p.11, p.17.

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978); Roxanne Lynne Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North–South Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

John Heathershaw, ‘Unpacking the Liberal Peace: The Dividing and Merging of Peacebuilding Discourses’, Millennium, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2008), pp.597–621, p. 603.