Humanitarian Disarmament and the Era of Disarmament Without Disarmament

Abstract

Humanitarian disarmament (HD) applies humanitarian norms of proportionality and distinction between combatant and civilian to the arena of weapons control. Many HD agreements also include provisions for remediation and victim assistance. This entry outlines three models of HD. The first seeks outright prohibitions on conventional weapons previously considered unexceptional (e.g., landmines). The second seeks regulation short of a ban and includes both weapon-specific restraints and expressly humanitarian nonproliferation initiatives such as the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The third is associated with bans on “apex” weapons central to the security logics, security identities, and security subjectivities of states (e.g., the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)). Many HD initiatives (but not, for example, the ATT) represent a distinct subcategory of qualitative disarmament. Models 1 and 2 HD are constrained in their ability to control the means of violence because humanitarianism gives equal weight to the norm of military necessity, thus legitimizing the institution of war, including war preparation. They therefore constitute specific practices of disarmament without disarmament. The TPNW represents a qualitatively different kind of HD, but the reification of military necessity in humanitarianism means the seeds of its ultimate failure may lie in the normative roots of its initial success.

I am grateful to Mathew Breay Bolton, Michael Pugh, and Anna Stavrianakis for comments on an earlier version of this entry

I am also grateful to Anuj Gurung for additional background research that informed this chapter