What drives states to join universal WMD treaties

Our understanding of WMD treaties is largely based on what we know about the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In a new article, Jan Karlas studies state participation in all 10 universal treaties. He finds that states ratify those treaties for a variety of reasons.

Currently, there are 10 universal treaties that were adopted since the end of the Second World War and regulate weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These treaties limit the possession or testing of nuclear weapons (nuclear weapons treaties), prohibit chemical and biological weapons (CBW treaties), and ban the deployment of WMD in Antarctica and outer space, and on the seabed (zonal treaties). Almost all of them came into being during the second half of the 20th century as a result of the convergence in the interests of the two nuclear superpowers, represented by the USA and the USSR, and the majority of the other states.

To be effective and legitimate, WMD treaties need be truly universal and involve ideally all sovereign states. However, they only hardly manage to reach this goal. Typically, a certain number of countries ratify a WMD treaty relatively quickly, others wait to ratify for a longer time, and some even do not become parties to it. For the example, the Biological Weapons Convention joined together more than 75% states only 31 years after its adoption, and at this moment, only 41% of states ratified the Seabed Treaty.

It is important to understand when states enter WMD treaties, and when they do so only with a considerable delay, or even stay outside a treaty. The neorealist theory of international relations would, in this regard, differentiate states on the basis of their security situations and capabilities. Those that face security threats and have the necessary capabilities to develop WMD should be more likely to keep their autonomy and postpone the ratification of WMD treaties. Those that are not confronted with security threats, or do not have the necessary capabilities, are more likely to join these treaties quickly. Several scholars used these ideas to explain the ratification of the most prominent WMD treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In my paper, I go beyond the NPT, seeking to explain what drives ratification decisions generally, in relation to all the categories of WMD treaties. I reconsider the costs and benefits from participation in the different categories of treaties, and formulate a new explanation for this participation. A statistical analysis that maps the ratification behaviour of 204 states during the years 1960-2022 confirms this explanation.

The findings of the paper show that there are four specific factors that determine propensity of states to commit to WMD treaties. First, the possession/pursuit of WMD delays participation in treaties that completely ban these weapons, or they testing (CBW treaties and the majority of nuclear weapons treaties). This finding has two non-trivial implications. The first of them is that by far not all states that live in insecure environments necessarily postpone the ratification of WMD treaties. At the same time, the majority of states that possess or pursue WMD do not immediately destroy them, or stop the effort to acquire them, once there is a new treaty that calls for it. They sometimes join such a treaty, but after a relatively long time.

Second, the attitudes of countries to the US-led, liberal hegemonic order influences their decisions on participation in nuclear weapons treaties. My findings show that when countries are satisfied with this order, they generally join nuclear weapons treaties quickly. This can be explained by the fact that the nuclear order, which most of these treaties support, is closely linked to the liberal hegemonic order. The preliminary data also shows that the countries that have critical views of the US-built order have been entering the recently adopted Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which, unlike other nuclear weapons treaties, challenges the hegemonic nuclear order, considerably more quickly than the states that are content with this order.

Third, economically developed states commit more quickly than less developed states to CBW treaties and zonal treaties. These treaties stipulate that states take necessary domestic legal and policy measures to regulate the use of biological and chemical materials, or set-up the basic rules for economic, scientific, and other activities taking place in Antarctica and outer space. The large biotechnological and chemical industries, and the resources needed for the exploration and exploitation of remote international spaces, increase the stakes that developed states have in the CBW and zonal treaties.

Fourth, the probability that a state will ratify any of the three categories of WMD treaties raises when a certain number of its regional peers joined it. When observing the positive ratification decisions of their peers, state representatives become more convinced that a given treaty represents a useful policy tool to strengthen national and international security. And they also react to the ratification decisions of their peers to act in line with the dominant preferences within their regional political community.

All these findings also imply that WMD treaties do not perform particularly well at identifying the states that comply with their provisions, simply because many countries join them with delays, or stay out of them, unless they have some benefits from participation. Due to this, these treaties do not work as ideal screening devices that would provide accurate information about states complying with the international rules on WMD. The lack of universal membership also limits their authority to provide legitimization to these rules.

Scholars suggested several ways that can ensure the widespread participation of states in WMD treaties and regimes. They argue that the most powerful states must act as leaders and provide incentives to smaller states, or that strong verification mechanisms must support treaties so that the participating states have information about the (non-)compliant behaviour. My paper identifies two additional important aspects. First, WMD treaties have a greater chance to reach a widespread membership if their functions provide substantial benefits to the different groups of states. Second, the existence of certain minimal numbers of states that support a WMD treaty in the individual world regions is another crucial precondition for its widespread ratification.

Jan Karlas is the author of “Explaining state participation in ten universal WMD treaties: A survival analysis of ratification decisions”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

Disarmament and the production of less violent and more responsible nuclear states

Nuclear weapons states regularly underline their commitment to disarmament. Building on feminist scholarship, Carolina P. Panico argues in a recent article that this renders nuclear possession actually more acceptable.

On March 16, 2021, the UK announced changes to its nuclear weapons policy, significantly increasing its overall nuclear stockpile cap. While the previous self-imposed cap set a target of no more than 180 warheads in the stockpile by the mid-2020s, the new limit now sits at 260. The announcement comes with the reassurance that the UK remains committed to a world free of nuclear weapons and continues to support the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the rules that come with it. What is interesting, however, is that the UK invokes its commitment to disarmament at the very moment it seeks to expand and modernize its nuclear arsenal.

Although the NPT establishes that the five nuclear states must take steps to disarm in good faith, the disarmament discourse must not be taken for granted. One may think that the scenario outlined above is nothing but a reflection of the rules-based order in operation. After all, the NPT sets disarmament as an end goal. However, this position fails to appreciate how the system of thought revolving around disarmament can modify our perception of what is right and wrong in the context of nuclear politics. Article VI, the disarmament proposition of the NPT, is usually seen with great enthusiasm and described as a focal point for collective responsibility towards nuclear disarmament. In a recent article, I present a different story about Article VI. I argue that it makes possible the very thing it is supposed to prevent; it renders nuclear possession more acceptable.

