Disarmament Diplomacy and Human Security

Denise Garcia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136824180
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Échanges et tarifs douaniers

This book assesses how progress in disarmament diplomacy in the last decade has improved human security.

In doing so, the book looks at three cases of the development of international norms in this arena. First, it traces how new international normative understandings have shaped the evolution of and support for an Arms Trade Treaty (the supply side of the arms trade); and, second, it examines the small arms international regime and examines a multilateral initiative that aims to address the demand side (by the Geneva Declaration); and, third, it examines the evolution of two processes to ban and regulate cluster munitions.

The formation of international norms in these areas is a remarkable development, as it means that a domain that was previously thought to be the exclusive purview of states, i.e. how they procure and manage arms, has been penetrated by multiple influences from worldwide civil society. As a result, norms and treaties are being established to address the domain of arms, and states will have more multilateral restriction over their arms and less sovereignty in this domain.

This book will be of much interest to students of the arms trade, international security, international law, human security and IR in general.

Denise Garcia is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University, Boston. She is author of Small Arms and Security (Routledge 2006).

1 Norms

Moral progress and evolution in the conduct of international affairs

It is precisely the control over the use of arms that states guard most jealously.

(Finnemore 1996: 72)

Regimes, norms and moral progress

The study of international relations has seen tremendous evolution since Hans Morgenthau’s seminal study Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, published in 1948, and Kenneth Waltz’s influential Man, the State, and War of 1959 and his Theory of International Politics of 1979. These treatises reinforced the nascent realist school of international relations and inaugurated the neo-realist school, both of which became mainstream. However, the study of international relations today is only minimally about men, states and war. These schools have either misinterpreted or misunderstood the real workings of international relations with their parsimonious assumptions. Their central idea was that international politics is defined by anarchy as a central operating variable, as a result of the lack of a central authority to impose its will on all independent sovereign units of the international system. States thus operated in an interlocking parameter of continuity and repetition where change was impossible. This realist vision of an anarchical world influenced an entire generation and has been depicted more recently by some renowned authors (Kindleberger 1981; Snidal 1985; Grieco 1993; Mearsheimer 2001). Basically, the realist and neo-realist schools ignored the role of morality, ideas and norms in the making of politics and thus seriously distorted perceptions of the functioning of international relations:

One reason why it is important to understand accurately the character of the pressures and forces at work in international politics is that a false understanding leads us away from ideas of security based on justice and compassion, and toward an international politics based on the inevitability of self-interest … consistent choice is possible: that it is possible to reform international relations in accord with conceptions of fairness and compassion, human dignity and human sympathy, justice and mercy. We need to be wary, for international life is full of perils; and for just this reason any kind of fatalism, or presumption that states act selfishly in their international policy, is as dangerous as it is unscientific.

(Lumsdaine 1993: 287)

Accounts of the centrality of morality in international relations flourished outside the mainstream realist and neo-realist traditions and were confined to the field of international political theory (Walzer 1977; Beitz 1979). There was no real influence of the latter on the former, even though the seminal works of Walzer and Beitz helped set the stage for what later became the theory of moral progress in international relations, which is of interest here. This situation of no cross-fertilization between fields of study in the area of international relations began to change with the rise of neo-liberalism, which recognized the importance of international institutions in coordinating politics among states (Keohane 1984; Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986; Lake 1993; Ruggie 1993). Driven by the inability of realism to explain rising multilateralism as the defining method of conducting international relations, as well as international organizations after World War II, and by confronting the growing anxiety over an anarchical world with an inherent lack of centralized government, a fruitful and prolific literature on international regimes appeared (Krasner 1982, 1983a; Haggard and Simmons 1987; Rittberger 1993; Young and Osherenko 1993), as well as its fiercest critics (Strange 1983). The first regime scholars saw regimes as a mechanism to overcome the uncertainties arising from the lack of a central government in world affairs. However, the focus was still on states, and most—but not all—of these authors believed in the need for a hegemon to give birth to regimes.

The emphasis on the state as the sole actor and the presence of a hegemon later proved to be too narrow a view. For instance, the regime against genocide arose and consolidated despite the lack of a concerted commitment to advance it (see Ball 1999; Mills and Brunner 2002). Regime theory was developed by authors who opened the epistemological underpinnings of the study of regimes to include more actors with varying roles and more causal variables (Haas 1989, 1992a; Young 1986, 1989, 1999; Nadelmann 1990; Adler 1992; Lipschutz 1996; Wapner 1996; Hasenclever et al. 1997, 2000; Betsill and Bulkeley 2004).

