What's the point of arms transfer controls?

Abstract

This essay examines the contemporary architecture of conventional arms transfer restrictions and concludes that it is deficient. In part this is simply due to the absence of political will to effectively implement existing arms transfer restraint. However, it is also the case that the globalization of the defense industry, the growing employment of dual-use technology and the pervasiveness and flexibility of illicit networks are, in combination, substantially eroding the utility of existing restrictions on arms circulation. It is argued, therefore, that such trends require a shift from a predominantly supplier-oriented model of restriction to a system of regulatory diffusion that matches the reality of arms diffusion in the international system. Such a system encompasses a variety of initiatives but particularly includes a greater emphasis on recipient initiatives, an enhanced role for civil society and the incorporation of an outputs/impacts model of arms regulation.

Introduction

The aim of this essay is to reconsider the value of the traditional model of conventional arms transfer control, of which action on small arms and light weapons forms an increasingly significant part. The need for this study (and therefore policy) to deal with conventional weapons in general, rather than simply focusing on specific weapons (e.g. landmines or small arms) within the conventional category, is due to the fact that neither suppliers and supply routes nor global, regional or national control mechanisms make such artificial distinctions. Moreover, as will be noted below, the practice of focusing upon particular pariah weapons represents one of the more problematic elements of current approaches to conventional weapons control. I will also argue that it is increasingly difficult to separate the trade in conventional weapons from trade in other conflict commodities, such as diamonds, timber, coltan or cassiterite.

The key contention of this essay, however, is that current conventional arms transfer control mechanisms are inadequate to deal with the future challenges of weapons circulation, because they overwhelmingly concentrate on affecting the supply side of the arms trade equation therefore failing to take sufficient account of two critical trends. Firstly, that a lack of ‘political will’ has combined with strategic and commercial interests to make most supplier-based export controls little more than acts of tokenism. Secondly, that changes in the nature of the global defence industry, the growing salience of dual-use technology in defence equipment and the pervasiveness of globalized illicit arms networks have, and will continue to, profoundly erode the utility of existing arms transfer restraints. Only a control agenda that deals with these trends can ever hope to be truly effective.

This essay will thus attempt to outline at least some features of an alternative arms circulation control agenda relevant to the demands of the twenty-first century. Some of the features of this agenda are already emerging via initiatives on the marking and tracing of small arms or the regulation of conflict diamonds, for instance. To the extent that this is the case this study can be understood as, partly, an attempt to conceptualize emerging practices that aim to control the process of arms diffusion. However, a key argument is that such developments need to be taken further and to be explicitly conceived within the terms of the alternative agenda outline below. In particular it will be suggested that the reality of contemporary arms diffusion requires a corresponding shift to a system of regulatory diffusion that incorporates a greater focus on recipient initiatives, an enhanced role for civil society and a shift to an outputs/impacts model of regulation. In this sense, this essay is as much, if not more, an attempt to prescribe, as describe, a new agenda to restrict the circulation of arms.

NBC and conventional arms control: Explaining relative success and failure

I should first note the exceptions to the proposition that current arms transfer controls are mostly acts of tokenism. In particular, despite the current concern about NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical weapons) proliferation to states such as Iran or North Korea, the existing non-proliferation instruments for NBC technology have been relatively successful. This is particularly the case with respect to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As Cirincione has noted, for instance, ‘the number of prospective nuclear nations has shrunk dramatically over the past twenty years, not increased; there are thousands fewer ballistic missiles in the world today than fifteen years ago; and there are far fewer countries possessing any weapons of mass destruction than there were twenty, thirty, or forty years ago’.1

However, three factors have made nuclear non-proliferation in particular reasonably effective. First, there is the existence of relatively high technological barriers to entry and the scarce availability of key materials. Second, the disciplinary mechanisms developed to constrain proliferation are both severe and, crucially, enforced with a relative degree of rigour. These mechanisms now range from pre-emptive (pre-crime?) invasion, through to sanctions, relatively rigorous implementation of existing control regimes and diplomatic isolation. Third, formal control initiatives have been underpinned by a powerful (and almost universal) norm against NBC proliferation and use.

Of course, what is particularly notable about conventional arms transfer control compared with restraints on NBC technology is the marked lack of political will to develop meaningful controls and to enforce those that have been developed. There is thus a profound asymmetry that exists between the disciplinary mechanisms deployed to prevent NBC proliferation and those deployed to prevent the spread of conventional weapons. This is in spite of the fact that it has been conventional arms that have been the principal tools of war, internal conflict and genocide in the post-Cold War era.

For example, the imposition of UN embargoes on the trade in arms and, more recently, the trade in conflict goods (civil goods that are traded from a conflict zone to generate funds for the prosecution of war – e.g. conflict diamonds) are now an established element in the armoury of the international community when faced with a conflict or an odious regime. Despite this, however, many conflicts do not become the subject of such restrictions – whether as a function of neglect or of the political interests of the major powers on the Security Council. Thus, whilst there were 19 major armed conflicts in 2004 there were just nine UN arms embargoes in force in the same year (one of which was non-mandatory).2 Where embargoes are imposed, however, the record of sanctions in cutting off arms supplies and changing odious behaviour on the ground is, in reality, poor to non-existent.3 UN embargoes may increase the cost and difficulty of arms acquisition by forcing actors onto the black market, but the reality is that most actors in conflicts experience little difficulty in sourcing arms from the international market-place. A telling, and typical, indictment of the effectiveness of sanctions was provided by the UN Experts Panel on Liberia when it noted:

Despite nine years of an embargo on arms and military equipment to Liberia, a steady supply of weapons has reached the country. Indeed, in their conversations with the panel, the Liberian authorities appeared not bothered about the embargo and never complained about it.4

Partly, this reflects the sophistication of globalized illicit supply networks (see below), but it also reflects the international community's ultimate disinterest in developing the means to make sanctions more effective. Consequently, even where sanctions are enacted by the UN, actual implementation remains ineffective. In the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for instance, there was an eight month delay between the imposition of an arms embargo on armed groups operating in North and South Kivu and the creation of a Committee to actually monitor compliance with the embargo.5 Similarly, funds for the provision of sanctions monitors on the ground, or to provide capacity building support for neighbouring states to better implement sanctions, are usually notable by their absence. Nor is the provision of compensation for the economic impact of arms or commodity embargoes imposed by the UN an automatic feature of such embargoes. Thus, the economic incentive for neighbours to breach embargoes is often strong, whilst the risk of detection remains small. This is the international equivalent of passing a law against murder and then failing to provide funds for the creation of a homicide unit.