The article advances three core points. First, I examine the ideas accompanying our understanding of disarmament, such as peace, non-violence, anti-war, and explain that these meanings change the way we see the act of possessing nuclear weapons. I compare the nuclear case to feminist critiques of ethics, arguing that invoking disarmament adds a layer of responsibility and peaceful purposes to the nuclear discourse, producing less violent and more responsible possessors.

Second, the disarmament principle allows the nuclear powers to justify possessing their weapons on the grounds of responsibility. To support this claim, I compare the disarmament principle to the norms around non-combatant immunity, which allow states to justify killing civilians in war based on the “good” intentions of “not targeting” or “not intending to harm them.” Under the laws of war, killing is acceptable so long as soldiers follow the prescriptions of the Geneva Conventions accordingly. In nuclear politics, the continued possession and rebuilding of nuclear arsenals is justified if one demonstrates a commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, which reiterates responsible behavior.

Third, I draw attention to how the persistence of nuclear weapons in global politics is associated with a process of repetition and reiteration of responsibility through the disarmament discourse. More importantly, I argue that so long as we have states performing in a way that replicates dominant understandings defining what passes as “normal” in nuclear politics, in which responsibility is key, nuclear possession will remain a more acceptable practice.

While I remain optimistic that it is possible to eliminate nuclear weapons, my work sheds light on some obstacles preventing us from moving forward with disarmament initiatives. It encourages thinking disarmament in a way that avoids recycling the tightly controlled requirements that constitute the current nuclear order. It is important to note that despite presenting a critique of the NPT and its normative apparatus, I am not advocating for abandoning the treaty. On the contrary, my article suggests that even though the treaty is at the heart of the nuclear problem, the reworking of power structures that arise from its normative framework will lead to transformation. With the TPNW now in force, the findings presented in the article can help develop implementation strategies while encouraging thinking the TPNW as a tool to shift dynamics rendering possession a more acceptable practice.

Uncovering stories that help us understand what makes nuclear weapons such a persistent feature of global politics is an integral part of the process of disarming. It is only through a deepened understanding of the origin and structure of nuclear order that one will be able to grasp and seize possibilities for change, therefore, reorganizing such knowledge as effective sites of resistance.

Carolina P. Panico is a Doctoral Candidate and Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Auckland, Department of Politics and International Relations. She is the author of “Making nuclear possession possible: The NPT disarmament principle and the production of less violent and more responsible nuclear states”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here. Her Twitter account is: @CarolPantoliano

Russian great power identity in the debate on “killer robots”

Russia prominently opposes new regulations for autonomous weapons systems (AWS), or so-called “killer robots” which can select and attack a target without human intervention. In a new article, Anna Nadibaidze explores the deeply rooted identity-related factors underpinning the Russian position in the global debate on AWS held at the United Nations.

Reports about the use of weapons systems with autonomous features, specifically the Russian-produced KUB loitering munition, in the war in Ukraine have strengthened the already existing concerns about the role of military autonomy and artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare. Only a few days before these reports came in, the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on lethal autonomous weapons systems was meeting in Geneva to discuss potential ways forward on the regulation of AWS. The Russian delegation has blocked any kind of substantive progress by constantly claiming to have been “discriminated” against by the measures taken by the EU following Moscow’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Throughout the years of the GGE sessions, which have been taking place within the framework of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) since 2016, Russia has been vocal about its belief that technological developments in the areas of AI and robotics do not make it necessary to adopt any kind of new regulation on AWS because the latter are sufficiently regulated by current international law.

Given that the CCW operates by consensus principles, de facto giving a veto power to all states, Russia’s agreement to develop a potential new instrument is needed to move forward in the debate, which has had only a discussion mandate so far. Approximately 30-40 states parties, along with several civil society organizations, are arguing for the necessity of a new legally binding regulation on AWS. Can Russia’s position be reconciled with theirs?

Great power identity in Russia’s position on AWS

In order to understand whether Russia could potentially agree to developing a new legally binding instrument, it is vital to examine its position in depth and from different perspectives.

Russia is one of the key developers of weapons systems with autonomous features and has shown strong interest in integrating higher levels of autonomy and AI as part of the modernization of its armed forces. From the rationalist perspective, the Russian position in the GGE debate is associated with strategic interests and quest to gain strategic advantage without any international restrictions.

While I do not dismiss these arguments, I argue for a more thorough investigation of Russia’s position and exploring deeply rooted factors, namely the Russian leadership’s self-perception as a historical great power, which has been a prominent feature of Russian foreign policy, especially since Vladimir Putin came to power.

My analysis of statements that the Russian Federation delivered to the CCW from 2014 to 2022 demonstrates that two integral principles of Russian great power identity have been guiding its position in the global debate on AWS. First, Russia promotes a multipolar world order based on many centers of power. Second, it seeks to ensure recognition of its perceived parity with other great powers and its equal participation in global affairs. These principles feature not only in the literature about Russian foreign policy, but also in its language used in statements on AWS at the CCW meetings.

Russian discourse on the global governance of AWS displays worries about the “politicization” of the debate and fears that the discussion would be monopolized by some states without taking into account others’ (Russian) interests and opinions. Russian statements display worries about the adoption of a polarized definition of AWS, for instance, when stating, “it is unacceptable to artificially divide weapons into ‘bad’ and ‘good’ ones based on the political preferences of certain States”.

The Russian conception of human control, a key element in the AWS discussion, is based on sovereignty. Russia believes that every state should decide on its definition of human involvement in the use of force and weapons systems. While it “does not doubt the necessity of maintaining human control over the machine”, it finds it unacceptable to be imposed with universal definitions and argues for “specific forms and methods of such control” to “be left to the discretion of States”.

Moreover, the Russian position presents technology in a positive light, not agreeing with what it perceives as “alarmist assessments” about fully autonomous weapons inevitably emerging. Russian delegations have constantly pointed out the benefits of military autonomy and warned against making hasty decisions which could “undermine the ongoing research in the field of peaceful robotics and AI”.

What does this mean for the future of the GGE debate?

As I show in my article, Russia’s position on AWS is deeply rooted and is not only guided by strategic costs/benefits analyses. It is facilitated by the Russian leadership’s strong belief about Russia being a great power in the post-Cold War multipolar world, on par with other great powers and deserving recognition, especially in topics touching upon international security.

