German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall clearly states on its website that it is taking responsibility in a changing world. Gesturing towards the Turning point (“historical turning point”) in German politics after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this “changing world” marks a radical change in Germany’s traditionally retained military posture. Just three days after the invasion, the Chancellor announced a €100 billion investment fund to rebuild and modernize Germany’s armed forces. This new environment has even made possible an official partnership between Rheinmetall and professional football team Borussia Dortmund, a collaboration that would have seemed unthinkable in Germany just a few years ago.
Although the tide of the contemporary world order may be turning, claiming to “take responsibility” as an arms manufacturer is a provocative statement. What does “responsibility” mean for companies that make products whose intrinsic purpose is to harm? Although not a completely new question, particularly in activist circles, this topic has been surprisingly under-examined in scientific discourse. As a first step to filling this gap, a group of critically-minded researchers and practitioners spanning the disciplines of international relations, sociology, economics and history recently convened at the University of Bayreuth in Germany for a workshop entitled: Responsibility for (dis)armament: an interdisciplinary workshop on the responsibilities of (European) arms companies. From our productive discussions, I came away with three key takeaways:
First, everything has changed and nothing has changed. The liberal promise that accompanied the end of the Cold War would have marked the beginning of a “golden age” of arms control. This included the (re)vigoration of Humanitarian Arms Control (HAC) standards, which rose to prominence alongside other ostensibly rights-based frameworks, such as corporate embrace of social responsibility in However, while many security agreements concluded in the years following the end of the Cold War have ceased to exist today, the architecture governing global arms control has, share, radically changed. On the other hand, Western states and arms companies have continued to license and export weapons to states where there is a clear risk that they will be used in serious human rights violations and international humanitarian law, casting doubt on the HAC’s initial potential to serve. as an effective regulatory force.
At the level of arms control in the broad sense, this account of recent history effectively reflects the tectonic plates that are rumbling under the current liberal order. Looking more specifically at the HAC, however, the evidence suggests that any stated commitment to a values-based arms control policy has been largely a matter of symbolic politics. Indeed, if we view arms transfers from Western states and corporations as existing along a continuum that preceded and followed the end of the Cold War, it is far from clear that “the “golden age” of arms control has resulted in more responsible (conventional) arms exports. behavior. It may even have helped facilitate exports.
Such continuities emanating from the Western arms production and transfer system call into question the liberal proposition that Western arms suppliers are qualitatively *better* than competing suppliers from countries like China, Russia or Iran . Rather than a civilizational distinction that separates the humanitarian restraint of liberal democracies from the pure self-interest of other non-democratic democracies, what is systematically decisive is political economy.
At the same time, the world order is changing. Although the normative shift towards “responsible” arms exports over the past decades has been more discursive than material, the emerging multipolar world will reshape expectations placed on companies and states engaged in arms trade. weapons. Particularly given how the post-Cold War HAC focused on controlling the governance of North-South relations, these changes require a more complex, data-driven approach tailored to history, to understand responsibility in the (Western) system of arms production and transfer. of tomorrow.
Second, despite considerable attention devoted to control and accountability of the global arms trade over the years, the vast majority of studies have focused on states as regulators of the industry, not corporations as as producers, or even co-facilitators. of commerce. This absence of academic research contrasts sharply with the campaigns of NGOs and activists challenging the arms trade which, although not without flaws, have followed and challenged both states. And companies in recent years and for generations.
Why have researchers not paid attention to the responsibilities of weapons manufacturers? Most important is the assertion that industry is seen as a (militarized) instrument of national sovereignty. Justifications closely tied to national security – alongside economic and diplomatic priorities, as well as corporate confidentiality clauses – shroud the sector in secrecy, hindering public access to information. Finally, given that the state acts as an industry regulator and overseer of arms exports, responsibilities are generally assigned to it, with arms companies considered “mere” producers despite the active partnership that often exists between the state and industry.
Regardless of national security reasons, few of these arguments are unique to the arms sector. Privacy shrouds other privileged sectors in secrecy, and many diverse companies strategically exaggerate the public-private binary to evade accountability demands. Yet even in the face of national security claims, the logic of “exceptionalism” only begins to explain how weapons manufacturers managed to get out of control, not why researchers left the industry under-represented. explored.
Given what is already known about the arms industry and its long-standing continuity, the answer to this question appears to be more political than intellectual. This is not to say that targeted research is not warranted in this case, quite the contrary. There is a profound lack of (academic) studies aimed at critically situating arms manufacturers in their historical and transnational contexts, particularly in the post-World War II period. But recognizing the political roots of the knowledge gap, alongside the efforts of activist campaigns to advance in the world of practice, may be the strategy that determines what and how arms trade research is conducted. Which brings me to my third and final takeaway about the limits of calling out hypocrisy.
Although Israel does not meet any of the criteria set out in the Biden administration’s October 13 lawth letter demanding an improvement in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, there were no consequences for the continued supply of American weapons. Although the UK recently suspended some arms export licenses to Israel, it retains its exception for F-35s, and Germany has shown no signs of stopping its military assistance.
These states justified their authority in part by asserting their adherence to liberal democratic values, notably by claiming legitimacy derived from the consent of the governed. While the secrecy and endemic corruption that accompany arms transfers reduce the strength of this social contract, the numerous regulations put in place to oversee arms exports in these countries demonstrate the concern of states to be perceived as legitimate on this question. Arms manufacturers then rely on their claims to national security and the normative leadership of the state to position themselves as ethical actors, while deflecting their own political responsibility by falling back on the status of “mere business” when they are caught transgressing societal norms.
Researchers have noted the organized hypocrisy that tends to guide Western powers in their values-based arms control policies, with security and economic interests often trumping ethical commitments, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Yet the outright abandonment of concern for legitimacy and consistency with regard to Israel’s actions in Gaza breaks new ground, with implications for continued accountability in the sector. In particular, this means that the traditional “name and shame” tactic of exposing the “truth” of state and corporate hypocrisy is no longer – or perhaps never was – enough. . Particularly in the context of increasing armaments in a changing world order, where liberal states and their trading partners may find it easier to rely on national security narratives to justify deviation from their own moral boundaries and legal, new research and activist strategies may be necessary. developed which provoke not only exposure but revelation. In other words, if state and corporate power are ultimately decisive in arms export decision-making despite the remarkably visible and brutally recurring consequences for the affected (Palestinian) populations, then the simple act of Further calling out hypocrisy may lead to few, or only symbolic, reforms.
Instead, or rather in parallel, how can research challenge the dominant assumption in many Western arms-producing societies that: a) arms manufacturers, states and domestic publics that support arms production and trade are somehow legally and morally separable from product use, even when the harmful impacts of product use patterns are widely known in advance; and that b) what is happening in Gaza is somehow acceptable. While the latter point is well beyond the scope of this article, the first point of entry might be to reveal and challenge the underlying myths that support the arms trade itself. To foster more informed public debate, this requires a robust research agenda that explores how contemporary shifts in power and norms shape state behavior, corporate practices, and their intertwined interactions in justificatory claims and material realities that fuel the arms trade.
My thanks to the Responsibility to (Dis)arm workshop participants for their generative insights and to B. Arneson for helpful comments.
Further reading on international electronic relations