Moreover, even where sanctions violators are revealed, the consequences for them are often negligible. Violating states rarely receive more than a diplomatic finger-wagging. There is no direct and automatic financial penalty on a scale that might make serial recidivists pause for thought. As will be noted below, this contrasts sharply with many other areas of international regulation. Similarly, national defence-industrial champions often benefit from the benevolence of their governments, whose greater concern is to keep the national champion ticking over rather than to address wrongdoing on the part of what is constructed as the legitimate side of the arms market (see David Mutimer in this volume). Even some of the most well known operators in the illicit market have, however, managed to function with relative impunity. For instance, since the early 1990s the notorious arms dealer Victor Bout has been implicated in sanctions busting arms supplies to a variety of conflicts using a network of over 50 aircraft and several airline companies operating in different parts of the world. However, although Interpol ultimately issued an international arrest warrant for Bout, he still felt confident enough to give a live interview to CNN at its Moscow bureau.6

A similar picture is evident when one examines the network of national or regional arms export criteria. Thus, despite the British Labour government's apparent commitment to an ethical arms sales policy, the export criteria it developed on coming to power looked little different from the permissive policy of its predecessor, and implementation has been even more disappointing.7 The same applies to the EU's much-vaunted Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (CoC). Consequently, whilst the Code has brought some increase in transparency and has served as a vehicle for EU co-operation on the regulation of arms exports, it is still best described as a form of weak regulatory tokenism – part of a broader process by which all but the most dubious of arms transfers (and sometimes not even those) are provided with a formal veneer of legitimacy. As one report by EU NGOs noted in 2004, ‘it remains a moot point as to whether the CoC has actually led to increased restraint in EU arms exporting’.8

Thus, neither British nor EU policy has prevented a succession of export scandals from turning Labour's ethical arms sales policy into an international embarrassment. These include: the decision to continue the sale of Hawk jets to Indonesia, and successive scandals over ‘arms to Africa’ (Sierra Leone); over the supply of Hawk spares to Zimbabwe; over Tony Blair's drum-beating for British arms exports to India at a time of heightened tension with Pakistan over Kashmir; over the revelation of alleged sweeteners paid by British Aerospace (BAe) to Qatar and corresponding accusations of government pressure to abandon the investigation into these issues; over the use of British equipment by both Israel and Indonesia in offensive operations that breached end-user assurances; over the sale of unnecessary and uneconomic defence equipment to both South Africa and Tanzania; and over the continued primacy of the Al Yamamah contract with Saudi Arabia and its corrupting influence on British domestic and foreign policy.9 Similarly, the EU code has not prevented Italian small arms sales to a variety of countries experiencing conflict or engaged in human rights abuse, including Colombia, Eritrea, Indonesia, India, Israel, Kazakhstan and Nigeria, or reports that France has exported defence equipment to Sudan.10

The record is of fine-sounding words, which are then undermined by loophole-ridden lowest common denominator regulations. Indeed, this is the record in the better performing states. In the case of the worst offenders, the very leadership of the state systematically profits from the trade in arms or conflict goods – either through the receipt of bribes from arms sellers or by profiting from sales. For instance, successive reports from the UN and from the NGO Global Witness have highlighted the personal pecuniary interest of the former Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, in the trade in arms and conflict diamonds to and from Sierra Leone,11 and the way in which top-level officials from the former Zaire, Burkina Faso and Togo facilitated arms transfers to UNITA in exchange for diamonds or a proportion of the arms.12

It is also the case that both UN arms embargoes and national/regional export criteria remain highly selective in their application. Thus, either in construction or in implementation, global arms transfer controls tend to be deployed as selective instruments of punishment against those (currently) deemed strategic enemies or political pariahs, rather than as a universal and impartial control mechanism. For example, in the wake of 9/11 the EU reinterpreted its arms embargo on Afghanistan so that it only applied to Taliban controlled areas, thus exempting the Northern Alliance – an initiative which brought the EU into line with the existing UN embargo imposed in December 2000.13 Liberia has been subject to embargoes on diamonds, timber and arms for supporting the predatory activities of the RUF in Sierra Leone, yet the governments of Uganda and Rwanda have remained free of international sanctions despite similar involvement in conflict in a neighbouring state. Indeed, in 2003 the US actually lifted a national embargo on Rwanda despite continuing evidence of arms trafficking to rebel groups in the DRC.14

Similarly, the Wassenaar Arrangement for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies is essentially directed against a limited number of ‘rogue’ states and has been much more active on the issue of NBC transfers than on conventional weapons.15 One of the few exceptions to this rule has been action under the rubric of Wassenaar (and also the G8) to control the supply of Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS).16 However, attempts to control this specific trade reflect the priorities of the war on terror rather than any principled concern about the trade in such weapons per se. Indicative of this is the way in which the US now finds itself in the rather contradictory position of supporting restrictions on the supply of MANPADS to non-state actors whilst simultaneously resisting attempts to impose such restrictions on small arms and light weapons more generally.17

At least the same accusations of hypocrisy could not be directed at the UN Arms Register, which is not even supported by a grand ambition to directly limit the arms trade. The commitment to shedding transparency on the arms trade might well be useful in the context of a broader system of control that was meaningful and effective. In the absence of such a system, the UN's development of a voluntary register of arms exports and imports only contributes yet another form of tokenism to the global architecture of arms transfer regulation.18

In part at least, the weakness of global controls on the conventional arms trade stems from the fact that the most influential states in the international system – those with the power to effect real change in the global governance of armaments, are the self-same states that have the largest defence sectors and benefit the most from global arms sales. Thus, the US now accounts for virtually half (47 per cent) of global military expenditure, NATO countries for 70 per cent and OECD states 78 per cent.19 In the period 2000–2004 the US accounted for 31 per cent of global supplies of major conventional weapons, NATO countries for 57 per cent and the permanent five of the UN Security Council for 77 per cent.20 This is not to say that these states are necessarily the worst offenders when it comes to observing arms export regulations. Rather, it is that there is a clear conflict between their commercial interest in maximizing arms sales profits and their strategic/ethical interest in developing a control architecture that minimizes proliferation. Thus, the rogues and the terror groups, as well as the mafia dons and the drug cartels that participate in the more egregious examples of conventional arms proliferation, merely exploit the collateral benefit they receive from a regulatory system designed to retain freedom of operation for the major players.

Current and emerging challenges to supply-side controls

Of course, it might be argued that my critique of the record of current arms transfer controls is unduly pessimistic. Even if this is the case, however, a further, and perhaps more pertinent question is whether traditional control strategies will remain relevant in the light of contemporary trends in the arms market. Is it the case instead that current trends will require a new architecture of arms transfer control? l would argue for the latter position. Indeed, there are a number of trends that, when combined together, present significant challenges to the effectiveness of current mechanisms for arms transfer control. None of these are novel developments, rather it is that individually and collectively they are beginning to reach a scale and intensity that will require a response beyond the parameters of traditional control mechanisms.

