Dangerous Trade

Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation

Jennifer Erickson

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231539036
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The United Nations's groundbreaking Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which went into effect in 2014, sets legally binding standards to regulate global arms exports and reflects the growing concerns toward the significant role that small and major conventional arms play in perpetuating human rights violations, conflict, and societal instability worldwide. Many countries that once staunchly opposed shared export controls and their perceived threat to political and economic autonomy are now beginning to embrace numerous agreements, such as the ATT and the EU Code of Conduct.

Jennifer L. Erickson explores the reasons top arms-exporting democracies have put aside past sovereignty, security, and economic worries in favor of humanitarian arms transfer controls, and she follows the early effects of this about-face on export practice. She begins with a brief history of failed arms export control initiatives and then tracks arms transfer trends over time. Pinpointing the normative shifts in the 1990s that put humanitarian arms control on the table, she reveals that these states committed to these policies out of concern for their international reputations. She also highlights how arms trade scandals threaten domestic reputations and thus help improve compliance. Using statistical data and interviews conducted in France, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Erickson challenges existing IR theories of state behavior while providing insight into the role of reputation as a social mechanism and the importance of government transparency and accountability in generating compliance with new norms and rules.

1. Introduction and Overview

In April 2008, China attempted to make a routine delivery of ammunition and explosives worth $1.245 million to Zimbabwe by way of South Africa. What followed was anything but routine. The deal sparked an international incident and, in turn, highlighted the often conflicting security and humanitarian imperatives of the contemporary arms trade. A South African investigative news magazine exposed “the ship of shame,” provoking media attention and criticism from all corners of the globe. Because the South African government had approved the shipment for transport from the port of Durban, it too came under fire for helping to arm the repressive Mugabe regime. Churches and civil society groups condemned the decision as amoral and of questionable legality under the South African Constitution. Dockworkers threatened to strike rather than unload the cargo.¹

The arms arrived in Durban just as China was trying to avoid criticism over its own human rights record in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics and as South Africa was facing further embarrassment over its appeasement of Mugabe. Reports of repression, violence, and torture in Zimbabwe following the contested March 2008 election fueled critics’ charges that the weaponry would be used to crack down on the political opposition. To save face at home and abroad, South Africa reversed its decision and barred the transport by court order. Countries across Africa denied port to the ship and urged others to do the same, with the support of Western powers. China ultimately called the ship home, unable to find a port and unwilling to face the reputational damage brought on by fulfilling the deal (Baldauf and Ford 2008).

At the time of the attempted shipment, only the European Union (EU) had imposed a multilateral arms embargo on Zimbabwe. Neither China nor South Africa were party to any convention prohibiting the supply of arms to that country. In fact, there were no international legal restrictions barring the sale of conventional weapons to Zimbabwe. And yet the arms were never delivered. Instead, international and domestic uproar forced South Africa’s hand and turned the ship around. Even so, efforts just months later in July to impose a United Nations (UN) arms embargo and other sanctions on Zimbabwe failed, with South Africa leading a small opposition and Russia and China exercising their veto power (MacFarquhar 2008). Opponents argued that sanctions fell outside the UN Security Council’s mandate to deal only with matters of international peace and security. Supporters, however, believed that trade restrictions would help protect the domestic populace and reinforce the need for good governance to ensure regional and international security.

Conventional arms control is riddled with contradictions like these, presenting states with conflicting security, economic, and normative imperatives. Small arms and light weapons (SALW) and major conventional weapons (MCW)² are responsible for the vast majority of conflict deaths, frequently associated with societal instability, and commonly involved in human rights violations. Calls to control the spread of small arms, now referred to as “the real weapons of mass destruction,”³ and major conventional arms have become widespread in the past decade. Yet conventional arms also have an enduring and legitimate place in world politics. States have long protected their right to choose their arms trade partners as a matter of self-defense, and conventional arms are recognized as essential tools of national and international security. Moreover, arms manufacturers worldwide have an economic stake in more open arms markets and considerable political influence at home. In some countries, such as the United States, domestic law also protects civilians’ right to bear arms. Historically, states have therefore determined their own arms export criteria and eschewed calls for common controls that might stem the flow of weapons to unstable regions. Even today, as states debate the political utility and ethical dilemmas of selling or restricting arms to parties in the Syrian conflict, it is clear that arms remain an important currency in world politics.

