Postinternationalism and Small Arms Control: Theory, Politics, Security.

• Author: Alley, Roderic
• Position: Book review

POSTINTERNATIONALISM AND SMALL ARMS CONTROL

Theory, Politics, Security

Author: Damien Rogers

Published by: Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2009, 286pp, 60 [pounds sterling].

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Small arms are the true weapons of mass destruction: they kill between 80 and 100 thousand people a year, internationalise internal wars, foster crime, and as relatively cheap, portable and long lasting devices provide the stock in trade for most of the killing that will happen today.

Better than any group of terrorists, small arms are truly ubiquitous conflict multipliers. International prohibitions on the illicit trade in small arms have been elusive as have more modest objectives that include observed rules on tracing, regulation of brokering, restrictions on the supply of ammunition, or safe disposal of relinquished stocks.

By any reckoning the trade in small arms is big business. And it is here that this generally informed and comprehensive study by Damien Rogers takes aim. It is his thesis that existing governance and state-based systems, by their sanctioning and promotion of what is regarded as legitimate dealing in small arms, comprise the major roadblocks impeding effective or comprehensive solution to this cancer spreading violence and mayhem. Here Rogers identifies what he terms a postinternational dispensation shaping world affairs, an arena of turbulence and diffusion where the orthodox moorings of a state-based order grappling with global problems through processes of inter-governmentalism are now seriously adrift. This construct, Rogers argues, helps to explain why the international community's incoherent and fragmentary grasp of the small arms problem not only persists but also will continue to falter. It is a critique 'that recognizes the complicity (and in some cases culpability) of ... arms control protagonists fueling the widespread availability and ongoing use of small arms'. The drunkards, it seems, are indeed running the breweries.

This is strong drink, but how well does it stand up? First let us consider the coverage before entering a critique.

An introductory Part I section details post-internationalism, the scope that it offers for individuals to elude eroding state authority, and how it highlights the inadequacy of conventional state-based analysis when appraising transnational problems. (Later in the book, arms brokers are considered a good example of 'sovereign free' actors eluding international law and domestic...