The first challenge is that presented by the simultaneous concentration and globalized integration of the major weapons industry in a largely Western dominated hub and spoke model.21 Thus, in 1990 the five largest defence companies accounted for 22 per cent of arms production by the top 100 defence companies, by 2002 this figure had risen to 40 per cent.22 In some respects increased concentration might well facilitate better oversight of the arms industry. However, this process is also characterized by the erosion of defence industrial national identities (the British defence firm BAE Systems now sells more to the US Department of Defense than to the UK Ministry of Defence) and increased intra-firm movement of technology, knowledge and personnel. For instance, multinational corporations in the civil sector regularly increase productivity by transferring design problems over the internet to teams working in another time-zone. Globalized defence companies have, and will have, strong incentives to exploit similar efficiencies.

Consequently, the ability of states to encourage strict adherence to national export controls by appealing to national loyalty or to national strategic interest is likely to be eroded as they increasingly face essentially stateless defence companies. At the same time, the ability of states to sanction offenders by refusing to source from monopoly suppliers still presenting themselves as national/regional champions will be commensurately reduced. And the proliferation of licensed production and more generalized technology transfer to subsidiaries or market partners will permit evasion of national export control whether by design or by default. Heckler and Koch, for example, license small arms production in 14 countries including Burma, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.23

A second challenge is presented by the growing employment of dual-use technology in defence equipment, thus permitting suppliers to source controversial equipment in components that are treated as far more innocuous. Indeed, current policy seems designed to facilitate this process rather than actually address it. For example, the UK government appears to have responded to its own export criteria by authorizing a greater volume of dual-use exports that seem designed to get under the wire set for transfers of finished defence goods. Indeed, in 2002 the UK formally announced export licensing guidance which, subject to certain conditions, effectively handed over control of re-export to the incorporating state – thus permitting the UK to license head-up display units for export to the US for incorporation into F-16 aircraft scheduled for delivery to Israel.24 This trend seems likely to grow. In particular, the military potential of cutting edge developments in civil technology such as the new bio- or nanotechnology is likely to profoundly exacerbate exactly these kinds of challenges.

A third challenge is that represented by the extension and intensification of illicit global arms networks that exploit porous borders, corrupt officials and tax regulation. For instance, there are 21 known arms trafficking routes into Colombia from Venezuela, 26 from Ecuador, 37 from Panama and 14 from Brazil.25 At the higher and more sophisticated end of the illicit arms trade actors have particularly benefited from the mechanisms of globalization. Thus local and global deregulation, coupled with the high-technology revolution, improvements in transport technology, and increased migration, have facilitated the development of local, regional and global trade networks that sustain illicit arms and conflict trade networks. For instance, overland transport networks have improved markedly in the developing world since the 1980s whilst developments such as containerization have simultaneously lowered the unit of cost of trade and made it more anonymous.26

Indeed, the cost of sea, freight and air transport have all fallen significantly over the last 70 years.27 At the same time, decommissioned aircraft from the Soviet military fleet have created a direct link between remote airfields in conflict zones and the international networks of supply.28 Furthermore, the growth in global financial markets (more than US$1.5 trillion is now exchanged daily in world markets29) has not only made it easier to launder the profits from such operations, but has made it correspondingly more difficult for investigators to discern illegitimate from legitimate transactions.

An example of one arms shipment to Liberia neatly illustrates the flexibility and global reach of contemporary illicit arms networks: A consignment of rifles was purchased from the Slovak Republic for the Ugandan military through an Egyptian arms broker with a company, Culworth Investments Corporation, with offices in Liberia. On receipt of the consignment, the Ugandans discovered that it did not conform to their specifications. An Illyushin-18, registered in Moldova but chartered by Centrafrica Airlines, a company in the Central African Republic, arrived in November 2000, supposedly to fly the weapons back to the Slovak Republic. In fact, a new purchaser, Pecos Company of Guinea had been found. Pecos had an end-user certificate from the Ministry of Defence of Guinea, but the Illyushin actually flew to Liberia with seven tons of sealed boxes on board, which included 1,000 submachine guns. The Liberian representative on the flight was Carlos Alberto La Plaine, a Portuguese diamond dealer. Three days later the plane flew back to Uganda to pick up a second consignment of 1,250 machine guns but, suspecting the plane was engaged in sanctions busting, was impounded by the Ugandan authorities.30

Furthermore, local actors do not necessarily have to rely on highly sophisticated global networks. Much of the illicit trade in small arms is conducted by ‘ants’ who bring small quantities of arms across borders. This is the case, for instance, in Colombia where small quantities of arms are brought in by boat or hidden in overland shipments of legitimate goods such as potatoes or cereal.31 Similarly, the small arms trafficked into North Eastern DRC from Uganda includes weapons carried by car, bicycle or even on foot.32 It is also the case that combatants may simply resort to theft from state arsenals, take advantage of the re-circulation of arms from neighbouring conflicts or produce arms locally. For instance, both the FARC in Colombia and the LTTE have developed quite significant repair and production capabilities for small arms,33 whilst home-made weapons made up more than half those surrendered to peace monitors in Bougainville.34

Thus, the statist and sclerotic architecture of arms transfer control is faced with policing dynamic, flexible global networks of supply. Moreover, such illicit networks are capable of rapid mutation in response to shifting geographies of regulation. For instance, the embargo on the export of diamonds from Liberia imposed because of its role in facilitating the trade in conflict diamonds from Sierra Leone has produced new opportunities for shadow trade with an estimated $350,000 per month of diamonds now being laundered through Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Sierra Leone and even direct to Belgium.35

Such changes in the nature of the contemporary arms market have led a number of commentators to argue that the proliferation model, with its emphasis on the export of arms by a few suppliers is outdated. Instead, it is argued that the diffusion model, with its emphasis on the diversity of suppliers, recipients and networks of both funding and supply is now more accurate, particularly with respect to the trade in light weapons that underpins internal conflicts.36 It might also be added that the metaphor of ‘arms transfers’ is equally problematic given the realities of the current defence market, as arms are not so much transferred (in the sense that finished defence equipment is transferred whole from supplier to buyer) but rather arms, technology and knowledge are circulated and re-circulated, often passing between a number of actors. Indeed, many small arms in particular may be moved from one conflict to another with (temporary) end-users essentially acting as the next arms merchant in waiting.

