This chapter identifies ten lessons for international relations that emerge from the book.

This chapter provides an overview of the book.

Writing at the beginning of the 1990s on Australia’s disarmament and arms control policies and achievements, Trevor Findlay noted that, although a relative latecomer to the field, Australia had soon become ’an assiduous, well-respected participant ... sporting a range of considered, often imaginative policies and initiatives’. In the main, however, these efforts and initiatives were concentrated in the international arena, with little cross-over into Australia’s domestic political domain. As Findlay described it: ’There is a sense in which Australia has so far tackled, and in most cases accomplished, all the "easy" arms control tasks – those initiatives which can be taken both unilaterally and with relatively little cost to Australia or the government.’ He further added that ’apart from its technical input in the CW area, the Defence Department has so far played only a minor role in shaping Australian disarmament policy,’ and speculated that ’[t]his could change as the international disarmament agenda broadens to include conventional and high-technology weapons that Defence has or plans to acquire’.

Multilateral diplomacy is defined as the management of relations among three or more nation-states, both within and outside international organizations. The main value of multilateral diplomacy is its ability to reduce the complexity of international relations in everyday life, including traveling, sending mail and solving crimes across borders. It produces agreements that are much more practical and less costly than a web of bilateral arrangements between individual countries, and it sets common standards that enable collaboration among scientists, engineers and businesses around the world. In addition to formal international organizations, multilateral diplomacy is practiced in informal or ad hoc groups and coalitions. There are few things in multilateral diplomacy more important than who writes the rules, who sets the agenda, and who holds the pen during negotiations.

A farewell is given to something that is leaving. After thousands of years of freedom for nations to go to war, new proximity, interdependence, risks of nuclear war have led them to exercise restraints and to commit themselves to the UN Charter and the requirement to abandon interstate uses of force. This book concludes that while states will continue as always to compete, the great powers are saying farewell to direct interstate wars. For over 75 years there have been no wars between them and no nuclear weapon has been used. The Charter as rule-based international order has often been violated and the veto has often stood in the way of action. Yet, the General Assembly has asserted the order and declared that it does not recognize illegal annexations. The nuclear arsenals remain and pose existential risks to humanity. At the same time, the fear that they would be used in second strikes makes it implausible that any nuclear-armed states would initiate hostilities that could risk leading to nuclear war. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is seen as out of tune with the twenty-first century – an aberration. The growing interdependence of states is creating restraints against causing ruptures and, at the same time, enables states to use crippling economic measures as substitutes for the use of force. In 1962, the Cuban missile crisis shocked the parties and prompted them to use diplomacy to avert the acute risk of nuclear war. Today, one may speculate if the war in Ukraine and threats to the human environment might shock nations to turn to diplomacy and disarmament and switch to the defence of the threatened human environment a major part of the some 2 trillion dollars that they now spend annually to defend themselves against each other. For this to become reality, an engaged public mind would be as important as it was against slavery and nuclear weapons.

Disarmament – in the sense of eliminating weapons – has not been a success as a means of restraining the use of force between states. Significant discarding of conventional weapons took place in Europe after the Cold War under an agreement (CFE) between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Large scrapping of whole categories of tactical nuclear weapons also occurred through parallel commitments under the so-called Presidential Initiative by Presidents Bush and Gorbachev. However, the subject of ‘general and complete disarmament’ that has long been on the international agenda, has hardly even been taken seriously. And while the non-nuclear weapon states allowed the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 to be prolonged indefinitely, the five nuclear weapons states parties have failed to live up to their obligation to agree on disarmament. A significant failure is also that the US and some other nuclear weapon states have failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty concluded in 1996. The US and the Soviet Union/Russia have sought – not disarmament but – important strategic stability through ‘arms control’ in bilateral agreements. In 2021, they prolonged the START agreement setting limits on the number of American and Russian strategic nuclear weapons and carriers and providing for important mutual verification.

While the focus of the book is on the interstate use of force post-WWII, this chapter holds a rear mirror and offers a perspective of evolution of restraints that started long before states came into being. It recounts how human societies over the centuries became states free from widespread internal use of armed force and how great powers sought to avoid major armed conflicts through policies of balance of power and multilateral conferences. It describes how they developed common rules by concluding conventions and built institutions such as the League of Nations and the United Nations to create a rule-based order and mechanisms and methods to prevent the interstate use of force.

