Humanitarian Arms Control and Processes of Securitization: Moving Weapons along the Security Continuum

Abstract

This article undertakes a critical analysis of what have been labelled humanitarian arms control (HAC) initiatives, most notably, recent agreements to ban cluster munitions and landmines as well as efforts to restrict the proliferation of small arms. The article critiques conventional accounts that view such initiatives as illustrating the potential of global civil society to interject human security concerns into the domain of arms regulation through the exercise of bottom-up power. In order to do this, the article first outlines the concept of securitization, particularly Floyd's discussion of positive and negative forms of securitization and Abrahamson's concept of the security continuum. This is used to frame an analysis of contemporary HAC initiatives that locates them in the much longer history of pariah weapons regulation and the way it relates both to the framing of legitimized weapons and changes in the broader regulation of the conventional defence trade in different eras. In contrast to conventional accounts of the HAC agenda, it is argued that initiatives such as those on landmines and cluster munitions were successful precisely because they were consonant with the same discourse used to legitimize both post-Cold War liberal interventionism and the new generation modern high-tech weapons. Moreover, the extra-securitization of landmines, cluster munitions and small arms has been accompanied by the (relative) desecuritization of the trade in major conventional weapons and associated dual-use technologies, a process that has a number of quite negative effects in terms of arms trade regulation. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of the preceding analysis both for thinking about processes of securitization and for arms trade non-governmental organizations (NGOs).