This book explores how the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a leading humanitarian actor, addresses the problem of weapons. A triangulation of strategies such as testimonialization, medicalization and legalization, are investigated, with the help of critical security studies literature, to cultivate an understanding of an effects based approach to weapons. The attempt here is not only to introduce some innovative, conceptual tools but also to provide a coherent and critical narrative of the experiences of the ICRC vis-à-vis states to regulate and prohibit weapons. This experiential account of the ICRC’s engagement with the problem of weapons is significant as it produces an empowering, alternative discourse making visible subjugated knowledge in the field of arms control and disarmament.
This book brings together humanitarianism, arms control, and disarmament in the field of global governance and focuses on the International Committee of the Red Cross as a leading humanitarian actor. The interdisciplinary approach articulates innovative tools crafted both contingently and strategically to engage with the problem of weapons.
The third edition of this work sets out a comprehensive and analytical manual of international humanitarian law, accompanied by case analysis and extensive explanatory commentary by a team of distinguished and internationally renowned experts.
The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal. “A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine “Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety.” —San Francisco Chronicle A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten. Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.
Offers expert advice on security to humanitarian volunteers operating in conflict zones. The knowledge provided by this book puts you in a better position to draw that critical line between the calculated and the unacceptable risk, a line that you, and those in your charge, must never cross.
This publication considers lethal autonomous weapon systems, approaching the issue from five different perspectives. It has been published ahead of the first meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts of the High Contracting Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons mandated to examine issues related to emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapon systems in the context of the objectives and purposes of the Convention. The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs Occasional Papers are a series of ad hoc publications featuring, in edited form, papers or statements made at meetings, symposiums, seminars, workshops or lectures that deal with topical issues in the field of arms limitation, disarmament and international security.
The author describes the reasons why humanitarian military interventions succeed or fail, basing his analysis on the interventions carried out in the 1990s in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo, and East Timor.
This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of factors that transform a prima facie non-international armed conflict (NIAC) into an international armed conflict (IAC) and the consequences that follow from this process of internationalization. It examines in detail the historical development as well as the current state of the relevant rules of international humanitarian law. The discussion is grounded in general international law, complemented with abundant references to case law, and illustrated by examples from twentieth and twenty-first century armed conflicts. In Part I, the book puts forward a thorough catalogue of modalities of conflict internationalization that includes outside intervention, State dissolution, and recognition of belligerency. It then specifically considers the legal qualification of complex situations that feature more than two conflict parties and contrasts the mechanism of internationalization of armed conflicts with the reverse process of de-internationalization. Part II of the book challenges the conventional wisdom that members of non-State armed groups do not normally benefit from combatant status. It argues that the majority of fighters belonging to non-State armed groups in most types of internationalized armed conflicts are in fact eligible for combatant status. Finally, Part III turns to belligerent occupation, traditionally understood as a leading example of a notion that cannot be transposed to armed conflicts occurring in the territory of a single State. By contrast, the book argues in favour of the applicability of the law of belligerent occupation to internationalized armed conflicts.