This chapter discusses how states ought to behave in tiems of armed conflict, highlighting the role of such mechanisms as proportionality and military necessity

The enforced disarmament of Germany enshrined within the Treaty of Versailles was a cornerstone of the post-war order. It provided the essential foundation upon which all other calculations regarding security on the European continent were based. The problem was how to enforce it. Three inter-allied control commissions would have free access throughout German territory to monitor the implementation of the land, sea and air provisions, with all their costs to be borne by Germany. The land disarmament clauses provoked the most controversy and anxiety. Serious difficulties confronted the Allied inspectors on the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission (IMCC) trying to judge the good faith of a government, military and indeed people acting under duress. More significantly, British and French authorities came to different views on the purpose and focus of disarmament. These differences shaped the work of the IMCC, hindered the shared understandings necessary to develop a stable disarmament order, and limited the capacity of the League in the later 1920s to broaden disarmament agreements.

This chapter provides an overview of the complex and continuously evolving disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs in Colombia. Colombia has been experimenting with DDR for decades in an attempt to create a “post-conflict” environment amid ongoing armed conflict. As deserters are pressured to provide key intelligence in exchange for benefits, these programs are central to the government’s strategic framing that discredits guerrilla ideologies. In the early 2000s, the Colombian government partnered with a high-end marketing firm to entice guerrillas to leave their groups, with glossy promises of protection, income, and reunion with family members. However, most of these promises are patently false and leave many ex-combatants at risk of violent repercussions from their former groups and further disillusioned with the government. Starting with ad hoc individual demobilizations, to the more formalized process of demobilizing the AUC paramilitaries in 2003–2006, to the expansion of programs for deserters and finally, to the collective demobilization of the FARC in 2016, this chapter reviews the evolution and controversies around these various processes.

The chapter covers Germany’s perspective on the use of force, armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and arms control and disarmament. The first part addresses Germany’s position on the US killing of Iranian General Soleimani, Germany condemning Iranian missile attacks on US bases in Iraq and Germany refining the right of sustainable self-defence. The second part shows the German Federal Court of Justice reaffirming that there is no justification in international law for attacks by the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, the German government’s stand on foreign troop presence in Syria, Germany’s stand on the law of occupation regarding US forces in Syria, Germany considering Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories illegal, Germany’s view on drones, the Federal Constitutional Court affirming only States can claim compensation for violations of international humanitarian law, and the Federal Administrative Court ruling the US may continue to use its base in Germany. The third part covers Germany’s criticism of US anti-personnel landmine policy and Germany’s condemnation of North Korean missile tests.

For much of the decade prior to 1940, Churchill was out of office and often seen as a warmonger. He saw appeasement as a policy not befitting a country of Britain’s standing that failed to take account of innate German militarism. One of his most effective tactics in opposing it was his evocative use of history, drawing parallels between his own life and that of his eighteenth-century ancestor, the 1st Duke of Marlborough. To Churchill, the British government’s dealings with Gandhi and the Congress Party were also a form of appeasement. There was a paradox in his thinking; that the forms of nationalism that bolstered British international power were legitimate, while those that did not were not. Churchill’s opposition to Hitler was based on his own first-hand experiences while researching his Marlborough biography and on his reading of the German ‘mental map’. The chapter traces his evolving response from the German occupation of the Rhineland in 1936 through to the Munich Crisis of 1938 and beyond. It ends by analysing Churchill’s path to power as prime minister, suggesting that far from being a triumph of opportunity, there were simply no other suitable candidates for the post.

Chamberlain’s first challenge on becoming chancellor in 1931 was how to deal with the Great Depression. The reasons why his policies on trade and war debts placed strains on Anglo-American relations, and the consequences for Britain’s ability to wage war in future, are explained, as are the reasons why Churchill agreed with his actions. The responses of the two men to the deterioration in international relations, beginning with the Manchurian crisis and the breakdown of the Geneva Disarmament Conference are compared. There then follows an analysis of how defence policy was transformed in 1934 by Chamberlain working within government for priority for the RAF and by Churchill pressing in the House of Commons for parity with Germany in the air. Priority for air defence implied delay in preparing the army to fight in Europe at the outbreak of war. Chamberlain was also successful in ensuring that Germany rather than Japan was recognised as the main threat, but he failed to persuade Cabinet colleagues that Britain should seek a non-aggression pact with Japan, the chief obstacle being the adverse effect such a pact might have on Anglo-American relations.

Civilians can be protected by eradicating and reducing the availability of weapons that would harm them. While international humanitarian law and international human rights law regulate the use of weapons, international disarmament law outlaws weapons entirely, notably those which tend to have indiscriminate effects and thereby are particularly dangerous for civilians. This chapter considers how anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions, and chemical weapons have been outlawed by dedicated disarmament treaties. It also considers how the UN Arms Trade Treaty regulates and restricts the transfer of almost all conventional weapons.

The Epilogue traces the complex afterlife of gas masks for civilians in five ways: in popular culture and memory of the Second World War; as a sign of protest against government regimes and in favor of social justice and democracy; as an emblem of the antiwar movement especially during the outbreak of the Iraq War in 2003; as an indicator of living during a climate emergency; and in relationship to the face masks of the global COVID-19 pandemic.