A (Sentimental) Farewell to Arms: Emotions, Weapons Control and International Law

BUIS, EMILIANO JERÓNIMO

Ginebra

Congreso; Knowledge Production and International Law; 2018

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

When and why did the law of international security become ?humanitarian?? What role do fear, envy, or friendship play in the regulation of war? Can law offer an effective way out of the irrationality of violence? Possible answers to these questions cannot be addressed by means of strictly legal arguments and should find place in other disciplines which have been traditionally more permeated by an emotional discourse. Law is usually conceived as arationalground, a social construction emanating from the need to objectivise passionate controversies and to find discursively structured solutions to avoid the use of vengeance. Nonetheless, it is also possible to think of law as the result of passions and therefore emotionally apprehensible. From a perspective focused in international relations, it would seem that, in the absence of a superior authority, interactions among States are guided by their feelings and conveniences. Indeed, their behaviour seems less structured on rational and justified reasoning than on national impulses and immediate reactions, sometimes inexplicable from a logical dimension.This paper will attempt to discuss the conceptual discussion on emotions in the field of the regulation of disarmament and non-proliferation. Overcoming the traditional perspective based on fear as a way of legitimizing regulation, I contend that positive feelings such as compassion and empathy/sympathy have taken the floor to build an alternative narrative that might become useful to advance stricter norms. Taking into account that the dynamics involving affections becomes a useful strategy in international fora, my hypothesis here is that the incorporation of a *humanitarian* perspective into areas that have been traditionally dealt with through a more realist *national security* paradigm implies resorting to a different *affective* background which tries to place the protection of individuals at the centre of international concerns. From fear to empathy, the innovative discourse that allows the humanitarian dimension to permeate law can be seen as an out-of-the-box technique that seeks to change the traditional state-centred focus in order to overcome the historical limitations of negotiations in the field of weapons control.