With current ongoing tensions, the Russian leadership increasingly perceives any action from states it classifies as “unfriendly nations” as attempts to isolate Russia from global governance, or so-called “Russophobic” actions.

These identity-related factors make the Russian position on AWS more intractable and harder to resolve, especially for campaigners using humanitarian-based arguments to raise concerns about the development of “killer robots”, for instance their threat to human rights and human dignity. With its self-perception of a great power and guarantor of global security, Russia is likely to be more open to security-based arguments such as those pointing out the risks of AWS to strategic stability.

In Russia’s view, the CCW represents the perfect balance between humanitarian concerns and national security interests, while the consensus voting rule fits with its broader concerns with being able to have its say. It is therefore unlikely to accept an independent process outside of the CCW, as suggested by several civil society organizations in light of the stalled process at the GGE, or any process which would strip it of its veto power. If an independent discussion were to take place, Russia’s self-perception as a great power and the importance that it attributes to being seen as indispensable in multilateral negotiations is likely to lead it to criticize the process and accuse its organizers of disrupting global security.

Anna Nadibaidze is a Ph.D. Research Fellow at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark and researcher for the European Research Council funded AutoNorms project. She is the author of “Great power identity in Russia’s position on autonomous weapons systems”, Contemporary Security Policy, and the report “Russian perceptions of military AI, automation, and autonomy”, published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

The Erosion of the Global Nuclear Order

Starting early in the atomic age, states developed international arrangements intended to reduce the danger of nuclear war. In a recent article, Jeffrey W. Knopf describes the international nuclear order, identifies signs of erosion in that order, and proposes some short-term measures to help arrest these adverse trends.

The global nuclear order developed organically. It was not planned. And with some exceptions, most notably the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), major aspects of the nuclear order were not formally negotiated. Instead, they involve tacit understandings that are shared, to varying degrees, by elites in key countries.

The nuclear order rests upon three major strands: strategic stability, the nuclear taboo, and nonproliferation. The current order does not give similar priority to nuclear disarmament. Although nuclear abolition receives occasional rhetorical support and is listed as a goal in Article VI of the NPT, the governments of nuclear-armed states and their allies do not support pursuing global zero as a near-term objective. This is because these states still see value in the continued possession of nuclear arsenals. Hence, the purpose of the global nuclear order is to minimize the chances, while nuclear arms continue to exist, that they are ever used in ways that would kill people — and specially to ensure there is never a large-scale nuclear war.

Strategic stability, the nuclear taboo and nonproliferation

All three strands contribute to this goal. Strategic stability refers to efforts to minimize incentives for any state to feel pressure to be the first to launch a nuclear attack. Strategic stability can be enhanced by arms control, confidence-building measures, strategic dialogues, and anything else that contributes to restraint in policies and actions related to nuclear weapons. The nuclear taboo involves normative inhibitions against threatening or using nuclear weapons.

There is reason to question whether a genuine taboo exists or the current situation is better described as a tradition of non-use. Either way, however, there is a sense that any state that uses nuclear weapons would be crossing a major threshold. Finally, nonproliferation comprises a variety of measures intended to prevent the spread of nuclear arms to additional states. In the last two decades, nonproliferation has been supplemented by the goal of nuclear security, which aims to ensure that bomb-making materials do not fall into the hands of a non-state, terrorist actor.

The strategic stability and taboo strands of the nuclear order peaked in the early 1990s and have eroded since then. In contrast, the nonproliferation strand continued to get stronger into the early 2010s, but in the last decade positive trends in the nonproliferation regime have also started to unravel.

Erosion and unraveling

Strategic stability has suffered notable erosion. The end of the Cold War enabled remarkable progress in nuclear arms reductions by the United States and Russia. Now, only one nuclear arms control agreement, the New START treaty, remains in effect. And the prospects for a follow-on agreement appear daunting. Traditional approaches to stability also took a blow when the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. All of the nuclear-armed powers are now engaged in nuclear modernization efforts involving new weapon systems that could further undermine stability. More broadly, U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations have both deteriorated, adding to the chances of inadvertent escalation. In addition, India and Pakistan openly joined the nuclear club following nuclear tests in 1998. The two countries have since experienced multiple crises, adding a new source of instability to the global nuclear order.

Both the rhetoric and nuclear postures of nuclear-armed states suggest declining respect for the taboo as well. The United States has never been willing to embrace a no-first-use posture, and in 1993 Russia abandoned a no-first-use posture that had been adopted earlier by the Soviet Union. Successive U.S. Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPRs) have envisioned roles and missions for U.S. nuclear weapons that extend beyond deterring nuclear attacks. These include, in the Trump NPR, hints that the United States would consider nuclear retaliation to deter a large-scale cyber-attack. In 2017, an escalating war of words – and tweets – between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un suggested neither felt any normative inhibition against nuclear saber-rattling. And, in 2018, Russia’s President Putin gave a national address in which he unveiled several proposed new nuclear weapon systems. The speech was accompanied by a video simulation that showed a Russian nuclear warhead on a course to strike what appeared to be President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Until recently, despite occasional setbacks, nonproliferation could be seen as an area of dynamism and innovation. In the 1980s and 1990s, several key countries joined the NPT and renounced nuclear weapons. In 1995, a review conference made the treaty permanent. Just as important, the NPT is now part of a multifaceted nonproliferation regime. Other elements of the regime include several regional nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs), multilateral export control regimes, cooperative threat reduction (CTR) programs developed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a variety of measures meant to strengthen nuclear security.

In the past several years, however, forward momentum has halted. The 2015 NPT Review Conference collapsed amid unprecedented acrimony among states parties. The 2020 conference was postponed until 2022 due to Covid, but none of the frictions that doomed the 2015 conference have been resolved. In addition, the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, and despite the desire of the Biden administration to restore the deal, prospects for rescuing it do not appear good. Hopes for adding new NWFZs are even less promising, as a long-sought zone in the Middle East appears dead in the water.