Yet despite states’ past reluctance and persistent concerns, the UN General Assembly passed the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on April 2, 2013, in a vote of 154 to 3 (figure 1.1).⁴ It goes into effect on December 24, 2014. For the first time, states have agreed to worldwide, legally binding humanitarian or “responsible” arms trade standards to restrict small and major conventional arms transfers to human rights violators and conflict zones. The ATT marks the culmination of a dramatic policy reversal that began in the 1990s. Once reluctant—or even hostile—to multilateral export controls, most major arms-producing states began to endorse such standards following the Cold War. And, like South Africa, some have also faced unexpected domestic pressure to act on those commitments. Such standards promise little by way of material gain for supplier states but rather impose restrictions on their foreign-policy autonomy and defense sales—no small price to pay as many governments have faced austerity measures at home. Why, then, have major arms-exporting democracies decided to support multilateral, humanitarian arms export controls, such as the ATT? And why have some of those supportive states been more sensitive than others about appearing to implement these normative changes and policy commitments? This book is the first systematic attempt to answer these questions, with important insights for scholars and practitioners of arms trade politics, international security, and global governance.

FIGURE 1.1. UN ARMS TRADE TREATY VOTE (2013).

CONTROLLING THE ARMS TRADE: THE THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL PUZZLES

At its core, the contemporary conventional arms trade brings together vital interests in security and foreign policy, economics, and human security, confronting states with conflicting demands as they decide their arms trade policy and partners. The creation of the ATT and related initiatives therefore presents a microcosm of the policy pressures and imperatives states face in the post–Cold War world. By taking an in-depth look into the politics of the arms trade, this book provides insights into three important theoretical questions. First, at the state level, what explains commitment to multilateral policies that were once considered impossible or out of the question, even in the absence of material or normative incentives to implement them? International negotiations are not cheap; they require time, political capital, and economic resources. Rather than “mere window dressing,” the resulting agreements may impose costs and bind behavior in expected ways, risk unanticipated costs and consequences over time, and open states up to domestic legal challenges and hypocrisy costs (Goodliffe and Hawkins 2006; Greenhill 2010; Schimmelfennig 2001; Simmons 2009). If states wish to avoid costly restrictions on their behavior, what motivates them to spend resources and take risks on an agreement in the first place?

Second, at the international level, what explains how new norms gain prominence and legitimacy beyond their initial norm entrepreneurs? Scholars often highlight the importance of “norm cascades” to show how new ideas of appropriate behavior become accepted by a critical mass of states and institutionalized in international politics (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Florini 1996; Krook and True 2012). If norm survival hinges on such “tipping points” of state acceptance, then it is essential to dig deeper and theorize the mechanisms that create those tipping points. Why do states—especially those critical states invested in the status quo but without which new norms may flounder—respond to basic forms of social pressure, such as esteem, emulation or conformity, ridicule, and praise (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Johnston 2008; K. Waltz 1979)? As Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink point out, social construction interacts with actors’ “instrumental rationality” to enable new norms to diffuse and take hold (1998:910–11). Delving into the motives behind norm adoption and why socialization can be a powerful influence on rational actors can therefore shed light on how norm cascades work in practice and expectations of state behavior change over time.

Finally, by examining the seeds of normative change in one issue area, scholars can gain insights into the processes that generate shifts in the broader social structure of the international system. The “responsible” arms transfer norm cascade is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of a larger cascade of norms, in which changing ideas of security, transparency, and responsibility make their acceptance possible. New arms trade norms, in turn, can make the international environment more conducive to resolving other debates in favor of responsibility and humanitarianism. At the same time, this case shows that even once institutionalized, change can be slow to come and require a great deal of work by governmental and nongovernmental actors in domestic politics. How and why the system does—and does not—change sits at the heart of international relations (IR) theory, which must meet head on both the material and normative imperatives and constraints confronted by international actors as they shape and are shaped by the system.

“Responsible” arms export control is an ideal case with which to investigate these persistent theoretical questions: states anticipate that new controls will bring heavy material costs without material gains but sign on nevertheless, highlighting new norms in their formal policies but not in their export practice. I argue that top arms supplier states have strategically adopted popular policies out of social concern for their international reputations rather than out of any existing practice or norm internalization. I then show that states’ varied concerns for compliance can be traced primarily to the threat of reputational damage from “irresponsible” arms transfers in domestic politics. These findings are valuable for the theoretical insights they provide into states’ commitment to and compliance with international policy initiatives, as well as into the sources and processes of normative change. They also offer practical lessons for the ATT as it goes into effect. Indeed, the difficulty of achieving conventional arms control makes it an important empirical puzzle in its own right, with consequences for state and human security.

