The international and regional management of arms in peace processes

Abstract

This thesis describes and evaluates the attempts made by international and regional organisations to manage the arms of parties during peace processes - typically through peacekeeping deployments. It describes over 40 third-party 'arms management' initiative undertaken between 1949 and 1999. The analysis which follows suggests that five principal arms management strategies, or approaches, have been utilised during this period: arms retention and delimitation; co-operative disarmament; coercive disarmament; arms control; and arms-balancing.

The overall aim of the thesis is to tease out the concepts, doctrines and thinking that underpinned these strategies, and to examine how they evolved and developed. It further seeks to determine their cohesiveness and effectiveness in stabilising peace processes, and to analyse the dynamics of peace processes, including the difficulties or predicaments faced by internal parties in demilitarising, and the impact these had on arms management outcomes. Finally, drawing upon this work, it seeks to establish what constitutes coherent and effective arms management policy in the new Millennium, and to set out policy and research recommendations.

This research fills gaps in empirical knowledge: the existing literature, mainly situated in security studies, does not provide a comprehensive and collated descriptive account of arms management over the 1949-1999 period. It also provides new conceptual and empirical insights into arms control and arms-balancing, which have been virtually ignored in the field of peace-building; and it further develops the work undertaken on co-operative and coercive disarmament in the first half of the 1990s, which has since been neglected.

It concludes that arms management is a highly problematic activity. Surrendering or accepting controls on weaponry frequently places parties, societal groups, and individuals, in a position of vulnerability or difficulty, particularly when military and political integration is sought.

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