Some ideas to halt erosion

What can be done? Getting the nuclear weapon states to recommit to the goal of nuclear disarmament would help. As a reflection of frustration over the slow progress on this goal, in 2017 the UN General Assembly adopted a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This “ban treaty” has been opposed by all of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, so it appears unlikely to provide a vehicle that in the short term could generate new progress toward nuclear abolition. Efforts outside of (or perhaps alongside of) the ban treaty to persuade the nuclear weapon states of the importance of reinvigorating movement toward nuclear disarmament would be helpful.

Given that nuclear disarmament remains a long-term endeavor at best, however, we also need short-term steps to shore up the existing nuclear order. One approach would be to focus on the cognitive foundations of nuclear peace. It is important for national leaders and their advisors to have a deep understanding of the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and a belief that nuclear dangers require states to act with caution. Several steps could help reinvigorate an appreciation of nuclear dangers.

First, new works of popular culture could draw attention to ongoing risks. In the Cold War, books and movies like “On the Beach” and “Dr. Strangelove” helped educate the public. Today, there are interesting efforts to utilize social media to alert people to nuclear dangers. So far, however, none have achieved extensive reach. Public awareness could be raised further if there was a breakthrough novel, movie, or TV show like the 1983 TV movie “The Day After.”

Second, it would help to have a policy proposal around which to mobilize people. An effort is already underway to multilateralize the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Russia and the United States recently reaffirmed this statement, and there have been multiple calls for the other nuclear-armed countries to endorse it. A broad campaign to support this goal could provide a vehicle for reminding the world about how catastrophic a nuclear exchange could be.

Third, it is time to reboot the Humanitarian Initiative. This effort, launched at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, sought to educate diplomats about the consequences of nuclear weapons use. The initiative was primarily used to build support for negotiating the ban treaty. Now that the TPNW is in place, a Humanitarian Initiative 2.0 could be used to educate a broader audience of political and military leaders and the world public.

At a time when all the strands of the global nuclear order are getting weaker and the prospects for new treaties or major initiatives are not good, it is vital to halt further erosion of the existing order. Efforts to remind the world of the danger of nuclear war and encourage cautious behavior by states would be one place to start.

Jeffrey W. Knopf is a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). He is the author of “Not by NPT alone: The future of the global nuclear order”, Contemporary Security Policy, forthcoming, which can be accessed here. This post first appeared on the Global Governance forum.

Strategic cooptation and India as nuclear power

Patrick Frankenbach, Andreas Kruck, and Bernhard Zangl show how India was strategically coopted into the existing non-proliferation regime. Their recent article in CSP holds lessons for all international institutions that need to adjust to changes in the global order.

Shifts in the global distribution of power put the international order and its underpinning institutions under stress. As powers such as China and India rise and powers such as the US or the UK decline, international institutions such as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) or the World Trade Organization (WTO) come under pressure to adapt to new power realities.

The prevailing view is that the adjustment of international institutions to a changing distribution of power is a highly conflictual process of power bargaining. (So far) dominant preservers of the status quo wrestle with rising revisionists, exchanging threats and trying to force the other side to give in. If anything, this power game is assumed to be particularly conflictual in security (institutions).

Our recent article on India’s inclusion into the nuclear non-proliferation regime belies this conventional narrative. Instead, it underlines the relevance of a different mode of institutional adaptation, namely strategic cooptation. In 2008, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a major component of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, terminated the three-decades-long embargo on nuclear trade, which it had imposed after India’s nuclear tests in 1974. India turned from a nuclear pariah of the international community into a de facto recognized nuclear power.

The NSG waiver constitutes a cooptation deal in which NSG member states – led by the US, but supported by other nuclear powers – traded institutional privileges in return for India’s increased institutional support of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The US and the other nuclear powers offered India the privilege of being recognized as nuclear power and taking part in international nuclear trade. In return, India promised to support the nuclear non-proliferation regime by shoring up its nuclear export controls and making the majority of its nuclear sites subject to IAEA safeguards.

India’s cooptation into the nuclear non-proliferation regime reflects a mode of institutional adaptation that is more cooperative than the prevailing narrative of the highly conflictive power-bargaining between rising revisionists and declining preservationists would have it. Cooptors actively pursue limited institutional adaptation desired by cooptees to keep the institutional core intact.

Strategic cooptation is a mutually beneficial mode of cooperation among unequal actors that exchange institutional privileges for institutional support. Cooptation is common and widely studied in domestic political settings, but it is also relevant for institutional adaptation to global power shifts, even in the realm of security. It is particularly relevant for international (security) institutions which provide institutional privileges to some states, while denying them to others.

The general focus in academia and among many policy-makers on conflictive great-power bargaining obscures the importance of strategic cooptation. This is problematic because it comes with the neglect of three important features of institutional adjustments to global power shifts:

First, for some challengers of the institutional status quo, who are willing and able to provide needed institutional support, relying on strategic cooptation (making promises) may be a superior strategy compared to power bargaining (issuing threats). Sometimes strategic cooptation is not only better suited to attain institutional adjustment; it is also less conflictive and allows to nurture cooperative relationships. On the other hand, defenders of the institutional status quo should not simply assume that challengers will engage in power bargaining. After all, policy responses that are adequate for addressing power bargaining are often counterproductive in dealing with strategic cooptation. Starting negotiations with promises rather than threats often leads to better outcomes. The negotiations between the US and India about the latter’s integration into the nuclear non-proliferation regime are a case in point.

Second, a strategic cooptation approach sensitizes observers and policy-makers to important conditions for achieving institutional change that are overlooked in the power bargaining account, namely third-party resistance to power-sharing deals between emerging and established powers as well as institutional opportunities for overcoming it. The nonproliferation regime–India case underlines that it is often third parties that put up strong resistance against cooptation agreements. When the US announced in 2005 its intention to lift the embargo on trade with nuclear material, resistance from non-nuclear “middle powers” was massive: A group of “like-minded states” comprising Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and New Zealand formed to stop India’s recognition as nuclear power, with New Zealand taking the lead. This group – rather than the nuclear great powers – rejected India’s recognition as nuclear power. For the deal to materialize, it was crucial that proponents could strike the deal within the more exclusive NSG rather than the more encompassing NPT context, thus managing to circumvent the third-party resistance typical of any cooptation deal. More generally, policy-makers should take into consideration the potentially fierce resistance (middle or even minor) third parties might put up against any great power bargain and they should weigh the institutional opportunities for overcoming this resistance.

