A necessary step back?

Abstract

A few years back, the rapid progress of international efforts to ban lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) left arms controllers amazed: only five years after the founding of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), the dangers of autonomous weapons were being debated in a UN context, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), with non-state actors and state actors alike finding common ground in rejecting weapon systems beyond human control. Since then, however, the debate has made little progress, despite increasing pressure by activists and a strong international campaign. In this article, we will argue that the strategies used by campaigners, based on ethical and legal concerns, must be complemented by classic security-related arguments. Unfortunately, key lessons of the Cold War, including the mutual security benefits of arms control, seem to have been forgotten. Many concepts that are central to arms control—such as stability and verification—are by no means intuitively understood and must apparently be (re-)“learned”. Some of the world’s most important actors have not been exposed to these concepts, e.g. China, but also other players. Deconstructing military expectations regarding autonomous weapons and focusing on a preventive arms control approach could help the currently stalled process to regain the momentum it needs.