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.

The period 1919–1935 was a difficult one for Armstrongs and Vickers. With the end of the war domestic and international demand collapsed, and the firms were left with significant excess armament capacity and mounting financial problems. Armstrongs and Vickers responded by diversifying into other businesses, but with limited success. The contraction of the market led the two armaments firms to merge. The Great Depression further eroded military spending and dashed hopes of expanding exports. In the early to mid-1930s three things happened simultaneously: the international situation deteriorated, arms control proceeded but did not solve international insecurity, and there was growing public ire about the past behavior of armament firms. The subsequent Royal Commission into the armament firms cast Vickers in a very negative light and the firms were threatened with nationalization, something neither the firms nor the government wanted. The intervention of Sir Maurice Hankey in defense of the firms proved vital in heading off nationalization. The interwar period was therefore an extended existential crisis for Armstrongs and Vickers.

Wise governance for nuclear weaponry and synthetic biology requires humankind to move more swiftly than today in certain technological domains, while actively slowing down the pace in other areas. For example, advancing technologies for aerial and space-based surveillance, coupled with AI for interpreting the resulting high-resolution images, could allow nations to track in real time the location of other nations’ nuclear missile submarines. Such a development would remove one of the fundamental stabilizing factors in today’s military affairs: the guarantee of a second-strike capability, which lies at the heart of nuclear deterrence. These kinds of technological breakthroughs urgently need to be restrained via diplomatic agreements akin to the superpowers’ arms control treaties during the Cold War. Similarly, the existing “Wild West” in synthetic biology and AI requires swift governmental action to create effective regulatory frameworks for these fields, both within nations and among nations.

This chapter traces Japan’s status concerns from the late 19th century leading up to the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. It examines Japan’s approach to naval power after the First World War and derives expectations for how Japan would react to an international agreement such as the Washington Naval Treaty from two competing perspectives: material interests and IST. It tests these hypotheses through a detailed account of Japan’s approach to the Washington Conference of 1921–1922. It finds that although Japan faced a growing threat from the United States in the Western Pacific, Japan accepted greater restraints on warship construction in order to maintain its access to the great power club, alongside Britain and the United States, as part of the ‘Big Three’ at the conference. Subsequently, the US Immigration Act of 1924, which unprecedentedly banned Japanese immigration to America, served as a major betrayal of Japan’s sacrifices for the sake of the international order, thus altering Japanese perceptions of the openness and fairness of the Washington system. It convinced many moderates that the West would never consider Japan its equal, and it empowered anti-treaty factions begin the costly process of abrogating Japan’s commitment to the Washington system.

This chapter, which is split into three parts, covers Germany’s perspective on the use of force; armed conflict and international humanitarian law; and arms control and disarmament. The first part discusses the finding of the German Constitutional Court that self-defence against non-State actors is a tenable interpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter; the Federal Government justifying the fight against ‘ISIL’ in Syria on grounds of collective self-defence; Germany’s take on the legality of the Turkish invasion of north-eastern Syria under international law; Germany backing India’s cross-border strikes against terrorists in Pakistan-administered Kashmir; and Germany’s position that Saudi Arabia was invited to intervene in Yemen. The second part deals with the launch of the Humanitarian Call for Action by France and Germany; Germany opposing the new US position on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank; and Germany commenting on the ILC draft principles on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict. Germany’s condemnation of DPRK’s missile test is addressed in the last part.

Thirty-years on, the high expectations that accompanied the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet communism have been largely confounded by the emergence of the autocratic Putin regime and the rekindling of Great Power rivalry between Russia and the United States. In this chapter, we argue that these outcomes were not inevitable, but rather were significantly the result of failures in Western, and particularly American, statecraft during the 1990s. First, the democratic transition was undermined by the type of economic transition, which Western policy networks promoted in post-Soviet Russia. Had Western influencers promoted a New Deal or social democratic model of economic transition, the distributional effects which undermined the legitimacy of the Yeltsin regime would have been far less severe. Second, the American failure to devise and pursue a strategy to effectively integrate Russia into a post-NATO European security architecture made it almost certain that “left out” Russia would react negatively to NATO expansion to the East. Had the United States followed up on Gorbachev’s vision of security architecture for a “Common European Home,” the ongoing clash between Russia and the West might well have been averted.

