US Arms Control Dynamics in the Era of Humanitarian Disarmament: A Case Study of the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Abstract

As the world’s leading weapons user and producer, the United States is often perceived as an unchanging obstacle to the prohibition of inhumane weapons. American participation in negotiating humanitarian disarmament agreements has included defending the utility of US weapons, pressuring allies to water down treaties, and designing international disarmament law that requires little actual disarmament effort. A focus in the literature on ratification of and compliance with agreements obfuscates the behavioral and policy changes that states make in moving toward adoption of international humanitarian law. However, using the case of the cluster munitions ban, this chapter shows that while the US remains an opponent of humanitarian disarmament, American arms control behavior is gradually becoming constrained by increasingly strong humanitarian principles of disarmament.