Towards an agenda for reform

The corollary of such developments is that traditional, supply-side non-proliferation initiatives based around the assumed ability of hermetic nation-states to supervise the physical movement of identifiable military technology is already declining in utility, and is likely to continue to do so as these trends gather pace. One response, then, might be to ask what is the point of arms transfer controls given the absence of political will to enforce regulations that are of declining utility anyway? A more measured response, and one this essay will now turn to examine, is to argue there is an urgent need to re-think the traditional mechanisms deployed to prevent the global diffusion of arms and defence technology. To some extent, as will be noted below, this process is already beginning, but it is a process of innovation and reform that needs to be taken much further.

This is not to suggest that traditional export control mechanisms should be abandoned. These can still perform useful, if limited, functions, particularly if that elusive element ‘political will’ can be mobilized to ensure more rigorous implementation. Rather, existing initiatives also need to be accompanied by a range of more innovative solutions to the challenge of control presented by the contemporary arms market. In particular, there is a need to match the reality of arms diffusion with a correspondingly more diffuse system of regulation. There are a number of general initiatives that can be pursued within this framework and these will be outlined below. However, there are two key areas that will require more sustained attention than under the traditional model. First, such a diffuse system of regulation will, of necessity, have to be characterized by a more extensive shift to a system of disarmament from below with a greater emphasis placed on the role of recipients and even civil society in restraining the circulation of arms. Second, both market conditions and a system of regulatory diffusion require a much more extensive adoption of an outputs/impacts-based model of regulation.

Towards regulatory diffusion

As already noted, the realities of arms diffusion require a move away from over-reliance on a form of regulation based on regulating inputs (arms) at the national choke-points of suppliers (government licensing departments, ports, airports, etc.). Instead, a far more diffuse and flexible system of regulation will have to be developed to match the diffusion and flexibility inherent in contemporary arms networks. On the one hand, this will require far more extensive regulation and monitoring of the commercial hinterland behind such national choke-points. In part this has already been presaged in some existing initiatives, most notably those centred around the development of an agreement on the marking and tracing of small arms so as to facilitate the tracing of supplies.37 It may also require a shift to the kind of intrusive verification and regulation of civil industries dealing with dual-use technologies that may have important military applications presaged in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

A further example might be the adoption of more thoroughgoing domestic and international initiatives to eliminate subsidies for arms exporters. This would help eliminate the irony whereby G8 leaders have committed themselves to dealing with the issue of subsidies for Western farm goods because of the detrimental impact they have on the poor, but where they still deploy an extensive range of subsidies to support their arms exports.38 Action on support for defence exports might include adopting similar kinds of restrictions on the ability of government officials to lobby for arms export orders that were attempted by the Carter administration in the 1970s.39 It would also include eliminating subsidies such as export credits for defence companies, as well as addressing the anomaly whereby the use of offsets are now precluded in civil transactions but not for defence sales – a bizarre reversal of international security priorities if ever there was one. A more radical approach would be to introduce a levy on global arms transfers. This could be used to fund initiatives such as the provision of monitors for arms embargoes, a network of civil society monitoring groups, DDR investigations into the source of collected arms and capacity building projects to help poorer states implement arms control agreements.

A further area for more extensive action under a system of regulatory diffusion is the link that exists between the trade in natural resources and conflict. There is growing evidence of the way in which the trade in natural resources (oil, gold, diamonds, timber, coltan, etc.) have been used by actors in conflicts to fund the demand for arms purchases, pay soldiers and line bank accounts. Some initiatives have already been developed to address this linkage but most of these are characterized by an emphasis on voluntarism and transparency. Notable exceptions include UN commodity sanctions imposed on actors such as UNITA in Angola and the RUF in Sierra Leone.

Growing awareness of the way such actors have used the trade in conflict diamonds to fund conflict has also led to the development of the Kimberley Certification System. This novel regime attempts to prevent the trade in conflict diamonds by establishing a global system for policing the movement of rough diamonds, underpinned by the threat of exclusion from world diamond markets for those states found to be in breach of their commitments not to trade in conflict diamonds. Current restrictions in this area are certainly not without their flaws. As ever, UN embargoes have been selective, with some actors (e.g. those in the DRC) escaping any kind of sanction on their conflict trade. Kimberley also has a restrictive definition of conflict diamonds, a voluntary system of inspections and a focus on policing rather than a concern with development, although some attempts are being made to address this latter issue in particular (see below).40

Nevertheless, whilst the Kimberley certification system may exhibit a number of flaws, the model of regulating to prevent the trade in conflict goods is one that could usefully be expanded to other industrial sectors (albeit with some important qualifications outlined below). Le Billon has also argued for the addition of a Protocol to the existing UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime specifically addressing the Illicit Exploitation and Trafficking in Natural Resources.41 A variant of this proposal might be to forge an agreement that defines and establishes principles for addressing the trade in conflict goods specifically. Whilst this would probably be more difficult to negotiate it would have the advantage of capturing those aspects of conflict trade that are often not deemed illicit – e.g. the Angolan government's trade in oil to finance conflict. Le Billon has also suggested the creation of a UN early warning system to identify trading in conflict resources, thus permitting speedy responses to the phenomenon of conflict trade.42

However, to be successful and to ensure such initiatives are not simply incorporated into the existing framework of disciplinary regulations designed to preserve hegemony, they would have to be applied without discrimination, and provide assistance for implementation. Crucially, such initiatives should not be conceived solely as policing mechanisms simply designed to replace the attempt to hermetically seal the borders of arms producers with a reverse attempt to hermetically seal the borders of states whose natural resource exports finance the demand for arms. Neither approach is likely to be particularly successful. To be effective, future regimes on conflict trade in particular will have to address the poverty, underdevelopment, atrocious labour conditions and poor terms of trade that are not only associated with natural resource trade from weak states but which create incentives for participation in conflict trade as part of coping strategies or as alternative forms of development. A possible model might be the nascent efforts to transform the Kimberley regime from one solely concerned with preventing the trade in conflict diamonds to one whose remit includes the promotion of ‘development diamonds’ that can optimize the development potential of artisanal diamond mining for diggers, communities and governments43 – although it remains to be seen how far these avowed goals will really inform actual implementation of policy.

There is also a need to mainstream requirements to monitor the trade in natural resources in the mandates of peacekeeping forces. For instance, MONUC in the DRC has a mandate to monitor arms flows but not the trade in natural resources that finances these arms flows.44 The NGO Global Witness has also called for the inclusion of natural resource governance in the mandate of the new UN Peacebuilding Commission proposed by the Secretary-General.45 Finally, there is also a need for the trade in ‘conflict goods’ to be explicitly included within the remit of all expert panels established to monitor UN sanctions. Indeed, there is an argument for the creation of such panels for all conflicts irrespective of whether they are the subject of sanctions or not.

