‘A serious threat to peace, reconciliation, safety, security’: An effective reading of the United Nations Programme of Action
Evaluations of the 2001 Conference on the illicit trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons and the Programme of Action (PoA) which it produced cover the gamut from success to failure. This essay does not seek to explain the success or failure of the Conference, nor does it look forward to the 2006 Conference and beyond to see what possibilities there are for global public policy on SALW. It is concerned, rather, with the topography of the issue which will come to the table in 2006. By means of Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘effective history’, the essay investigates the problem that the PoA has produced. It shows how that problem is constituted around two key features: small arms and light weapons as a particular category of technology, and the division between the licit and illicit trade. It demonstrates both the contingency of this framing and the effects that it has produced. In particular, it shows how this framing makes possible a set of ‘proliferation control’ practices similar to those applied to other forms of military technology, and how it masks forms of gun violence, particularly those directed against women.
Legitimising liberal militarism: politics, law and war in the Arms Trade Treaty
Abstract Post-cold war efforts to knit together human rights and international humanitarian law in pursuit of tougher arms transfer control reached their apogee in the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). In contrast to dominant accounts based on human security norms, I argue that a key effect of the ATT is to legitimise liberal forms of militarism. During negotiations the US and UK governments justified their arms export practices in terms of morality, responsibility and legitimacy. More broadly their arms transfer practices are explained away by reference to national regulatory regimes that exceed the standards set out in the ATT. Arms transfers to Egypt and intra-Western transfers illustrate the way these justifications and regimes serve to shield US–UK weapons transfers and use from scrutiny and accountability. Rather than signalling the victory of human security, the ATT is better understood as facilitating the mobilisation of legitimacy for contemporary liberal forms of war fighting and war preparation.
Will the Nation-State Survive Globalization?
A specter is haunting the world's governments?the specter of globalization. Some argue that predatory market forces make it impossible for benevolent governments to shield their populations from the beasts of prey that lurk beyond their borders. Others counter that benign market forces actually prevent predatory governments from fleecing their citizens. Although the two sides see different villains, they draw one common conclusion: omnipo tent markets mean impotent politicians. Indeed, this formula has become one of the clich?s of our age. But is it true that govern ments have become weaker and less relevant than ever before? And does globalization, by definition, have to be the nemesis of national government? Globalization is a journey. But it is a journey toward an unreachable destination?"the globalized world." A "globalized" economy could be defined as one in which neither distance nor national borders impede economic transactions. This would be a world where the costs of