Conceptualising global civil society -- What's the problem? NGOs and the arms trade -- NGOs strategies and the disciplining of global civil society -- Arming the North: Transatlantic and European military production and trade -- Disciplining the South: development and human rights concerns in the arms trade -- Disarming the South: small arms and conflict -- NGOs, global civil society and the world military order.
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AbstractThe UK's commitments to conflict prevention and the protection of human rights and international humanitarian law in its arms export controls are now over 20 years old. However, the outbreak of war or conflict has had little or no restraining effect on UK arms exports. This article explores the function of the UK's arms export control regime given that its primary effect is not to restrict arms transfers. I argue that the mantra that the UK has one of the most robust control regimes in the world is not a plausible description of the realities of UK export policy – rather, it is a myth that needs to be debunked. Export controls are primarily mobilised by the state to manage controversy once criticism emerges from civil society and Parliament and thus primarily serve a legitimating function. I illustrate this argument with examples of arms exports in relation to the conflicts in Kashmir, Sri Lanka, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Yemen, demonstrating three ways in which UK export controls are missing in action: the routine misuse of UK‐supplied weapons; the narrow interpretation of risk in licensing policy; and self‐serving reviews to manage reputation once controversy breaks out.
Analyses of risk in international political sociology and critical security studies have unpicked its operation as a preventive and preemptive political technology. This article examines the countercase of the governance of weapons circulation, in which risk has been mobilized as a permissive technology. Examining UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen, I demonstrate how risk assessment constitutes a regime of recklessness in which risk is made not to matter in three main ways: systematic not-knowing about international humanitarian law violations; claims of unintentional harm and practices of reputation management; and future-proofing the inherent temporality of risk. I argue that risk has served to facilitate arms exports despite the potential for harm: it has been mobilized as a mode of domination. This does not suggest a failure of risk as a governance strategy or a contradiction in its operation, however. Rather, it illustrates the generative character of risk as a regulatory technology in contexts marked by asymmetrical power dynamics. If the potential for domination is built into the operation of risk, we need a requiem for risk and a search for alternative grounds of repoliticization that can generate more adequate modes of regulation and accountability.
AbstractAnalyses of risk in international political sociology and critical security studies have unpicked its operation as a preventive and preemptive political technology. This article examines the countercase of the governance of weapons circulation, in which risk has been mobilized as a permissive technology. Examining UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen, I demonstrate how risk assessment constitutes a regime of recklessness in which risk is made not to matter in three main ways: systematic not-knowing about international humanitarian law violations; claims of unintentional harm and practices of reputation management; and future-proofing the inherent temporality of risk. I argue that risk has served to facilitate arms exports despite the potential for harm: it has been mobilized as a mode of domination. This does not suggest a failure of risk as a governance strategy or a contradiction in its operation, however. Rather, it illustrates the generative character of risk as a regulatory technology in contexts marked by asymmetrical power dynamics. If the potential for domination is built into the operation of risk, we need a requiem for risk and a search for alternative grounds of repoliticization that can generate more adequate modes of regulation and accountability.
What are the politics of, and prospects for, contemporary weapons control? Human rights and humanitarian activists and scholars celebrate the gains made in the UN Arms Trade Treaty as a step towards greater human security. Critics counter that the treaty represents an accommodation with global militarism. Taking the tensions between arms transfer control and militarism as my starting point, I argue that the negotiating process and eventual treaty text demonstrate competing modes of militarism. Expressed in terms of sovereignty, political economy, or human security, all three modes are underpinned by ongoing imperial relations: racial, gendered and classed relations of asymmetry and hierarchy that persist despite formal sovereign equality. This means human security is a form of militarism rather than the antithesis of it. Drawing on primary sources from negotiations and participant observation with actors involved in the campaign for the ATT, the argument challenges the idea that human security has scored a victory over militarism. It also complicates our understanding of the nature of the accommodation with it, demonstrating the transformation as well as entrenchment of contemporary militarism. The argument reframes the challenges for controlling weapons circulation, placing the necessity for feminist, postcolonial anti-militarist critique front and centre.