Central to the realist school was the understanding and application of security. The traditional realist understanding of security had three dimensions and presupposes that the state is the only referent of security. The underlying dimension that underpins the others is how states prepare to wage war. The second underlying dimension is the protection of the national territory against external threats of a military nature, while the third is the protection of the state against defined enemies (these enemies usually pose threats of a military nature that are usually known). In these terms, security can then be defined as the enhancement of the security of states through the procurement of conventional arms to protect the national territory against perceived military threats and known enemies.

With the demise of the obvious threat posed by the conflict between the West and the Soviet Union, scholarship tackled the need to enlarge the concept of security that emerged after the Cold War. There were discussions about “broadening” and “deepening” the understanding of security. “Broadening” encompassed the inclusion of a wide variety of threats such as those related to the environment, public health and food, among many others. “Deepening” the concept of security included an understanding of the security of the individual. Some scholars departed from state-centric approaches, whereas others remained within the state realm, referring to such concepts as cooperative, common or collective security. The unifying premise among the scholars who believe in the expansion of the concept of security was their conviction of the insufficiency of the state-focused concept. The belief that security is limited to threats to the state originating outside the state, as well as the accompanying belief in an anarchical world with no norms and rules, is anachronistic (see Krause and Williams 1996 for a review of this literature). The emergence of the concept of human security helped to broaden a new understanding of security. In this new understanding, the security of individuals also has a place of concern and many states have started making such a perception an integral part of their security policies (Bajpai 2000; Oberleitner 2005). This is where the present study is situated, and for it, the mechanism to enable the application of a broadened understanding of security is disarmament diplomacy.

The broadened and deepened concept and understanding of security and the appearance of human security has coincided with and benefited from the rise of a third paradigm in the study of international relations, i.e. constructivism, which introduced norms as a central component to comprehend the inner workings of international relations. A brave new literature has slowly started to erode the main tenets of realism and neo-liberalism, as well as to show a different epistemological paradigm (Klotz 1995; Katzenstein 1996a; Finnemore 1996; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Price and Reus-Smit 1998; Checkel 1998; Cortell and Davis 1996, 2000; Risse 2000; Price 1995; 1998a, 2003; Tannenwald 1999; Risse and Sikkink 1999; Risse et al. 1999; Herrmann and Shannon 2001).

The norms literature of the constructivist vintage was driven by an attempt to explain change in international relations (until then unexplored) and was intrinsically inspired by normative concerns. The authors dealing with these concerns initially attempted to explain their nature and whether norms matter by concluding that states are more or less constrained and influenced by them. This literature brought rich new avenues for the study of international relations by examining prominent cases of changes in how states conduct their international affairs, e.g. the end of colonization, apartheid, piracy, slavery, genocide, torture, and others. Constructivist authors have transcended many long-standing artificial dichotomies established by realists and neo-realists: those between the “logic of appropriateness” and “logic of consequences” (March and Olsen 1998), between rules and actors, and between agents and structures. This literature demonstrated several key phenomena: change may occur (even in areas closest to the national security of states) through transnational activist and NGO networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998), through new ideas, through changes in the domestic arena, and through the influence of medium-sized powers (Katzenstein 1996a; Checkel 1998; Evangelista 1995; Risse-Kappen 1995; Cortell and Davis 1996; Rutherford et al. 2003), all of which can persuade governments to change from the top down, across borders, and from below (Brysk 1993), or through “spirals” (Risse and Sikkink 1999) or “cascades” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) of norm acceptance. It has shown the value of argumentation and persuasion as central to the emergence of norms (Risse 2000; Hawkins 2004). When certain states have already embraced the new normative understanding and want to persuade others to do the same, the central mechanisms involved are emulation and peer pressure (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). The great powers, it is true, have promoted change in state behavior for strategic purposes, but also out of moral principle (De Nevers 2007: 56; Rediker 2004: 138–145). The case for the abolition of the slave trade was compelled more by moral force than for instrumental reasons (Kaufmann and Pape 1999). In other cases, such as terrorism, the immorality of acts of terrorism impels multilateral actions to curb it, but also advances the goal of national of security (De Nevers 2007). Early seminal constructivist literature laid out the importance of norms over material calculations (Klotz 1995; Finnemore 1996; Katzenstein 1996a) and how international norms can change domestic arenas (Checkel 1998; Evangelista 1995; Risse-Kappen 1995; Cortell and Davis 1996). States do care about their reputation and try to maintain their image as normal, accepted members of the international community. The early literature on international norms thus attempted to demonstrate the importance of normative factors over material ones (Gurowitz 2006).¹