The deck is stacked against conventional arms control (Gray 1992). Conventional arms are the only category of weapon (legally) used since the Cold War and have, until recently, appeared immune from multilateral controls. The major arms-producing states confront not only the responsibility for restricting trade in the interest of peace and security elsewhere, but also domestic economic and security pressures to export to keep their defense industries afloat. As one French government official notes, conventional weapons have been the “last area of freedom” in arms control (interview 60108220; see appendix B for an explanation of the interviews and interview identification codes). Although extensive diplomatic and technical efforts have been made to ban the production, use, and spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, conventional arms have gone largely untouched by the international community. The rare attempts to create conventional arms control in the twentieth century buckled under the weight of states’ sovereignty, foreign-policy, and economic interests.

Certainly, most states have long required permits for the import and export of arms from their borders, but such controls have been a distinctly national prerogative, attached to economic and military security. The arms trade has often served both as a tool of foreign and economic policy and as a symbol of national self-sufficiency and strength (Cahn et al. 1977; Eyre and Suchman 1996; Kolodziej 1979; Moravcsik 1991). UN Charter Article 51 establishes states’ right to provide for their own defense as a fundamental principle of national sovereignty and has been upheld as justification for states to transfer arms as they choose. The sanctity of national sovereignty for the production and transfer of arms was also enshrined from the outset of European integration.⁵ Conventional arms transfers can signal friendship and effectuate alliance between states by demonstrating trust, establishing a security relationship, and enhancing interoperability for joint military operations. Sending arms abroad also can be a less costly form of support than sending troops. Finally, conventional weapons can showcase the technological modernity and military strength of the states that import and export them.

At home, governments commonly perceive arms exports as necessary to sustain their domestic defense industry, employment, balance of trade, and national economic well-being. With defense budgets rarely sufficient to maintain production lines, sales abroad can keep the assembly line moving and facilitate economies of scale. The intimate relationship that results between the state and the defense industry also encourages exports and export promotion in response to industry preferences.⁶ Politicians and constituents who rely on jobs and other benefits tied to defense-based local economies reinforce political support. More generally, publics often back defense industry interests in response to perceived threats to national security.

These sovereignty, security, and economic concerns have not disappeared over time. In some cases, they have been exacerbated by changes in world politics: the decline in defense spending following the end of the Cold War; the beginning of the war on terror; austerity measures imposed in the wake of the global financial crisis; and advent of the Arab Spring. Since the late 1990s, however, numerous multilateral initiatives have established controls on the licit and illicit trade of small and major conventional arms (see appendix A for a list of the key talks and agreements from 1919 to 2014), including the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Moratorium, the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms (UNPOA), and the ATT. Even so, as I show in chapter 3, states have not made dramatic changes in their arms export practice, suggesting that standard explanations for international commitments rooted in material gain and normative obligation may be limited. What, then, accounts for top arms-exporting democracies’ commitment to new arms trade norms, and why are some more concerned about avoiding the appearance of norm violations than others?

OVERVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT: SOCIAL REPUTATION IN INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC POLITICS

The incentives for major exporters to make a dramatic and potentially costly policy shift in favor of “responsible” arms transfer standards are not immediately clear. States expect new policies (if implemented) to generate high material costs without material gain. Existing practice does not reflect an established normative commitment. Defense industry lobbies were initially opposed or inattentive. Public opinion has been largely indifferent. Explanations that rely on material interests, normative obligation, or domestic politics thus come up short. I argue instead that states strategically adopt policies in line with new norms out of concern for their international reputations. Here, maintaining a good reputation with other international actors serves as a social incentive, which can deliver social benefits. Yet policy adoption motivated by such instrumental image building may no...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction and Overview
• 2. “Responsible” Arms Transfer Policy and the Politics of Social Reputation
• 3. History and Contemporary Trends in Conventional Arms Export Controls
• 4. Explaining Commitment: International Reputation and “Responsible” Arms Transfer Policy
• 5. Explaining Compliance: Domestic Reputation and Arms Trade Scandal
• 6. Conclusions and Implications
• Appendix A. Multilateral Conventional Arms Control in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
• Appendix B. Data Sources and Coding
• Appendix C. Full Statistical Results
• Notes
• References
• Index