The Arms Trade Treaty: Leveling the Playing Field

IMGXYZ2979IMGZYXWhile many of the world’s nonproliferation measures concentrate on weapons of mass destruction, the majority of damage and deaths continues to come from conventional weapons. In 2003, a group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates sought to redress this imbalance with the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) initiative, which is intended to regulate conventional weapons trade. The Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, in the fourth installment of its “Arms Control Seminar Series,” invited David Hall, second secretary on foreign and security policy at the British Embassy, to describe the ATT’s provisions and support from weapons-supplying countries for the proposed treaty. Dai Ying, a PhD candidate at Tsinghua University, offered concrete examples of the ATT’s importance for countries that purchase conventional weapons. Carnegie’s Lora Saalman moderated the event.

The Impact of SALW in Africa

Small arms and light weapons (SALW) tend to cause more indirect deaths than direct deaths in Africa, Dai argued. These weapons exacerbate existing social ills, such as infant mortality and undernourishment, by aiding in the destruction of social service institutions like hospitals, she argued. SALW play an integral role in expanding the scope and duration of conflicts, Dai contended.

• Realistic Benchmarks on Trade: Any proposal to completely eradicate SALW trade in Africa is unrealistic, Dai said. Policy remedies should concentrate on achievable benchmarks. She advocated controlling the external supply of weapons and ammunition to the continent, particularly stemming the flow of ammunition. She calculated that in African regions that have seen large-scale humanitarian catastrophes, the value of accumulated small arms ammunition was found to exceed $1 million. If ammunition was restricted in such regions, she argued that the chance of such high-intensity and high-casualty conflict would be greatly reduced.
   
• Domestic Supply: African countries do not manufacture SALW themselves, but rather import them from other countries, Dai said. While these weapons and ammunition are not complicated to produce, many countries in Africa still lack the necessary manufacturing base and natural resources to create their own indigenous industries.
   
• Legal versus Illegal Trade: Establishing the criteria to distinguish between legal and illegal weapons sales is critical, Dai said. However, such measures face significant hurdles, given the structure of the ATT and its requirement for reaching consensus on elements of the treaty. One of the participants from Poland noted the difficulty of effecting controls and anti-diversion measures in countries experiencing conflict. Dai replied that the small arms trade is marked by difficulties of “inter-supply” between legal and illegal channels. The instability within these domestic markets makes controlling the arms supply from the outside even more crucial.
   
• Setting More Effective Standards: The UN’s disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs have offered initiatives to engage peacekeeping troops in collecting and destroying ammunition and weapons. However, this process has often proven to be slow and not very effective, Dai said. Furthermore, there are significant security concerns associated with putting peacekeepers in charge of destroying arms caches. An ATT would address some of these concerns by setting consistent standards for the regulation of weapons outside of conflict areas and could cover the transit, transshipment, and brokering of weapons, which is currently not regulated, or is regulated but according to varying standards.

Weapons Suppliers’ Incentives for Supporting the ATT

Hall explained why the world’s biggest arms-selling countries should support an ATT. While statistics on arms sales are not entirely reliable, the United Kingdom and China have been regularly identified as two of the biggest exporters of weapons. Hall said that because of these substantial interests, the United Kingdom was an early and strong supporter of an ATT.

• Security and Investments: Hall noted that some of the biggest arms-trading states also had a large stake in peacekeeping operations. A better-regulated international arms trade could help to reduce the risk that arms produced by such countries would be used against their own peacekeepers and other troops overseas. Furthermore, an ATT could help to reduce the instability created by weapons-fueled conflict, enabling more reliable returns from overseas investment. He cited China’s increasing investments in Africa as one such example.
   
• China’s Incentives: Hall noted that some Chinese defense companies have made significant efforts to exceed national standards, perhaps driven by the desire to project a positive international image and secure access to higher-value markets. Such efforts have been challenging, given the lack of agreed-upon international standards. An ATT would address this challenge, Hall said, setting a global standard for all countries to meet.
   
• Concrete Examples: Saalman asked how the recent conflict in Libya and similar conflicts in the future might look under the ATT. Hall replied that, while an ATT might not prevent such a conflict or a country’s use of weapons against its civilians, it would establish clear standards in the international community regarding what constitutes legal and illegal supply. Actors violating these norms could be clearly held to account. An ATT could also strengthen the pressure on countries to comprehensively implement UN-mandated arms embargoes. 
   
• Support and Universality: The negotiation of an ATT already has the support of more than 150 countries in the United Nations, with especially strong support coming from Africa and Latin America, Hall said. An ATT would, first and foremost, set clear international standards. But the ATT envisaged by most states would ultimately leave the final interpretation of those standards to individual nation states. Transparency and discussion mechanisms could help to bring national interpretations closer over time.
   
• Political Will versus Skepticism: One Chinese participant asked about the motivations for countries to accept or reject the ATT. Hall noted that much of the weapons industry in the UK supports such a measure. Moreover, while the United States initially opposed formulation of an ATT, it now supports the treaty under the Obama administration. While a number of ATT skeptics remain, their ranks are steadily decreasing. However, much still needs to be determined about the elements that would be included in an ATT, including the types of weapons that are part of the treaty. The ATT’s strongest advocates want the controls to include SALW, while other countries envision a much narrower scope.
   
• Timeframe and Future: When asked about the timeframe of the ATT, Hall said that although the text of the treaty had not yet been drafted, a series of preparatory committees has made strong progress ahead of the negotiating conference in 2012. Hall predicted that, as with all international negotiations, there are likely to be some compromises, but an ATT must meet its own fundamental objectives, which, for most of the treaty’s strongest supporters, means including SALW.