Constructivist authors progressively started to demonstrate how the rise of new norms informed by moral concerns can bring change in the conduct of international politics. The emergence of new norms can entail either the appearance of new ideas or the reassessment of already existing norms (Kowert and Legro 1996). Emergence or reassessment can occur through persuasion and socialization as key factors in the process (Nadelmann 1990; Florini 1996; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Barnett and Finnemore 2004). Arguments based on moral and ethical force can transform the understandings states have vis-à-vis ingrained practices and bring about enormous social change (Nadelmann 1990; Crawford 2002). International norms have a better chance of success if they resonate with previously existing normative frameworks or fit with already established political cultures (Risse et al. 1999: 271).

If there was a divorce between the study of morality and politics prior to constructivism, there was also a divorce between the international relations literature and international law. The first links that appeared between these two areas were restricted (Slaughter 1993; Abbott and Snidal 2000; Goldstein et al. 2000) and then broadened (Kratochwil 1984, 1989; Brunnee and Toope 2000; Finnemore and Toope 2001; Rudolph 2001; Smith 2002). The first bridges (of a more restricted nature) considered the state as the central actor in the creation of international law and examined the eminence of legally binding treaties as the sole mechanism uniting international law and politics. They also recognized that international law had an important role to play in international politics. The broader bridges between the two fields also recognized many other actors beyond the state that play a role in creating international law, as well as saw other forms of agreements (of a politically binding nature), as important tools that facilitate cooperation among states in international politics.

The conflicts of the 1990s and resulting humanitarian catastrophes were unacceptable to the conscience of the international community. The bridges between international relations and international law arose also out of the need to explain the trend to establish international courts as a means to arbitrate the humanitarian situations that appeared after the brutal conflicts of the 1990s. States are currently much more likely to agree to establish international tribunals to address moral hazards and violations of international humanitarian law in international relations rather than espouse military intervention. In other words, states are more likely to opt for legal remedies than risky interventions (Smith 2002). The creation of an “atrocities regime” ensued with a robust trend toward a legal approach to tackle the problems arising from these conflicts. The international community created several courts dealing with the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, as well as the International Criminal Court. Realism was unable to explain the rise of this humanitarian-based regime (Rudolph 2001).

It is clear that more bridges are needed between international law and international relations and many scholars have called for them explicitly (Abbott and Snidal 2000; Slaughter 1993; Keohane and Nye 1997; Brunnee and Toope 2000; Garcia 2006; Sandholtz 2008; see also the special issue of International Organization 54(3), 2000). International law does not constitute an integral part of theory building in international relations, even though many authors have emphasized the centrality of norms and have distinguished political and legal norms and their importance for the construction of behavior in international relations (Onuf 1989, 1998; Kratochwil 1989; Klotz 1995; Finnemore 1996).

In parallel to the flourishing and promising bridges between international relations and international law and the rise of constructivism, another set of authors inaugurated yet another type of literature that built on international political theory, promoting bridges between constructivism and international law and attempting to move toward a theory of progress in international relations (Lumsdaine 1993; Adler and Crawford 1991; Crawford 1991; Onuf 1998; Kaufmann and Pape 1999; Wapner and Ruiz 2000; Wapner 2000; Kaldor 2000; Booth et al. 2001; Crawford 2002; Price 2008a; Williams 2004; Devlen et al. 2005; Reus-Smit 2008; Sikkink 2008; Finnemore 2008; Frost 2008, 2009).

