Arming the Outlaws: On the Moral Limits of the Arms Trade
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321718754516 |
| Author | James Christensen |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
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Political Studies
2019, Vol. 67(1) 116 –131
Arming the Outlaws: On
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Arms Trade
James Christensen
Abstract
There is a general presumption against arming outlaw states. But can that presumption sometimes
be overturned? The argument considered here maintains that outlaw states can have legitimate
security interests and that transferring weapons to these states can be an appropriate way of
promoting those interests. Weapons enable governments to engage in wrongful oppression and
aggression, but they also enable them to fend off predators in a manner that can be beneficial
to their citizens. It clearly does not follow from the fact that a state is oppressive or aggressive
that it will never be a victim of wrongful aggression itself, and while an outlaw state’s primary
aim in repelling such aggression will often be the preservation of its own power, its defensive
manoeuvres will sometimes also serve its citizens’ interests. In short, supplying weapons to outlaw
states may sometimes contribute to the protection of innocents.
Keywords
arms trade, outlaw states, just war theory, international conflict, civil war, foreign policy
Accepted: 31 December 2017
If, not unreasonably, we were to follow Albert Camus in assessing the relative urgency of
philosophical questions by reference to the actions that they entail, it is likely that those
surrounding the international arms trade would rank highly. ‘I have never seen anyone die
for the ontological argument’, Camus (2000 [1942]: 11) observed, dismissing its signifi-
cance. But countless people have died as a result of states approving or promoting the sale
of weapons abroad. It is somewhat surprising, then, that the women and men whose job it
is to think carefully about ethical issues have largely bypassed the subject. Political phi-
losophers have devoted varying degrees of attention to related and adjacent questions
about the justice of war (Fabre, 2014; McMahan, 2009), the morality of markets (Sandel,
2012; Satz, 2010), the private ownership of firearms (DeGrazia, 2016; Lafollette, 2000)
and the normative dimensions of international commerce more generally (Christensen,
2017; James, 2012; Risse, 2007), but the arms trade itself has been almost entirely
Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Corresponding author:
James Christensen, Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK.
Email: james.christensen@essex.ac.uk
Christensen
117
ignored.1 There is, of course, no paucity of social-scientific literature exploring empirical
issues relating to the changing dynamics of international arms markets (Stohl and Grillot,
2009; Tan, 2010), but the moral concerns that draw so much attention to the arms trade in
the first place have been neglected. This article contributes to resetting the balance. In
doing so, it joins a growing body of literature that seeks to answer a range of overlooked
questions at the margins of just war theory.2
From a normative perspective, the most politically salient question about the international
arms trade concerns its scope, or moral limits. There are three sets of scope-restrictions that
might be placed on the arms trade: restrictions on what can be sold, restrictions on who can
participate and restrictions on what can be sold to certain participants. (The third category is
relevant because we might think that certain products should not be sold to certain parties,
even if the latter should not be excluded from the market altogether.) In this article, I consider
the second set of scope-restrictions: restrictions on who can participate.3 It is the putative
failure of politicians to appropriately limit the scope of the arms trade in this dimension that
elicits the most vociferous opposition to international arms transfers. States regularly author-
ize the sale of weapons to outlaw states that, critics maintain, should be excluded from the
market.4 (By an ‘outlaw state’, I mean an oppressive regime that violates the basic rights of
its own citizens, or an aggressive regime that wrongfully threatens the security of outsiders.)
When I began writing this article, the British government was under fire for its continued
provision of weapons to Saudi Arabia, a country that had recently been condemned by the
UN for its indiscriminate aerial attacks on schools, hospitals and other forms of civilian infra-
structure in Yemen (MacAskill, 2016). And the government has also recently been rebuked
for selling arms to regimes guilty of abusing their own citizens. At the outset of the Arab
Spring, the British authorities revoked export licences covering sales to several Arab coun-
tries engaged in the violent repression of civilian protesters (Quinn and Booth, 2011), but
they have been criticized for continuing to supply weapons to a range of countries about
which the Home Office has the ‘most serious [and] wide-ranging human rights concerns’
(Townsend and Boffey, 2014).
Weapons transfers to outlaw states typically contribute to the infliction of wrongful
harms in a number of ways. They provide the tools with which domestic security forces
coerce, maim, and kill, and with which national armies aggress against outsiders; they
increase the power of the state relative to internal dissidents; and they increase the power
of the state relative to members of the international community (Christensen, 2015: 34).
Consequently, there is a general presumption against arming such states; the provision of
arms to oppressive and aggressive regimes is prima facie wrongful. When a state provides
weapons to such regimes, its status as a society in good standing in the international com-
munity is called into question. If it is to preserve that status, it must establish that its
actions are permissible. This is something that Britain – along with other major arms
exporters, such as the United States – has repeatedly failed to do.
But can the presumption against arming oppressive and aggressive regimes sometimes
be overturned? And, if so, under what conditions could the justificatory burden be met?
According to the argument that I want to consider here, outlaw states can have legitimate
security interests, and transferring weapons to these states can be an appropriate way of
promoting those interests. Weapons enable governments to engage in wrongful oppres-
sion and aggression, but they also enable them to fend off predators in a manner that can
be beneficial to their citizens. It clearly does not follow from the fact that a state is oppres-
sive or aggressive that it will never be a victim of wrongful aggression itself, and while
an outlaw state’s primary aim in repelling such aggression will often be the preservation
118
Political Studies 67(1)
of its own power, its defensive manoeuvres will sometimes also serve its citizens’ inter-
ests. In short, supplying weapons to outlaw states may sometimes contribute to the pro-
tection of innocents.
We should note immediately that while supporting an outlaw state by supplying weapons
may contribute to the protection of its innocent citizens, supplying weapons is one mode of
support among several, and, under many circumstances, it will be a suboptimal approach.
Any evaluation of a proposed arms transfer to an outlaw state must take a comparative form.
Whether such a transfer can be permissible will depend, inter alia, on how it fares relative
to other actions that could be taken instead. If an arms transfer is expected to produce worse
outcomes than alternative available options, then it will not be permissible.
Comparative evaluation of available modes of intervention must proceed on a case by
case basis, but certain considerations can be expected to consistently tell against the pro-
vision of arms (which is not to say that arms transfers will not be the best option, all-
things-considered). Most obviously, arms transfers provide outlaw states with tools that
can be used for oppressive and aggressive ends; other types of support lack this feature.
Another distinctive shortcoming is the problem of ‘leakage’. Outlaw states may pass on
weapons to third parties or be unable to ensure the security of stockpiles. The risk of
stockpiles being looted is especially high in times of crisis (Stohl and Grillot, 2009: 100;
relatedly, Pattison, 2015: 460–461).
But there is one consideration that can be expected to tell in favour of providing arms
(which is not to say that arms transfers will be the best option, all-things-considered),
namely, providing arms may be less costly to the intervener than other modes of support,
such as sending troops. Sending troops exposes interveners to an immediate risk of severe
physical harm, while sending weapons does not. Sending weapons rather than troops may
increase the risk of harm to others (either to the intended beneficiaries of the intervention
or to third parties), but this may sometimes be permissible. It may be fairer for the largest
costs of an intervention to be borne by those whose interests it is intended to serve
(McMahan, 2010).
In the next two sections of this article, I show how, and under what conditions, arming
an outlaw state can be permissible. I begin by...
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