Third, even then cooptation is not a panacea for stabilizing troubled institutions. The story of India’s cooptation suggests we should not take for granted the medium- and longer-turn effectiveness of cooptation as a means of stabilizing international institutions. The cooptation of India did not silence other critics of the NPT among the “nuclear have-nots” nor did it stabilize the status quo of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Quite the opposite: India’s cooptation further alienated dissatisfied non-nuclear weapons states under the NPT, thus widening the gap between nuclear powers and non-nuclear weapon states. Criticizing the nuclear deal with India at NPT Review Conferences, several non-nuclear weapon states party to the NPT (but not the NSG) took offense with the privileges granted to India. If anything, India’s cooptation created growing resentment and increased criticism of the regime centered around the NPT, which ultimately contributed to the quest for the new Nuclear Ban Treaty.

Thus, academics and policy-makers alike should more seriously consider the option of cooptation as a mode of institutional adaptation. However, they should not simply equate agreement on a cooptation deal with longer-term stability for the institution in question. Expected contributions to institutional stability may not fully materialize or they may provoke unintended consequences – often precisely due to lasting third-party resistance.

Patrick Frankenbach, Andreas Kruck, and Bernhard Zangl are researchers at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany. They are the authors of “India’s recognition as a nuclear power: A case of strategic cooptation”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

Who wants to ban killer robots?

Despite much talk about a killer robots, few states support a ban. In a new article, Ondřej Rosendorf shows that states lacking capacities to pursue killer robots are most in favour of a ban in addition to states with a strong humanitarian orientation.

The advent of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), also known as “killer robots,” presents one of the most significant developments in current military affairs. The possibility of delegating decisions to use force to machines promises to revolutionize warfare, yet, it also raises serious ethical, legal, and security challenges.

Since 2012, a group of NGOs organized under the umbrella of “Campaign to Stop Killer Robots” (CSKR) has been advocating for a preventive prohibition of these systems. Much like previous humanitarian disarmament campaigns against anti-personnel landmines, cluster munitions, and blinding lasers, the principal justification for the ban on LAWS lies in the potentially adverse impact of their use for the protection of civilians during times of war.

National delegations are currently discussing LAWS in the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) within the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which allows imposing prohibitions or restrictions on weapons deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects.

While the initial focus of the GGE was open-ended, discussions quickly gravitated to possible regulatory options, including moratoria, codes of conduct, or a positive obligation to maintain “meaningful human control” over weapon systems. Partly due to active advocacy efforts of the CSKR, the call for a preventive prohibition received the most attention, even though the full potential of the technology is unknown, and there is no universally accepted definition of LAWS.

To date, some thirty countries, including Austria and members of the Global South, have aligned themselves with the view of the CSKR, demanding a ban to address the potentially adverse humanitarian implications of weapon autonomy. The composition of this group is peculiar at first glance since – except for Austria – it does not include any Wester-liberal democracies, traditionally associated with the advocacy of humanitarian norms.

Why have the former leaders of campaigns against anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions, such as Canada and Norway, not (yet) expressed their support for the call to prohibit LAWS when their potential use threatens to violate fundamental humanitarian norms? Which countries, if not Western-liberal democracies, are likely to join the group of ban supporters?

The main problem with enlisting additional supporters for CSKR’s cause relates to states’ perceptions of the costs and benefits from agreeing to the prospective prohibition and, effectively, foregoing military innovation in LAWS.

For laggards in technological research and development, a total ban presents an intuitively attractive option because it would preclude the widening of the gap in capabilities vis-à-vis those at the frontier of military innovation. They would benefit from prohibition while giving up little to nothing in return (at least in the short term). Conversely, those capable and interested in exploring military applications of autonomy would pay a disproportionately higher price from foregoing the innovation relative to laggards.

To identify the likely and unlikely supporters of the ban, it is therefore imperative to understand the factors that might motivate states to develop or acquire LAWS in the first place.

  • First and foremost, financial and technological capacities constrain states’ innovative potential. In the immediate future, only the most technologically advanced countries would be able to leverage the potential of weapon autonomy effectively.
  • Second, security threats might motivate states to pursue LAWS to gain an advantage over adversaries. Trends in the use of weapon autonomy indicate that these systems could be especially useful for border protection purposes or counterterrorism operations.
  • Third, the nature of domestic-political structures might generate interest in LAWS. Casualty-averse democracies, and control-seeking autocracies, in particular, could derive specific benefits from weapon autonomy. Yet, certain normative beliefs might also dissuade countries from exploring these benefits.

Accordingly, when we look at the group of ban supporters, what characterizes these states is an interplay of lacking capacities and incentives to pursue innovation in LAWS, on the one hand, combined with stronger humanitarian orientation, on the other hand. An exemplary ban supporter is a country with limited financial and technological capacity, neither established democracy nor autocracy, which actively advocates for the protection of civilians in armed conflicts, with deep socialization within the existing arms control and disarmament regimes.

The reluctance of Western-liberal democracies and many other states to endorse the ban partly lies in the potential for leveraging the benefits of LAWS. This does not necessarily mean they are currently developing these systems. However, the increased receptiveness towards such benefits dissuades countries from committing to a preventive prohibition.

The GGE process will continue until the next Review Conference of the CCW in December 2021, but its outcome remains uncertain at this point. To increase their chances for success, campaigners must expand their supporter base exponentially. The easiest way forward would be to focus on countries from the Global South, rather than attempting to enlist the one “champion state” from among Western-liberal democracies.

Although the unregulated development and use of LAWS are not inevitable, the feasibility of preventive prohibition seems dubious if the CSKR expects militarily significant states to accede. If a regulatory framework is to be effective, it must be perceived as fair by all parties. Reaching agreement on the lowest common denominator – potentially a political declaration – constitutes a more realistic (and much needed) outcome in the immediate future.