What are the politics of, and prospects for, contemporary weapons control? Human rights and humanitarian activists and scholars celebrate the gains made in the UN Arms Trade Treaty as a step towards greater human security. Critics counter that the treaty represents an accommodation with global militarism. Taking the tensions between arms transfer control and militarism as my starting point, I argue that the negotiating process and eventual treaty text demonstrate competing modes of militarism. Expressed in terms of sovereignty, political economy, or human security, all three modes are underpinned by ongoing imperial relations: racial, gendered, and classed relations of asymmetry and hierarchy that persist despite formal sovereign equality. This means human security is a form of militarism rather than the antithesis of it. Drawing on primary sources from negotiations and participant observation with actors involved in the campaign for the ATT, the argument challenges the idea that human security has scored a victory over militarism. It also complicates our understanding of the nature of the accommodation with it, demonstrating the transformation as well as entrenchment of contemporary militarism. The argument reframes the challenges for controlling weapons circulation, placing the necessity for feminist, postcolonial anti-militarist critique front and centre.
AbstractWhat are the politics of, and prospects for, contemporary weapons control? Human rights and humanitarian activists and scholars celebrate the gains made in the UN Arms Trade Treaty as a step towards greater human security. Critics counter that the treaty represents an accommodation with global militarism. Taking the tensions between arms transfer control and militarism as my starting point, I argue that the negotiating process and eventual treaty text demonstrate competing modes of militarism. Expressed in terms of sovereignty, political economy, or human security, all three modes are underpinned by ongoing imperial relations: racial, gendered, and classed relations of asymmetry and hierarchy that persist despite formal sovereign equality. This means human security is a form of militarism rather than the antithesis of it. Drawing on primary sources from negotiations and participant observation with actors involved in the campaign for the ATT, the argument challenges the idea that human security has scored a victory over militarism. It also complicates our understanding of the nature of the accommodation with it, demonstrating the transformation as well as entrenchment of contemporary militarism. The argument reframes the challenges for controlling weapons circulation, placing the necessity for feminist, postcolonial anti-militarist critique front and centre.
AbstractHow is it that the UK government continues to export weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in the war in Yemen, despite an explicit commitment to international humanitarian law (IHL)? And how is it that the High Court recently dismissed a case of judicial review, confirming that the government was 'rationally entitled to conclude' that arms exports pose no clear risk to IHL in Yemen? In what follows, I explain how a flexible interpretation of risk, reliance on secret information, and deference of the Court to the executive serve to facilitate rather than restrict arms exports. The judges' decision provides a stamp of approval to an arms export policy that has directly contributed to the deaths of thousands of civilians in Yemen. Attention to the Saudi/Yemen case shows the political and legal manoeuvring that goes into managing the contradictions in government arms export policy.
AbstractThis survey article examines the ways in which the UK government has attempted to manage criticism of its arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Hitting the headlines since 2015 due to widespread, credible allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Saudi‐led coalition in the war in Yemen, UK arms sales are now subject to unusual levels of parliamentary, media, NGO and legal scrutiny. The article outlines the government's strategies for managing criticism in order to both deal with domestic dissent and maintain good relations with the Saudi government. Paying attention to such strategies is an important means of analysing how arms transfers are justified and facilitated, and how governments manage the contradictory pressures to both promote and restrict arms exports.
Non-governmental organisation (NGO) activism on the arms trade is emblematic of the significant and emancipatory role attributed to civil society in post-Cold War international politics. Discussions of NGOs' efforts are marked by a distinctively liberal understanding of civil society as an increasingly global sphere separate from the state and market, promoting progressive and non-violent social relations. However, there are significant conceptual and empirical problems with these claims, which I illustrate using examples from contemporary NGO activism on the international production of and trade in conventional weaponry. First, liberal accounts underplay the mutual dependence between the state, market and civil society. NGO agency is both constrained and enabled by its historical, structural grounding. Second, I argue for a more ambivalent understanding of NGOs' progressive political value. While some NGOs may play a role in counter-hegemonic struggle, overall they are more likely to contribute to hegemonic social formations. Third, liberal accounts of a global civil society inadequately capture the reproduction of hierarchy in international relations, downplaying ongoing, systematic patterns of North-South asymmetry. Fourth, the emphasis on the non-violent nature of global civil society sidelines the violence of capitalism and the state system, and serves as a means of disciplining dissent and activism. Adapted from the source document.
In: Journal of international relations and development: JIRD, official journal of the Central and East European International Studies Association, Band 15, Heft 2, S. 224-249