Only a cynic would claim the UN’s planned treaty to regulate and limit the international arms trade is an absurdity. The world may be awash with small arms at present but guns rust, deteriorate or break. It will be many years before real control can be brought to this deadly trade. Nevertheless a line had to be drawn in the sand at some point. Hopefully a year from now, a powerful arms trade agreement will come into force and then allow this vast project to begin.
There will be tough questions. When for instance is the sale of new arms from a producing country legal? The answer today is when that government decides it is. Most countries appear to honor UN arms embargoes on areas of conflict. But middlemen, ready with phony end-user certificates, can redirect weapons apparently sold legitimately to one side or the other. Sometimes intelligence services of the vendor countries connive at this subterfuge. Most often, producer countries do not really care.
The arms trade is a profitable business. It is not therefore surprising that yesterday the world’s most entrepreneurial nation, the United States, was the only UN member to vote against the planned agreement. The constitutional right for Americans to bear arms perhaps blinds the US to the consequences of being ready to supply everyone else beyond its borders. China and Russia unfortunately abstained from voting. To their great credit three other major arms manufacturers — France, Germany and the UK — were among the 139 states that voted for the agreement. Bulgaria and the Ukraine, two significant arms traders, also signed up.
The precise wording of the deal will be one of the first big challenges of new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Ideally. the agreement will be ratified by all member states. However. For that to happen, complex drafting and tough behind-the-scenes negotiations will be required. A unanimous vote in the General Assembly would make it extremely difficult for legislators in any single country to throw it out. The key component of this agreement will be its moral force. If world leaders mean what they say about the tragedy of the Third World conflicts compounding endemic poverty, disease, starvation and lack of education, then they will get behind this groundbreaking initiative. If, however, their words were mere hokum, they will do their best to sabotage or dilute the proposed provisions at every turn.
The supply of arms, covertly or openly, has been part and parcel of diplomacy for many states. Implicit in a UN arms trade agreement is the idea that in due time, this deadly diplomatic tool will be removed from governments. Here may be the sticking point and not just for Washington. It must however be overcome. Whoever they are, arms traders are merchants of death and, according to Amnesty International, their wares kill 400,000 people a year. Maybe if they were also obliged to supply the same number of coffins annually, they would recognize the enormity of what they are doing.
