INTRODUCTION

For many years the campaign to end nuclear proliferation attempted to demonstrate the link between the existence of nuclear weapons and the chances of having to fight a war where there would be no winners. One of the most powerful tools of the non-proliferation campaign was to show that the true losers in nuclear war would be the members of society and not armies or government officials. After the end of the Cold War, the possibility of engaging in an all-out nuclear war has become negligible, but innocent individuals within societies continue to be the prime victims of violence and war.

In the current situation, government and non-government actors are striving to control and, where possible, prevent conflict world-wide, through a variety of means. Research is being undertaken into non-material aspects of violence, such as conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and the relationship between development and security. At the same time, there is an attempt to control and prevent the actual material elements of war and conflict, such as conventional arms production and trade, and the growing impact of the indiscriminate use of light weapons in societies as a whole.

The proliferation of weapons is an understandable concern. After all, wars are fought with conventional weapons systems produced by a small number of countries and used indiscriminately world-wide. The possession and use of these weapons systems decisively influence the political outcome of conflict by serving to deter, pacify, resist, or defeat a military enemy. Lacking the capacity to influence political events in the same way, small weapons in conflict and war are a necessary, but secondary, tool of violence designed for use by military forces against military forces.

Whatever the political outcome of wars, the post-conflict situation concentrates on the control and reduction of the decisive weapons of war, but not on the secondary tools of war. Thus, it is not difficult to understand why the greatest amount of damage and violence suffered by the individuals in societies results from the existence of vast amounts of cheap and easily accessible and replicated weapons, such as landmines, guns, machine guns, grenades, pistols, and rocket launchers.

Since the end of the Cold War, international public opinion has become more aware of the human tragedy suffered by countries in the throws of civil war and/or recovering from decades of internal war. The public, assisted by the international media, better understands the efforts needed to put a country back on its feet. But it also sees how international efforts, such as those of the United Nations, are constantly undermined by the continued existence of uncontrolled violence and the presence of large amounts of weapons. Even if peacekeeping missions are successful, the post-conflict reconstruction process in a country is imperilled by the existence of violence and weapons. The roots of violence have often pointed to the need for socio-economic development, effective democracy, and a credible law and order mechanism. But this remedy requires time and stability.

If there is indiscriminate access to the tools of violence (i.e. weapons), stability will be harder to maintain while the necessary development and peace take hold.

Taking these aspects into account, it is not difficult to see why there is such a concentrated effort to consider all the variables of violence. Nevertheless, these are more often than not undertaken from an isolated point of view and not in a holistic manner. A case in point is the study of ways to control the proliferation of instruments of violence. In this area, there is a division between those who would like to see more control in the legal trade of conventional weapons systems, and those who worry about the massive trade in illegal light weapons. Yet, these two topics should not be seen in isolation, but as part of a whole.

TWO SIDES TO THE SAME COIN

Present discussions of the management and control of conventional weapons are divided into two general research areas:

conventional weapons transfers; and

proliferation of light weapons.

The division is undertaken to encourage discussion of issues that could easily become political minefields otherwise. When considered separately, these issues can be subdivided into a number of direct and indirect security and development matters.

Conventional weapons transfers

This division touches upon all issues directly or indirectly related to the way conventional weapons are legally traded between international actors. It can be subdivided into many areas of security concern, such as:

arms export policies and regulations;

a register of conventional weapons;

suppliers and recipients;

the dynamics of the national military industrial complex;

defence-related employment and political constituencies;

exports and listings related to dual-use technologies;

the relationship between weapons sales and armed conflict;

the making of national threat perceptions; and

the legitimate need for optimal defence capabilities.

Proliferation of light weapons

This looks at all direct and indirect topics which relate to or impact upon the patterns of illegal proliferation of light weapons (i.e. those that are easily portable). The topic can be subdivided in a variety of ways, for example:

illegal transfers of small arms and political instability;



increases in crime and violence, banditry, and terror;



civilian casualties of conflict;



internal conflict and civil war;



failed states and weapons control during multilateral peace missions;



weapons pipelines and international organised crime;



ammunition control;



border control;



weapons caches; and



the emergence of micro-economies based on supply and demand for light weapons (i.e. gun rental, crude ammunition factories, crude weapons manufacture to supply growing markets, and keeping the pipeline supplied with all logistics to serve the gun-runners).

Although the divisions render these complex topics manageable from a research perspective, as well as from a political point of view, they also produce a mind-set which naturally isolates the topics from each other, preventing a holistic approach to the issue of controlling conventional weapons. Therefore, the fact that we are talking of the same problem area, is often obscured by the emphases placed on divisions and subdivisions, in turn, necessary to produce research, policy, and action.

Although an isolationist view of the issues involved in dealing with conventional weapons proliferation might lead to faster action, it also increases the risk of taking separate, and often counter-productive measures in facing the problem. It is thus not unusual for governments to be seen, on the one hand, as controlling weapons, and, on the other hand, as simultaneously pushing weapons sales. The end result is that, though coherent policies for coping with one aspect of the conventional arms issue can be produced, the same coherence is seldom found when looking at policies dealing with the whole spectrum of the problem.

To move the issue of arms proliferation beyond the realm of facile, short term answers, researchers and policy-makers must strive to take a holistic approach. Thus, the linkages between issues related to conventional arms transfers and those that deal with the illegal trade in small arms must be explored and discussed.