Towards disarmament from below

The shift towards regulatory diffusion will also require a move away from the current system of arms transfer regulation geared to preserving both hegemony (through the selective application or implementation of disciplinary mechanisms restricting the transfer of arms and technology) and military-industrial interests. At the very least such a shift will require the consistent and impartial application of current arms transfer restraints, something that does not currently occur. However, what such a shift also implies, and what the logic of global arms diffusion necessitates, is the need to move to a system of disarmament from below. Such a system is likely to incorporate both a far greater emphasis on recipient as opposed to supplier initiatives and an even greater role for civil society in the process of arms monitoring and even regulation.

Recipient initiatives

There are a number of ways a greater emphasis on recipient initiatives might be achieved. At the regional level this might be realized through extension of the various nuclear weapons-free zones (NWFZ) that now cover most of the Southern hemisphere to incorporate bans on other military technologies such as missiles. Thus, rather than viewing NWFZ as an end-point of arms control one might envisage them as institutionalizing processes designed to gradually expand the arena of arms and technologies subject to local weapons bans.

A variant of this would be the promotion of arms import moratoria. The introduction of the arms import moratorium in West Africa has, of course, been less than successful.46 However, the implementation of such a scheme in a region notorious for weak government control and subject to acute security dilemmas was always going to be problematic. Other regions may well experience greater success with such a model, particularly if it is accompanied by the provision of resources for implementation. Indeed, a number of regions have developed, or are developing, better regulations on specific issues such as small arms – an example being the Nairobi protocol for Great Lakes Region and the Horn of Africa which commits states to a range of controls on SALW including their import, export and transfer.

Where they exist, initiatives such as these can be built upon and provided with greater financial support for implementation so that they might become the basis for more radical and wide-ranging controls. However, there are also regions such as the Middle East where progress on the development of regional systems of arms regulation has been negligible. In such cases, encouragement and support might be given to the development of systems of arms import limitation. For example, Levi and O'Hanlon have argued for an agreement that would limit imports into the Persian Gulf to no more than $1–2 billion in arms each year (albeit in a text that is otherwise an apologia for pre-emption).47 Such an agreement might also include import bans on specific weapons and could establish a process that might lead to more radical forms of regional disarmament being pursued.

A similar focus on recipient initiatives might operate at the national and sub-national level too. A number of countries have introduced, or are in the process of introducing, various forms of national or sub-national controls on arms or specific categories of weaponry – particularly small arms. For instance, Brazil's 2003 Disarmament Statute prohibits the carrying of guns by civilians and a national gun buy-back programme has taken 400,000 weapons out of circulation. The effect has been to reduce gun deaths by 8 per cent, the first such fall in over a decade – although more far-reaching proposals to ban the sale of firearms to civilians were defeated in a referendum in October 2005.48

Other societies have established weapon-free spaces. In the Solomon Islands, for example, a weapons-free village scheme was introduced as part of a range of initiatives to collect arms and underpin peace,49 and in the Philippines guns have been banned in public since 2003.50 Weapons for Development initiatives that provide community-based development or community-building programmes (e.g. the building of water wells, schools, health centres, etc.) in association with the voluntary hand-in of weapons by civilians may have particular merit. For instance, under one programme in Sierra Leone, once participating chiefdoms have been identified as weapons free they have received $20,000 and expertise to use on development projects identified through community discussion.51 The programme has proved remarkably successful and, as Greene has noted, demonstrates that the apparent presence of a local gun culture may belie the fact that it is often uneven in extent and/or sometimes a transient product of historically contingent events and therefore not immutable.52

Of course, the danger is that weapons restraint on the part of recipient states simply entrenches the huge disparities in military capability that exist between the developed and the developing world. Self-imposed restraints from recipients on the demand for arms imports would therefore need to take place in the context of broader initiatives to promote reductions in military expenditure and production by major defence industrial powers such as the US – initiatives that are outside the purview of this particular study. Similarly, efforts at the sub-national level to eliminate arms risk becoming vehicles for the state to entrench its own monopoly of violence at the expense of the security of its citizens. However, where such initiatives are pursued in tandem with national or regional commitments by states to reduce arms imports and, ultimately, domestic manufacture and security spending, this risk is likely to be reduced. The same is also the case where any initiatives pursued are explicitly underpinned by a commitment to providing security for citizens and are based on societal ownership.

The vision of arms circulation control posited here, then, is not so much a traditional top-down model of supplier self-restraint but of a multi-layered set of initiatives incorporating an enhanced role (and support) for regional and national import or weapons bans established as part of broader efforts to move towards radical disarmament at the level of the globe, the region, the state and the village. To some extent, the outlines of this model are already emerging as policy-makers are forced to respond to the imperatives of arms diffusion. But existing initiatives need to be both deepened and extended and also freed from the logic of disciplinary regulation that has so dominated traditional supplier controls. One way in which this can be achieved is through the greater involvement of civil society.

An enhanced role for civil society

A form of disarmament from below is also likely to incorporate an enhanced role for local–global civil society in the negotiation, design, and monitoring of arms transfer restrictions. This is not only because the involvement of such groups has the potential to provide better guarantees against the temptation to dilute commitments and to backslide on implementation, but also because civil society groups have clear advantages in meeting the challenges posed by the nature of the contemporary arms market.

In particular, to the extent that they are rooted in communities and reflect their views, civil society groups can work for a more organic form of arms limitation that provides a better fit with the needs, culture and security problems of local societies. Such groups also possess similar features to those evinced by illicit arms networks: the ability to react speedily and flexibly to events, to forge networked linkages between like-minded actors at the local, regional and global level and to use new technologies such as the internet as a form of (moral) force multiplier. This gives civil society groups clear advantages over the sclerotic, bureaucratically hidebound state and multilateral organizations that have traditionally taken the lead on arms transfer restraints. Indeed, one of the features of recent campaigns such as those on landmines and conflict diamonds has been the fact that, in their role as norm entrepreneurs, civil society's groups have been able to generate (and more importantly claim) a greater level of knowledge on specific topics compared with states and other organizations.53 This has permitted them a significant level of influence – at least in negotiations on these specific issues.

