Examining the Influence of the Ottawa Treaty and the Oslo Convention on Opt-out States

抄録

The Ottawa Treaty, or the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC), and the Oslo Convention, or the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), have attracted many international relations scholars. The multilateral regulatory conventions pertaining to military weapons were established despite the fact that great powers had opposed these conventions due to military security considerations. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and middle powers succeeded in establishing APMBC and CCM by emphasizing the inhumanity of weapons to increase the number of signatories to the conventions. Accordingly, existing studies have focused on how the humanitarian norm factor (rather than the military security factor) contributed to increasing the number of original members of the conventions before their establishment. However, we must note that the conventions faced opposition from great powers and many states did not join them at the time of their establishment as had been expected. With NGOs’ goal of abolishing weapons from the world in mind, one of the reasons why the conventions were highly evaluated is that, once established, they were considered to influence even the states that did not join the conventions through pressuring them to become members, not use the weapons, and so forth. Accordingly, it is essential to explore whether the conventions have influenced such states since their establishment. If they have, has their influence resulted from humanitarian considerations as it did before the establishment? Alternatively, as is often the case with regulatory conventions of military weapons, does their influence rest on states’ security considerations? As a first attempt to answer this research question, the present paper examines why the influence on opt-out states has been different between the conventions. The analysis shows that security considerations were more important than humanitarian norms in terms of the effects that the conventions had on states that were not party.