In arms' way: arms company and military involvement in education in the UK

Arms company and military involvement with schools and universities in the UK takes a number of forms and has a variety of effects. Countering mainstream narratives around national security, good and bad forms of globalisation, and economic competitiveness, I argue that these effects are best characterised as the commercialisation and militarisation of education in pursuit of state and corporate goals. These are both forms of instrumentalisation that damage the autonomous space educational establishments strive to provide. Such developments are not going unnoticed however, and resistance to them continues

Legitimizing liberal militarism: politics, law and war in the Arms Trade Treaty

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. And 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

When “anxious scrutiny” of arms exports facilitates humanitarian disaster

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Militarism and security: dialogue, possibilities and limits

While attention to security has grown exponentially over the last few decades, militarism – the preparation for and normalization and legitimation of war – has not received the widespread and sustained focus it warrants in mainstream or critical circles. Rather than stake a claim for one concept over the other, however, this article – and the special issue to which it serves as an introduction – asks how we are to understand the relationship between security and militarism, both as analytical tools and as objects of analysis. We examine, first, what analytical and political work militarism and security do as concepts, and how they can be mobilized methodologically; second, what the possibilities are of fruitful exchange between knowledges produced about these concepts or practices; and, third, what the limits are of militarism and security. In the process, we address the shifts in the world that international relations and its related subfields study; shifts in the institutional framing and materiality of fields and subfields of research; and shifts in how international relations studies the world. Read together, the contributions to the special issue make the case for a reinvigorated focus on the mutual co-constitution of militarism and security

Introducing the special section on ‘arms export controls during war and armed conflict’

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Requiem for risk: non-knowledge and domination in the governance of weapons circulation

Analyses of risk in international political sociology and critical security studies have unpicked its operation as a preventive and pre-emptive political technology. This article examines the counter-case of the governance of weapons circulation, in which risk has been mobilised 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; 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 mobilised 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 in to the operation of risk, we need a requiem for risk and a search for alternative grounds of repoliticisation that can generate more adequate modes of regulation and accountability

Debunking the myth of the “robust control regime”: UK arms export controls during war and armed conflict

The 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

Embodying militarism: exploring the spaces and bodies in-between

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Controlling weapons circulation in a postcolonial militarised world

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