Thus, a clear response to both weapons diffusion and the deficiencies of disciplinary non-proliferation will require greater participation for civil society. At the global level this has been presaged by the role of NGOs in campaigning for, negotiating and monitoring implementation of the landmines treaty. A range of initiatives are already underway at the local level too – one example being the way in which the Ugandan Council of Churches and the Fellowship of Christian Council of Churches in the Great Lakes Region and Horn of Africa have established cross-border peace committees whose roles include the monitoring of small arms availability and misuse.54

This is not to suggest that an enhanced role for civil society represents a panacea or magic bullet. Civil society groups can be co-opted by governments or may be fronts for some very uncivil actors. Even when working with the best of intentions they can become agents of an ethnocentric, neo-paternal and neo-patrimonial form of global politics. Moreover, those issues on which civil society has had the most success to date are precisely those on the periphery of the national security (and defence industrial base) concerns of core powers (landmines, conflict diamonds). In addition, the construction of issues such as landmines or conflict diamonds around a language of humanitarianism rather than one of strategic balance has not been quite as radical as it first appears. This same language of humanitarianism is now deployed to justify mainstream security policy – whether it be over Iraq, Kosovo or Afghanistan. In the latter case, for instance, the US war in Afghanistan was justified not merely as a response to terrorism but as an act that would redress the human rights abuses of the Taliban. Part of the reason, then, why campaigns such as that on landmines or conflict diamonds have had such swift success is that they have precisely plugged into a mainstream security discourse deployed to legitimize military intervention. The narratives of ‘war and threat’ and ‘greed not grievance’ that are frequently deployed in such NGO campaigns (often to criticize the West) is precisely the language of ‘the new military humanism’ articulated by the West.55

In addition, this same language and ethos is also deployed to legitimize the new generation of smart weapons. These are constructed as humane weapons because their accuracy permits discrimination between civilians and combatants. Thus, the post-Cold War concern with ‘inhumane weapons’ such as landmines or ‘inhumane trade’ (conflict diamonds) is the corollary of a discourse that also legitimizes the latest generation of weapons systems. Again, then, this forms part of the success of such campaigns. In this respect, they are not quite the radical departure from a security status quo they are often characterized as, but, in many respects, an element of it.

This has a number of implications for any meaningful campaign for disarmament from below. In particular, it implies the need to broaden civil society activity beyond tokenistic campaigns on issues such as landmines and to articulate a more holistic agenda for disarmament from below – an agenda that would make a meaningful impact on those areas of the armaments dynamic that have been ring-fenced from the quite significant strides towards disarmament made in other areas of military technology.56 For this to occur, however, will require a variety of factors, not least it will require more strategic thinking from the NGO community about what campaigns to launch and, sometimes, a greater willingness to refuse government handouts for campaigns on issues they (both) feel relatively safe with. It will also require civil society itself to re-think its campaigning priorities to bring them into line with the realities of arms diffusion. For instance, whilst civil society groups have taken the lead in developing a variety of networked and capillary responses to the challenges of arms circulation, it is also the case that a centrepiece of current NGO action on the conventional weapons trade is the campaign for an Arms Trade Treaty. However, whilst the proposed treaty does contain a fleeting reference to controls on imports, it is predominantly framed within a traditional supplier-based non-proliferation model of arms transfer restraint. Whether it makes sense to deploy scarce NGO resources in campaigning for a treaty that is unlikely to achieve universal adherence and will be susceptible to the deficiencies of supplier-based initiatives highlighted here is debatable, particularly in an era of arms diffusion and circulation.

Towards an outputs/impacts model of arms regulation

As already noted, traditional models of arms transfer regulation have been supplier-led with a focus on preventing export beyond supposedly hermetic borders. The emphasis has been on self-restraint, either unilaterally or through some form of multilateral agreement and the aim has been to govern the input of arms to particular states, regions or to world society as a whole. One of the features of this traditional model has either been the absence of sanctions for malfeasance or the persistent failure to implement them, either because of the difficulties of prosecution or simply the absence of political will. In an era of weapons diffusion, however, when self-restraint is unlikely to prevent arms reaching actors, there is a clear need to develop a far more rigorous and extensive framework of regulations to address the outputs from suppliers and/or the impact of arms transfers.

One element in such a model might be the development of a formal requirement for post-conflict disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes (DDR) to include, as a matter of routine, the registering and prominent publication of weapons types and serial numbers collected in conflict zones that have been the subject of international restrictions such as UN embargoes. This might take the form of an annual publication detailing weapons (and their makers) that have been recovered as part of DDR processes. Furthermore, a requirement of all financing for post-conflict DDR initiatives might be that it includes the provision of dedicated funds to support attempts to trace the origin of collected weapons. For these kinds of initiatives to work effectively, however, they would also have to be linked with the development of a far more rigorous framework of penalties for states and suppliers where they have breached domestic or international regulations on the movement of weapons and military-related goods. There are a number of ways in which the existing framework of penalties could be improved.

First, the UN needs to be more prepared to adopt secondary sanctions on states that breach arms embargoes either by directly supplying embargoed destinations, or by persistently acting as transhipment points, by supplying false end-user certificates or by laundering funds for illicit arms deals.57 To date, secondary sanctions have only been imposed on Liberia and, even in this case, disquiet about Liberia's violation of the arms and diamond embargo on the RUF in Sierra Leone tended to form just one element of a much more general concern about Charles Taylor's role in fomenting regional instability.

Second, at the moment many firms escape punishment for violating arms embargoes by pleading a lack of knowledge about the ultimate destination of the equipment they have sold. The complexities of illicit trading routes and the difficulties involved in penetrating corporate secrecy means that even if authorities are committed to weeding out recidivists successful prosecutions are rare. In some cases, it may even be true that the original suppliers had no knowledge of the ultimate destination of equipment. However, there are examples in other areas of regulation where such a defence is not acceptable. For example, the UK government has imposed fines on travel and lorry companies found to be bringing asylum seekers into the country whether or not the companies did so knowingly. Given the scale of the threat to human life presented by the proliferation of arms in conflict zones, it seems not unreasonable to adopt some variant of this principle with respect both to arms exporters and the actors responsible for the actual movement of weapons – perhaps qualified by mitigation for exporters able to provide positive proof that they have made every effort to prevent the unauthorized diversion of their exports. In other words, what is proposed here is the adoption not of a principle of caveat emptor but rather one of ‘caveat vendor’.

Third, there is a need to create better international instruments to permit the prosecution of companies where they have facilitated breaches of international law such as the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Currently, it is theoretically possible to prosecute companies in national courts for their involvement in such crimes where international law has been incorporated into domestic law. Even where business entities do not directly perpetrate crimes they can be prosecuted on the basis of complicity. An obvious and oft-cited example is the use of the US Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) to try to bring cases against individuals and companies accused of complicity in war crimes or crimes against humanity. However, such actions are subject to a number of difficulties. For instance, not all international law is translated into domestic law, there is a difficulty in establishing the jurisdiction of national courts and, as one survey has noted, ‘governments are disinclined to make corporate misconduct a priority when the potential domestic economic and political fallout is high and the injured parties are citizens of a poor, far away country’.58 The Bush administration for instance, has repeatedly opposed cases brought under ATCA arguing that its use ‘bears serious implications for our current war against terrorism, and permits claims to be easily asserted against our allies in [the] war on [terror]’.59

Moreover, at the international level, no forum currently has the power to prosecute ‘legal persons’ for the kind of crimes relevant here – and all business entities are defined in law as legal persons. Thus, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone are all only mandated to prosecute individuals. The same restriction applies to the International Criminal Court, although the idea of extending the Court's mandate to include prosecution of legal persons was considered during the negotiations on its creation.60 Whilst this does not preclude the prosecution of specific individuals within firms, it would clearly aid action against companies if the remit of the ICC was extended to cover the actions of legal persons.

