The Arms Trade and the Transformation of Global Order: A Revitalized Research Agenda

Abstract The arms trade is central to the dynamics of violence, inequality, power, and global order, yet international relations (IR) has been surprisingly silent about its operation and its significance. This article makes the case for a revitalized research agenda that is better attuned to the dynamics of global (dis)order and (in)securities generated by the arms trade. I argue that most scholarly approaches to the arms trade and its control are stuck within the parameters of realist, liberal, and constructivist theories of IR that do not adequately explain, let alone critique, their role in the operation of power and maintenance of global order. Meanwhile, critical approaches to war, violence, and security have innovated on conceptual, theoretical, and methodological questions but have largely stopped paying empirical attention to the arms trade as a phenomenon. Drawing on feminist, postcolonial, and anti-colonial critiques, I advance a framework for understanding the dynamics and effects of the arms trade that centers on unevenly internationalizing arms capital operating in tandem with states’ geopolitical ambitions, the racialized and gendered relations of violence within and between states that grow out of the colonial encounter and resistance to it, and the uneven scale at which armed violence is generated, facilitated, and effected. I highlight five key themes for further research that cut across the domains of political economy, security and order, and across the phases of the production, circulation, use, effects, and control of weapons.