FINDING THE LINKAGES

Linkages between the legal trade in conventional arms and the illegal proliferation of light weapons are not difficult to find. After all, many of the weapons that flow uncontrolled through borders in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe are remnants of the vicious circle of arming ideologically opposed factions during the Cold War era.

Powers with a vested interest in different regional conflicts, that reflected their spheres of influence, both legally and illegally flooded entire regions with weapons. In some cases, as in the weapons export policies of the 1980s in relation to the Iran-Iraq war for example, this policy backfired on the suppliers themselves as was seen in the Gulf War of 1991.

In others, such as in the flooding of Central America with weapons, the eventual resolution of internal conflict initialled an uncontrolled flow of redundant, excess light weapons that found their way to specialised criminal markets, such as that provided by the drug cartels in South America.

Flooding a country or a region with conventional weapons systems and easily portable light weapons - ideal for insurgent and freedom fighter use - has often generated civil wars, the collapse of fragile states into total anarchy, mass killing of non-combatants, and/or outright invasion of countries by neighbouring states. Countries that supplied weapons during a specific political moment in the international context increasingly found themselves attempting to control and even combat the same weapons at a later date.

The paradox is that even when the international community has acted jointly to prevent or reduce the humanitarian crises resulting from civil wars and imploding states, the most serious problem they encounter is that of disarming warring factions and restoring law and order in post-conflict societies. The belief that peace depends on establishing a secure environment for elections and post-conflict reconstruction has placed many peace keepers, for example, face to face with problems of weapons control, weapons accounting, and weapons destruction.

Yet, once peace is achieved in the short term, the weapons that remain in a country after drawn out conflicts, are not systematically collected or destroyed. These weapons achieve an economic power of their own by ensuring individual survival, by being used as cheque books for basic needs, or by being sold to economic advantage. Whatever the choice, the result is the same: an increase in lawlessness, banditry and crime, and the flooding of neighbouring regions with illegal weapons that in turn produce political instability and create the seeds for organised international crime. The internal instability of these neighbouring states often fuels government needs for larger numbers of police, more military efforts, and more equipment. The vicious cycle connecting the legal trade in conventional weapons with the proliferation of illegal light weapons is thus complete. Examples of this type of connection are abundant in Africa and Asia today.

The identification of linkages is useful as it allows researchers and policy makers to use a broader analytical spectrum when considering problems and solutions posed by the proliferation of conventional weapons. In some cases this may lead to short term solutions to a specific problem area that do not contradict long term solutions in the same or other problem areas. In other cases, it may even lead to breakthroughs in otherwise intractable issues by applying pressure points in areas that have not normally been considered as being linked. Thus, the recognition of linkages between conventional arms issues might not only serve to look at a problem in a holistic way, but also to find non-traditional solutions to problems created in the conventional weapons area by identifying and applying unusual, but related, pressure points.

A HOLISTIC VIEW THAT CAN BREAK THE STALEMATE

The first noticeable aspect when considering the linkage between the legal trade in conventional weapons and the proliferation of illegal light weapons is that the former is seen to be national in character and international in consequences, while the latter is international in character and national in consequences.

This important distinction explains much of the character of the debate on the problem of and the solution to both issues. The discussion of the reduction or control of the trade in conventional weapons is politically charged since it touches issues such as foreign, defence and economic policy, and sovereignty. Because of its high level of political interaction, the problems of controlling the conventional arms trade, more often than not, condition and hamper international co-operation to find acceptable solutions among countries. Unlike this, the discussion on ways to control the illegal flow of light weapons between borders, actually encourages regional and international co-operation (i.e. to control the negative national impact of the indiscriminate and unregulated availability and use of light weapons in civilian populations).

Future thought about conventional weapons control and the proliferation of light weapons should paradoxically concentrate on the second theme, which is non-threatening politically, but absolutely necessary to obtain peace, stability and development. By concentrating on an issue where no one is immediately seen to be at fault, the international community and national public opinion can become directly aware of the links between order, disarmament and peace, versus disorder, indiscriminate proliferation of weapons and violence. This impacts directly on the ability of countries to engage in sustainable development practices.

CONCLUSION

There is much more that countries can do through international co-operation and reduce the numbers of light weapons than is realised, but unless countries start to concentrate on the proliferation of light weapons, they will never manage to reach an agreement on the issue of reducing conventional weapons transfers, because of the linkage between these issues.

If both conventional arms sales and the control of light weapons are seen as part of the same intellectual package, then the international community could concentrate on assisting in the control and reduction of light weapons flows across borders, which would encourage regional co-operation, allow for stability and permit development to take place. Stability and development would act as a confidence-building measure across borders, resulting in decreased military budgets.

In short, as long as light weapons are considered to be a ‘light issue’, the need for continued investment in major conventional weapons systems will continue to increase, as governments seek to contain the spill-over effect of massive armed disorder across their borders.

This article is an edited version of a paper presented at the seminar on Population Movements in Southern Africa, Institute for Defence Policy, Halfway House, 3 July 1996. It is published as part of the Towards Collaborative Peace Project, sponsored by the Government of Switzerland, the Royal Netherlands Government and various other governments and foundations, and endorsed by the United Nations Development Programme in South Africa.