Fourth, Dan Plesch has also argued for the abolition of limited liability for company shareholders. As Plesch notes, under current regulations if companies fail or are sued for damages, shareholders only lose the sum of money they have invested. Companies can be prosecuted for selling defective products or weapons to an enemy but shareholders have protection against the potential liabilities they are likely to incur. For Plesch, this amounts to a position of power without responsibility. Abolition of limited liability, he argues, would ensure that shareholders, or their insurers, would make much stronger demands on companies to pursue responsible trading strategies. Moreover, it would also eliminate the phenomenon whereby companies create subsidiaries that can be sued and shut down but, as shareholder, the liabilities of the parent company are minimal. It is, of course, precisely these kinds of loopholes that arms traffickers are adept at exploiting. Plesch argues instead for a significant increase in the liability of shareholders.61 Even if governments were to balk at introducing this as a general principle, it would seem a particularly appropriate idea to apply to the export of defence goods – especially given the serious effects on human and national security stemming from irresponsible trading.

Of course, it might be argued that that the kind of penalties with teeth envisaged here are far too draconian and risk imposing unnecessarily punitive sanctions on legitimate actors who, when they work best, can be agents for peace through the promotion of trade, development and integration. However, it is worth noting that the range of sanctions deployed against both states and legitimate firms when, for instance, they simply breach competition laws can be quite severe and are arguably applied with greater consistency than is the case for regulations governing arms traders. For instance, in 2004 Microsoft was fined €497 million by the European Commission for abusing its monopoly position and subsequently threatened with fines of €2 million a day unless it fully complied with the Commission's judgment.62 In the same year the tobacco company Philip Morris reached a settlement with the European Commission under which it agreed to pay £547 million in compensation for tax revenue lost by European governments as a consequence of its complicity in the smuggling of cigarettes.63

It is not unreasonable to expect that firms and states that supply, or fund the supply, of the tools of genocide and war crimes might be at the same risk of punitive sanctions as those that breach regional or global regulations on free trade. Currently, it is debatable whether this is the case.

Conclusion

To conclude, current restraints on the circulation of conventional weapons and their technologies are flawed in two key respects. First, regulation is either tokenistic, imposes weak restraints and/or generally suffers from a marked absence of rigour when it comes to implementation. In addition, both regulation and the enthusiasm for implementation tend to reflect the role of arms transfer restraints as mechanisms of disciplinary non-proliferation against selected ‘rogues’ rather than impartially applied instruments designed to prevent conflict and human rights abuse per se. Second, the traditional model of arms transfer non-proliferation control, with its emphasis on supplier restraint, is one likely to be of ever-declining utility, particularly given the challenges presented by the move from proliferation to arms diffusion.

Consequently, there is a need to match current market conditions with a similar shift from a traditional model of supplier restraint to one of regulatory diffusion characterized in particular by a greater role for both recipients and civil society as well as an expansion of initiatives focused on addressing the outputs/impacts of transfers by suppliers. To some extent, elements of this model are already emerging via initiatives on issues such as the marking and tracing of weapons and the regulation of conflict goods. However, an effective response to current market conditions will require an expansion and intensification of these kinds of approaches.

The various proposals outlined above may appear to describe a fairly ambitious agenda of reform, particularly given the current state of international relations and no doubt others will be able to offer alternative propositions that improve on the suggestions made here. At the same time however, it seems clear that, unless something like the reforms I have outlined are attempted, then the limited effectiveness of the current global architecture of control is likely to decline even further in the future. The cost, of course, will not be felt by the merchants of death but by the victims of future conflicts sustained by the continued circulation of conventional weapons.

I would like to thank Rob Dover, Jocelyn Mawdsley and Ann Stavrianakis for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper as well as the anonymous referees. Research for this paper has been facilitated by an ESRC grant under the New Security Challenges Programme ESRC Res: 223-25-0071.

Notes

1. J. Cirincione, ‘Addressing Proliferation Through Multilateral Agreement: Success and Failure in the Nonproliferation Regime’, in Janne E. Nolan, Bernard I. Finel and Brian D. Finley (eds.), Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction: Ultimate Security (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2003), p.59.

2. SIPRI, SIPRI Yearbook 2005: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p.434.

3. SIPRI, SIPRI Yearbook 2003: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.448.

4. United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts Appointed Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1343 (2201), Paragraph 19, Concerning Liberia, p.36, para.159.

5. Amnesty International, Democratic Republic of Congo: Arming the East (June 2005), see <http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR620062005>.

6. Cited in Mark Phythian, ‘Intelligence and the Illicit Arms Trade: Problem or Solution’, Paper presented at the BISA Conference, London School of Economics, 16–18 December 2002, p.11.

7. Neil Cooper, ‘Arms Exports, New Labour and the Pariah Agenda’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.21, No.3 (December 2000), pp.54–77.

8. Report by European NGOs, Taking Control: The Case for a More Effective European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (London: Saferworld, 2004), p.1.

9. Emma Mayhew, ‘A Dead Giveaway: A Critical Analysis of New Labour's Rationales for Supporting Military Export’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 26, No. 1 (April 2005), pp.62–83.

10. Amnesty International, IANSA, Oxfam, The G8: Global Arms Exporters: Failing to Prevent Irresponsible Arms Transfers, Control Arms Briefing Paper (June 2005), see <http://www.controlarms.org>.

11. Global Witness, The Role of Liberia's Logging Industry on National and Regional Insecurity: Briefing to the UN Security Council by Global Witness (January 2001), see <http://www.globalwitness.org/>; Global Witness, The Usual Suspects: Liberia's Weapons and Mercenaries in Côte d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Why It's Still Possible, How it Works and How to Break the Trend (March 2003); United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts Appointed Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1306 (2000), Paragraph 4, in Relation to Liberia. S/2002/470 (19 April 2002), see <http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/docs/minindx.htm>.

12. United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts on Violations of Security Council Sanctions Against UNITA, S/2000/203 (10 March 2000).

13. Elizabeth Kirkham and Catherine Flew, Strengthening Embargoes and Enhancing Human Security, Biting the Bullet, Briefing No.17, p.24, see <http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/cics/publications/>.