Ondřej Rosendorf works at the Institue of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Czechia. He is the author of “Predictors of support for a ban on killer robots: Preventive arms control as an anticipatory response to military innovation”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

To ban killer robots, codify human control

The fourth industrial revolution – with automation as its key feature – is in full swing. Militaries around the globe intend to benefit from this development, and so called “autonomy” in weapons systems is on the rise. In a new article, Elvira Rosert and Frank Sauer compare the international humanitarian disarmament processes on blinding laser weapons, anti-personnel landmines and lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) aka “killer robots.” Emphasizing that weapon autonomy differs substantially from past issues, the authors argue that the international campaign against LAWS cannot rely on simply modeling their effort after past successes. Instead of aiming to define and ban LAWS as a category of weapons, the use of autonomy in weapons should be regulated through codifying a positive obligation to retain human control.

Since 2013, the international community has been discussing LAWS at the United Nations in Geneva. The main venue of this debate is the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), a framework convention tasked with restricting or prohibiting weapons deemed to have indiscriminate effects or to be excessively injurious. This diplomatic process is owed in large part to a global coalition of 160 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 66 countries, coordinated in the joint “Campaign to Stop Killer Robots” (KRC), tirelessly raising awareness of the legal, ethical, and security concerns accompanying weapon autonomy.

In its effort, the campaign is employing tried-and-tested strategy elements successfully applied in previous humanitarian disarmament processes that resulted in the bans on blinding laser weapons, anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions. This includes public awareness-raising, the dissemination of expertise to the general public as well as to the diplomats working on the issue, and building coalitions with powerful voices in the CCW such as, for instance, the International Committee of the Red Cross. However, while these strategy elements are indeed conducive to the campaign’s goal of creating new, binding international law on weapon autonomy, others are not. 

A key problem is the campaign’s framing of the issue as one of “killer robots”. For every successful humanitarian disarmament campaign, a simple, powerful and dramatic message (like “blinding is cruel” or “landmines maim civilians”) is indispensable. By invoking pictures of the Terminator, the “killer robots” label resonates well with the public and conveys an existential threat – however, it also inevitably renders the issue futuristic and thus much less urgent. This “sci-fi-feel” stifles progress in the CCW, where ban opponents use it to declare the negotiations a premature, speculative discussion about future military technologies.

More importantly, the “killer robots” frame obscures the complex and polymorphous nature of weapon autonomy that sets the issue apart from both blinding lasers and landmines, creating several challenges. First, the variations of what “killer robots” might look like are endless. Every conceivable future tank, plane, boat, submarine, or swarm of such systems could potentially be deemed a lethal autonomous weapons system. Second, no system would even be discernible as autonomous by looking at it – in fact, whether a weapons system is remotely piloted, and thus under human control while in operation, or whether it is autonomous, that is, finding, fixing, tracking, selecting, and engaging targets without human intervention, is impossible to know from the outside. The difference will eventually be nothing but a checkbox in its software’s user interface. Third, future weapons systems will increasingly be spatially distributed, raising the tricky question, “where and when [a LAWS] begins and ends”, as Maya Brehm puts it.

Consequently, LAWS, in contrast to other weapons like blinding lasers or landmines, do not constitute a clearly definable category, or at least not one that is inclusive and exclusive. Stigmatizing LAWS is thus much harder and, in addition, complicated by the fact that some applications of weapon autonomy, for instance in terminal defense systems against incoming munitions, are protecting human life and barely raising any humanitarian concerns.

Nevertheless, the legal, ethical, and security concerns raised by campaigners are valid – but finding some common “definition of LAWS” that aims at categorically separating them from “non-LAWS” is not the way to go. Instead, to get a regulatory grasp on weapon autonomy, campaigners and the international community are challenged to collectively stipulate how future targeting processes should be designed so that the use of military force remains under human control that is meaningful, as in, not just a mindless pushing of buttons. 

It is therefore encouraging that the CCW deliberations have begun shifting from the futile search for a categorical definition of LAWS toward gauging the role of the “human element,” that is, the creation of conditions to retain meaningful human control over weapons systems. One of our suggestions to the campaign is to explicitly acknowledge this shift and adjust its messaging accordingly, away from “banning killer robots” and towards “codifying meaningful human control” as a principle requirement in international humanitarian law. The goal is to regulate when a machine and when a human is deciding what, that is, performing which function in the decision-making cycle of finding, fixing, tracking, selecting, and engaging a target. The answers undoubtedly will differ – depending on the operational context and the target (that for instance, might be an incoming missile or a human being). But while banning killer robots this way is tricky, it at least is feasible.

Elvira Rosert is a Junior Professor for International Relations at Universität Hamburg and the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy in Hamburg. Frank Sauer is a Senior Researcher at Bundeswehr University Munich. They are the authors of “How (not) to stop the killer robots: A comparative analysis of humanitarian disarmament campaign strategies”, Contemporary Security Policy, and of “Prohibiting Autonomous Weapons: Put Human Dignity First”, Global Policy 10: 3, 370-375.

THAAD and South Korea’s alliance dilemma

The July 2016 decision of South Korea to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) triggered unprecedented retaliation from China even though Seoul and Washington conceded that THAAD could not protect the capital region of Republic of Korea (ROK). In a recent article, Yong Sub Choi analyses why the South Korean government decided to deploy THAAD anyway. 

To answer this puzzle, it is necessary to connect the THAAD deployment in South Korea with the U.S. conception of a strategic rebalancing to Asia. Seoul’s THAAD decision was primarily intended to sustain and strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance amid escalating nuclear threats by North Korea and deepening Sino-American rivalry. Placing the current state of the alliance at the center of its investigation into this controversial issue, the article pays particular heed to the ongoing adjustments being made between the two powers to better cope with the rise of China. Thus, by examining the underlying causes of the THAAD decision, it can also contribute to an understanding of the reconfiguration of the alliance amid the growing rivalry between the United States and China.

Conceptually, this article links South Korea’s decision to deploy THAAD with contemporary alliance politics in relation to extended deterrence and abandonment and entrapment risks. First, the deployment of THAAD on the peninsula itself may improve the security of South Korea by enhancing the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence through its contribution to the defense of U.S. territories and U.S. forces in East Asia and the western Pacific.

Second, the United States, following its rebalancing strategy, applied increasing pressure on South Korea to install THAAD on its soil, which decided to comply owing to much higher costs of abandonment of the alliance in the face of, most of all, possible nuclear attacks by North Korea. Technically, unlike what the South Korean government has publicly claimed, THAAD has only limited direct utility for the protection of South Koreans from North Korean missile. However, the THAAD deployment can contribute to its national security in a strategic way by reinforcing the U.S.-ROK alliance.  