Constructivist theory has contributed to the understanding of moral actions in international relations (Nadelmann 1990; Lumsdaine 1993; Klotz 1995; Finnemore 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Price 1995, 1998a, 2003, 2008a). Most of this literature has focused on the power of transnational (non-state) actors and other forces beyond the purely statist realm with the power to bring about change. In issues of security, change in general (not necessarily just moral change) has been explained more by a combination of domestic politics and ideational change (Katzenstein 1996a). Authors in this literature dealing with the concept of moral progress advance a constructivist view of the possibility and actual occurrence of moral change in world politics. The wide acknowledgment of principled conduct as a force in international relations is the mainstay of this argument (Price 2008a).

The discipline of international relations has no choice but to put ethical reasoning at its heart if it wants to rectify its inability to address real global problems (Reus-Smit 2008: 54), as well as the dilemma of informing states on the issue of “how should we act[?]” (Reus-Smit 2008: 70), and has to go further and focus on humanitarian ideals (Price 2008a: 209). Documenting normative changes that bring real improvement to human lives is not only praiseworthy, but helps in advancing the discipline’s much-needed quest for ethical reasoning. Within the discipline, constructivist scholars have been at the forefront of documenting the evolution of norms and regimes that signal change and progress in international relations (Price 2008a: 209): “Constructivism offers a way out of the potential critical trap by taking the prevalence of power seriously without precluding the possibility of meaningful humanitarian change nonetheless” (Price 2008a: 210). Ethical principles were the driving force motivating the biggest changes in international politics in the last centuries: decolonization, the abolition of slavery, and the ultimate redefinition of colonialism as an unacceptable practice in international relations. These had little to do with power politics, and these transformations were brought by the power of moral force (Crawford 2002). The question of “when do states pursue costly moral actions” was asked in a seminal article that examined the most expensive example of moral action: the United Kingdom’s campaign to end the slave trade (Kaufmann and Pape 1999).

More recently, the norms literature within constructivism has evolved into promoting bridges among enlarged understandings of security, international law, and the further exploration of how change occurs in the conduct of international affairs (Rutherford et al. 2003; De Nevers 2007; Garcia 2006; Gurowitz 2006; Hurd 2005, 2007; Sandholtz 2008; Hawkins 2004; Kelley 2008; Sandholtz and Stiles 2009; Gillies 2010). For Ian Hurd, states are inescapably rooted in international relationships and norms and base their actions on normative justification. States are thus inextricably connected to international norms. Interests and behavior are therefore shaped by norms, and vice versa, in a mutually reinforcing cycle (Finnemore 1996: 27; Hurd 2007: 196).

New norms empower actors to engage in new areas of action that previously seemed impossible. For instance, the rise of human rights norms was fundamental to the rise of new concepts and interests (Kelley 2008). By the same token, the evolution of a prior set of norms may enable the development of new norms (Kelley 2008: 233): “At a systemic level, norms among states can also create shared expectations for multilateralism” (Finnemore 1996: 145):

States are embedded in dense networks of transnational and international social relations that shape their perceptions of the world and their role in that world. States are socialized to want certain things by the international society in which they and the people in them live.

(Finnemore 1996: 2)

Prescriptive norms originate and compel moral obligation and result in observance of their precepts (Herrmann and Shannon 2001). Both material factors and ideational considerations, including moral concerns, can lead states to act. In their calculations, states take into consideration both utilitarian gains and moral duty, therefore they may use norms strategically as well (Herrmann and Shannon 2001; Hurd 2005). The most recent analysis of norm emergence that is perhaps the closest to my own study is Alexandra Gillies’ study (2010). Gillies argues that the reputation concerns of high-profile international oil companies and financial institutions contributed to the rise of an international norm of transparency in the oil sector. She acknowledges previously existing normative frameworks and norm entrepreneurs as important enabling factors (as have others in the literature); however, she advances a third more influential factor that ultimately changed the industry discourse, i.e. the reputational concerns of international oil companies, Western governments and financial institutions in Europe and North America that have come under increased scrutiny arising from successful advocacy campaigns from NGOs in recent years. Therefore, to protect their image, they started viewing transparency in their oil transactions as a tool. Gillies thus sees reputational concerns as a causal variable (Gillies...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Norms: moral progress and evolution in the conduct of international affairs
• 2. The Arms Trade Treaty
• 3. Small arms and light weapons regime and the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence
• 4. Banning cluster munitions
• 5. Conclusions and findings: moral international relations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index