14. Amnesty International, Democratic Republic of Congo: Arming the East.

15. Joanna Spear, ‘Arms and Arms Control’, in Issues in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005).

16. Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2004: Rights at Risk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp.77–97.

17. Spear, ‘Arms and Arms Control’; John Bolton, Plenary Address to the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, New York City, 9 July 2001, see <http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/janjuly/4038.htm>.

18. See University of Bradford Arms Register website at <http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/peace/pubs/bars.htm>.

19. SIPRI, SIPRI Yearbook 2005, Table 8A.1, pp.346–371.

20. SIPRI, SIPRI Yearbook 2005, Table 10A2, pp.453–454.

21. Richard A. Bitzinger, ‘Towards a Brave New Arms Industry’, Adelphi Paper, No.356 (London: IISS and Oxford University Press, 2003).

22. Paul Dunne, ‘The Restructuring of the International Arms Industry’, Paper presented at the Eighth Annual ECAAR Conference on Economics and Security, University of the West of England, 24–26 June 2004, see <http://carecon.org.uk/Conferences/Conf2004/CONF2004.html>.

23. BASIC, Brief Submission to the Biennial Meeting of States (BMS) on Small Arms and Light Weapons (July 2003), see <http://www.basicint.org/WT/smallarms/LPO.htm>.

24. EU NGOs, Taking Control, p.39.

25. Kim Cragin and Bruce Hoffman, Arms Trafficking and Colombia (Washington, DC: RAND, 2003), p.21.

26. John Mackinley, ‘Globalization and Insurgency’, Adelphi Paper No. 352 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the IISS, 2002), pp.15–29.

27. David Held, Anthony G. McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), p.170.

28. Mackinley, Globalization and Insurgency.

29. Susan Willett, ‘Introduction: Globalisation and Insecurity’, in Susan Willett (ed.), Structural Conflict in the New Global Disorder: Insecurity and Development, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 2 (April 2001), p.1.

30. Global Witness, The Usual Suspects: Liberia's Weapons and Mercenaries in Côte d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Why it's Still Possible, How it Works and How to Break the Trend (March 2003).

31. Cragin and Hoffman, Arms Trafficking and Colombia.

32. Amnesty International, Democratic Republic of Congo.

33. Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2005, p.47.

34. Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2005, Box 9.1, p.288.

35. Global Witness, Timber, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: How Liberia's uncontrolled resource exploitation, Charles Taylor's manipulation and the re-recruitment of ex-combatants are threatening regional peace (June 2005), p.22.

36. Michael T. Klare, ‘Light Weapons Diffusion and Global Violence in the Post-Cold War Era’, in Jasjit Singh (ed.), Light Weapons and International Security (London: British American Security Information Council, 1995), pp.1–40; Michael Klare and David Anderson, A Scourge of Guns: The Diffusion of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Latin America (Washington DC: Federation of American Scientists, Arms Sales Monitoring Project, 1996).

37. Control Arms, Tracking Lethal Tools: Marking and Tracing Arms and Ammunition: A Central Piece of the Arms Control Puzzle (Control Arms Campaign, December 2004).

38. Paul Ingram and Roy Isbister, Escaping the Subsidy Trap: Why Arms Exports are Bad for Britain (BASIC, Saferworld, Oxford Research Group, September 2004); Malcolm Chalmers, Neil V. Davies, Keith Hartley and Chris Wilkinson, The Economic Costs and Benefits of UK Defence Exports, Centre for Defence Economics, Research Monograph Series 13 (University of York, November 2001).

39. Joanna Spear, Carter and Arms Sales: Implementing the Carter Administration's Arms Transfer Restraint Policy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995).

40. Partnership AfricaCanada and Global Witness, Rich Man Poor Man. Development Diamonds and Poverty Diamonds: The Potential for Change in the Artisanal Alluvial Diamonds Fields of Africa (2004), see <http://pacweb.org/e/index.php?option = content&task = view&id = 42&Itemid = 65>.

41. Philippe Le Billon, ‘Fuelling War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflict’, Adelphi Paper No.373 (2005).

42. Ibid.

43. ‘Diamond Development Initiative Begins’, Other Facets, No.18 (September 2005), p.1.

44. Global Witness, Undermining Peace: Tin: The Explosive Trade in Cassiterite in Eastern DRC (June 2005).

45. Global Witness, Undermining Peace.

46. Sverre Lodgaard and Carsten F. Rønnfeldt (eds.), A Moratorium of Light Weapons in West Africa (Oslo: Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers and NUPI, 1998).

47. Michael A Levi and Michael O'Hanlon, The Future of Arms Control (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), p.123.

48. ‘Personal Security Dominates Brazil Poll’, BBC News, 24 October 2005, see <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4371120.stm;> ‘Gun Control Loses Yet Again’, The Japan Times Online, 30 October 2005, see <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20051030a1.htm>.

49. Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2005, Box. 10.5, pp.282–283.

50. Biting the Bullet, International Action on Small Arms 2005: Examining Implementation of the UN Programme of Action by Biting the Bullet (2005), p.279 <http://www.saferworld.org.uk/>.

51. Jeremy Ginifer with Mike Bourne and Owen Greene, Considering Armed Violence in the Post-conflict Transition: DDR and Small Arms and Light Weapons Reduction Initiatives (CICS, Briefing Paper, September 2004), p.7, see <http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/cics/>.

52. Owen Greene, ‘SALW in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding’, Paper presented at the BISA Conference, University of St Andrews, 19–21 December 2005.

53. Richard Price, ‘Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines’, International Organization, Vol.52, No.3 (Summer 1998), pp.613–644.

54. Biting the Bullet, International Action on Small Arms 2005, p.40.

55. Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo (London: Pluto, 1999).

56. Neil Cooper, ‘Putting Disarmament Back in the Frame’, Review of International Studies, forthcoming.

57. Kirkham and Flew, Strengthening Embargoes and Enhancing Human Security.

58. FAFO and International Peace Academy (IPA), Business and International Crimes: Assessing the Liability of Business Entities for Grave Violations of International Law RAFO Report 467 (Oslo: FAFO, 2004), p.22.

59. Jim Lobe, ‘Attorney General Attacks Key law’, Inter Press Service, 15 May 2003, cited in Le Billon, Fuelling War, p.73.

60. FAFO and IPA, Business and International Crimes.

61. Dan Plesch, The Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace: Money, Power and Mayhem in the Twenty-First Century (London: Politico's, 2004).

62. ‘Microsoft Faces Fines of €2m a Day’, The Guardian, 22 December 2005.

63. ‘Cigarette Giant to Pay $1 bn to EU’, The Guardian, 6 April 2004.