Once deployed on the Korean peninsula, THAAD can substantially enhance the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence by providing an additional layer of defense for U.S. territories and U.S. forces in East Asia and the western Pacific. The credibility of extended deterrence is determined by a complex mix of factors, where what counts is the degree of contribution by the client state to the national interest of the patron state. The deployment of THAAD in South Korea provides significant benefits for the United States, such that the former offers strategically important advantages to the latter, including enhanced protection of U.S. territories from North Korean and Chinese ICBMs and containing China’s military expansion in the South and East China Seas amid growing tensions between the two superpowers. 

The wide gap in military capability between the United States and South Korea and the existence of North Korea have put the relationship between the two democracies on an asymmetrical footing, which required South Korea to adopt behaviors that were consistent with the former’s strategic interest, to a greater or lesser degree. The United States, following its rebalancing strategy, asked South Korea to side with it as it contained China’s military expansion with THAAD deployment as arguably the most important task for that ally at that moment. In the presence of escalating nuclear threats by North Korea, which heightened the costs of abandonment even further, South Korea decided to deploy THAAD, although it acknowledged that China would likely retaliate against South Korea for the decision. Seoul, showing a nuanced understanding of the alliance security dilemma, made this strategic choice because it believed that the costs of being abandoned by Washington surpassed those of being entrapped in conflicts with Beijing. 

The most important strategic considerations for the United States at the global level involve dealing with or balancing China. By strengthening the U.S.-ROK alliance and providing its assistance to the United States to contain China’s military expansion, South Korea can bolster its status as a reliable ally, which is vital for taking the initiative in settling North Korean nuclear issue peacefully.

The growing tensions between the United States and China can bring harm to many countries’ national interests across the world. Nevertheless, it is rare to find countries, such as South Korea, which would so severely suffer both militarily and economically in the event of discord or conflict between the two superpowers. South Korea can contribute to improving strained relations between them only to a limited extent, but it can still minimize them, at least as regards North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles, by pursuing peace on the Korean peninsula in a manner that both sides can agree with. 

If ongoing international efforts to put an end to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs go awry, the tensions between the United States and China could be exacerbated even further. In that case, in response to U.S. demands, South Korea would not be able to avoid risking entrapment again in strife with China because of the nuclear threat that North Korea poses. Then, the degree of retaliation from China would be more severe than the one it imposed in the wake of South Korea’s decision to deploy THAAD in 2016.

Yong Sub Choi teaches at Seoul National University. He is the author of “Keeping the Americans in: The THAAD deployment on the Korean peninsula in the context of Sino-American rivalry”, Contemporary Security Policy, which is available here.

The Ban Treaty and the Politics of Power

In a new article, Nick Ritchie analyses the power politics behind the recent Ban Treaty. He argues that the Ban Treaty challenges the set of core international social institutions of nuclear order. Whether this challenge is sustained remains to be seen.

We live in interesting times for the global politics of nuclear weapons. The resurgence of deep animosity between the United States, NATO and Russia, concerns about the ability of President Donald Trump to authorize the use of nuclear weapons, and the nuclear threats and insults between the US and North Korea in 2017 all revitalized public fears about nuclear war to an extent not felt since the 1980s. 

Global_Parliamentary_Appeal_for_a_Nuclear_Weapons_BanLess well known is a movement of governments, NGOs and international institutions over the past eight years to galvanize progress towards nuclear disarmament as the only long-term solution to the threat of nuclear violence. This resulted in a new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons negotiated at the UN in 2017 to ban nuclear weapons. It was supported by 122 states across the global South but rejected by the nuclear-armed states and their allies. This polarization is symptomatic of the fractious state of nuclear politics.

Given these significant developments, how can or should we understand the messy politics of nuclear weapons in today’s world? In my new article, I argue that the starting point has to be power. This might seem obvious, but it is often missing from serious analysis of nuclear politics and the idea of a ‘global nuclear order’. By taking power seriously we can get a much better understanding of the global politics of nuclear weapons as a ‘global nuclear control order’, one in which the power of the United States is central but not reducible to it. 

I define this as a well-established set of practices (material, institutional and discursive) that legitimizes, regulates, and disciplines the development and use of nuclear technology and knowledge. But it does so selectively and in ways that reproduce a global nuclear hierarchy in general and U.S. power and preferences in particular. This includes the selective regulation and disciplining of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy programmes and the selective legitimation of the possession of nuclear weapons and even nuclear attacks.

The United States has played the central ordering role in global nuclear politics as the world’s most powerful state. But my argument that the global nuclear control order is rooted in but not reducible to U.S. power is important because it demonstrates the ways in which the global politics of nuclear weapons is shaped by structures of power that have developed and endured over seven decades.

Three further points are relevant here: first, these power structures are hierarchical and they have enjoyed the widespread support of most of the world’s major powers with the exceptions of Germany and Japan in the 1960s, China until the 1990s, and India on a limited but continuing basis. Second, the United States might be the most powerful state in global nuclear politics, but only within a wider nuclear oligarchy of other nuclear-armed states and nuclear beneficiaries; and third, the nuclear control order is embedded in a broader set of power structures that characterize the post-1945 capitalist ‘international liberal order’.

Screenshot 2019-02-03 at 20.13.06For these reasons, the global nuclear control order should be understood as a hegemonic order. Hegemony, in this sense, refers to a structure of power that is sustained through a combination of coercion and consent between the dominant and dominated. Political scientist Robert Cox argued that coercion and consent are practiced through material power, institutions, and ideas about how political life should be organized. A hegemonic structure describes “a particular combination of thought patterns, material conditions, and human institutions which has a certain coherence among its elements” as Cox put it (p. 135).

Thinking about global nuclear politics in this way means thinking about power beyond traditional notions based on material military and economic power. Instead, we need to think about material power, institutional power, the discursive power of ideas, and structural power. It is the way in which these forms of power are exercised and experienced in global nuclear politics to selectively empower and legitimize that is captured by Cox’s framework. Through this lens, global nuclear politics constitutes a hegemonic structure of control.