This chapter recounts Mikhail Gorbachev’s vision for the post-Cold War world order, focusing in particular on the disarmament negotiations and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The chapter argues that Gorbachev’s foreign policy was underpinned by the ambition to recapture moral leadership in the world (which, for the Soviet leader, was closely linked to the legitimacy of the Soviet project, and indeed to his own political legitimacy). This ambition was clearly discernible in his approach to disarmament. The vision of a nuclear-free world (as presented by the General Secretary in 1986) was instrumental to the broader agenda of global leadership, which, Gorbachev felt, the Soviet Union had long abandoned. The same agenda animated his approach to the war in Afghanistan: Leaving Afghanistan was important for moral reasons, as a practical manifestation of the new spirit Gorbachev purported to represent. The exit was delayed, however, when the Soviet leader realized that quitting the war carried its own implications for Moscow’s global standing, and, in particular, undercut Soviet credibility in the third world. By recentering the Cold War endgame on Gorbachev’s global ambitions, the paper seeks to contextualize the General Secretary’s approach to foreign policy within the broader tradition of Soviet political leadership during and after the Cold War.

What Bernard Brodie said about nuclear weapons in 1946 continues to be true: The most important thing about nuclear weapons is that they exist and are terribly powerful. This was true in both the Cold War and the subsequent era. Although the situation has changed a great deal, there are striking continuities, especially in American attitudes and policies. Most obviously, the United States has consistently opposed nuclear proliferation, with only a very few exceptions for its closest friends. Second, the debate within the United States about the role of nuclear weapons has been altered only slightly by the end of the Cold War. The fundamental division between those who see nuclear weapons as having a revolutionary impact on world politics and those who do not continues. Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review makes arguments that are remarkably similar to those made under the Raegan administration. In parallel, the arguments made against Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) systems today are quite similar to those advanced during the Cold War, despite the radically changed conditions. This indicates that ways of thinking about nuclear weapons have become deeply engrained.

These brief concluding remarks look to the future of nuclear arms control and disarmament, but not with great optimism.

This chapter considers the inter-relationship between the right to life and arms control and disarmament more broadly, encompassing also prohibitions and restrictions on conventional weapons as well as those pertaining to weapons of mass destruction. It offers definitions of both ‘arms control’ and ‘disarmament’ in the absence of agreement under international law as to the scope of each term. It then considers obligations under global arms control and disarmament treaties, first with respect to specific weapons of mass destruction and then with respect to conventional weapons. The use of weapons is addressed separately from disarmament duties and other arms control obligations.

The answers that each political community finds to the law reform questions posed by AI may differ, but a near-term threat is that AI systems capable of causing harm will not be confined to one jurisdiction – indeed, it may be impossible to link them to a specific jurisdiction at all. This is not a new problem in cybersecurity, but different national approaches to regulation will pose barriers to effective regulation exacerbated by the speed, autonomy, and opacity of AI systems. For that reason, some measure of collective action is needed. Lessons may be learned from efforts to regulate the global commons as well as moves to outlaw certain products (weapons and drugs, for example) and activities (such as slavery and child sex tourism). The argument advanced here is that regulation, in the sense of public control, requires active involvement of states. To co-ordinate those activities and enforce global ‘red lines’, this chapter posits a hypothetical International Artificial Intelligence Agency (IAIA), modelled on the agency created after the Second World War to promote peaceful uses of nuclear energy, while deterring or containing its weaponization and other harmful effects.

Chapter 4 examines international attempts to regulate the acquisition of weapons by those at war. The chapter examines the development of export controls, the disarmament regime, and Security Council arms embargoes as part of the normative background to the Arms Trade Treaty (2014).

Chapter 5 covers the second year of the Reagan administration, and the growing public concern over nuclear war. It discusses the rise of a major grassroots movement, which called for a freeze in the production, deployment, and testing of nuclear weapons by the US and the Soviet Union. The nuclear freeze campaign soon morphed into the largest peacetime peace movement in American history. The force of the movement would make foreign policy the political liability of the Reagan administration. Public demands for a “freeze” on nuclear weapons began to elicit support from within the Democratic Party. The freeze campaign, and a broader “peace movement,” became the Democrats’ most potent political weapon against Reagan’s conservative revolution. The chapter analyzes the administration’s struggle to combat the movement, and persuade the public of the benefits of its own strategy for reducing nuclear weapons. Among other aspects, it discusses Reagan unveiling of a START initiative. By late 1982, Reagan’s policies had raised tensions with Moscow, upset NATO allies, weakened support for his arms buildup, and generated antinuclear movements across America and Western Europe.