Screenshot 2019-02-03 at 20.14.01

This unequal and hierarchical nuclear control order is often framed as universal, normal, and legitimate in ways that conceal its underlying power relations. But the ways in which the ‘ban treaty’ process has actively challenged these power structures has made them more explicit. By taking power seriously and by using Cox’s understanding of hegemony and a more nuanced appreciation of power, a set of core international social institutions, or ‘structural pillars’, of nuclear order can be distilled. These include:

  1. A nuclear weapons and nuclear trade oligarchy centered on the five nuclear weapon states recognised in the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and their positions as permanent members of the UN Security Council;
  2. An understanding of security that requires a permanent operational capacity for strategic nuclear violence for an exclusive ‘club’ justified by an ideology of ‘nuclearism’; 
  3. A bilateral US-Russia institution of competitive, limited, negotiated and verified constraints on their strategic nuclear delivery systems alongside competitive development of advanced strategic weapons and recapitalization of Cold War nuclear weapon systems; 
  4. A Western nuclear security community of alliances that maps on to global wealth and power in the capitalist economic system with the U.S. as nuclear patron at the core;
  5. A system of intrusive and institutionalized nuclear policing led primarily by the U.S. and centered on state and non-state actors and networks, often in the global South, such that it is inadvisable to confront or militarily resist the U.S. and wider West without nuclear weapons; and
  6. A set of formal international institutions that regulate civilian nuclear technologies, knowledge and practices, notably through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The ban treaty has challenged the legitimacy of some (though not all) of these social institutions because of the growing permanence of nuclear inequalities and injustices. It is an expression of collective resistance to those aspects of nuclear hegemony, nuclear hierarchy, and practices of nuclear control that legitimize and perpetuate the existence of nuclear weapons, the practice of nuclear deterrence, and the continuing risk of catastrophic nuclear violence.

What is clear from this analysis is that changing the global politics of nuclear weapons through initiatives like the ban treaty entails confrontation with an embedded historical structure of power and hierarchy. A sustained challenge has the potential to change things at a time when wider power structures and hierarchies in global politics are in a period of flux, but it will need to be sustained. 

Nick Ritchie is a senior lecturer at the University of York, UK. He recently published “A hegemonic nuclear order: Understanding the Ban Treaty and the power politics of nuclear weapons”, Contemporary Security Policy, Advance online publication, available here

The place of weapons in intrastate peace processes

Confiscated weaponsDemobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) programs play a central role in intrastate peace agreements. Yet DDR is often asymmetrical. Non-state actors are required to give up their weapons. The weapons of state parties, in turn, are mostly left out of these peace negotiations. Monica Herz and Victória Santos analyze in a recent article how we can understand the emergence of this situation, and what is missed by this silence regarding state weapons in peace processes?

We argue that a crucial part of this trend is connected to the separation between two “associations of experts” that are devoted to different dimensions of the place of weapons in the production of insecurity.

On one side, there has been a historical emergence of a transnational association of actors who are dedicated to Arms Control and Disarmament (ACD) practices, including a number of intergovernmental agencies, government officials, researchers and, increasingly, humanitarian workers. These actors have sought to generate a series of limitations regarding the production, use and trade of a variety of weapons–limitations which have often been translated as obligations for states, as seen in transparency mechanisms.

On the other hand, in the context of peacebuilding and intrastate peace processes, a separate association of experts, who have focused on how the weapons of non-state armed actors are to be handled–that is, through DDR programs and, at times, through demining activities–has been formed. The production of international standards and the circulation of lessons and manuals regarding the treatment of (non-state) weapons in peace processes participate in the socialization of this second group.

The boundaries of these two associations are fluid and in continuous transformation, but the interactions that take place within each of these two groups favor the sharing of frames of references for the understanding of the relationships between weapons and violence.

While both associations tackle the centrality of weapons for the production of peace and security, their separation reinforces a crucial silence in the context of intrastate peace processes. As only the weapons of non-state actors are understood as political matters for negotiation, the place of state weapons in the constitution of a peaceful political community is neglected. While the weapons of non-state actors are understood as the “problem” to be overcome through a peace process and through subsequent DDR programs, state weapons are continuously constructed as part of the “solution” to violence.

In other words, peace processes, as moments when the reconstitution of the political community is at stake, are leaving out of the table of negotiation a crucial factor: a broader discussion on the legitimate place of means of violence owned and deployed not only by non-state actors, but also by state forces.

This process is reinforced through the circulation of DDR expertise across intrastate peace processes and through the associated standardization movements, which lead to the crystallization of a model of arms control in which state militarism is necessarily left untouched. As recently seen in the case of the Colombian peace process with the FARC, while the weapons of non-state actors are collected, melted and turned into monuments that symbolize a violent “past,” military expenditures of states often continue to rise in post-conflict contexts and are built as part of a peaceful “future,” with no place for a politicization of such processes of militarization.

As the treatment of weapons and violence in peace processes is limited to the technical implementation of DDR packages, through the routinization of activities that are presented as “lessons learned,” other possibilities–such as the promotion of transparency and downsizing of states’ military expenditures, or pressures for their compliance with international arms control mechanisms–are left out of political negotiations.

In order to overcome this trend of depoliticization of state weapons in the context of intrastate peace processes, we suggest that an approximation between the knowledge produced by arms control and disarmament (ACD) experts and by peacebuilding experts could provide a valuable contribution. While certain ACD practices end up reinforcing forms of state militarism, we argue that these mechanisms have the important potential of holding states accountable for their use and trade of weapons.

As peace processes represent an important moment in which the constitution of a political community is brought to the table, the knowledge of ACD practitioners could help overcoming the silence on state militarism that so frequently marks these negotiations. In other words, instead of peace agreements that merely seek to reinstate the rule on the monopoly of violence by the state, we could have intrastate peace processes in which the place of weapons and violence is brought to the center of how political communities are to be built.

Monica Herz is an associate professor at the Institute of International Relations of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (IRI/PUC-Rio). Victória Santos is a PhD student at IRI/PUC-Rio. They are the authors of The disconnect between arms control and DDR in peace processes, Contemporary Security Policy. Advance online publication.