The Journal of Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer
Online ISSN : 2423-8546
Print ISSN : 2423-8538
ISSN-L : 2423-8538
Volume 2017, Issue 1
Displaying 1-10 of 10 articles from this issue
  • [in Japanese]
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 1
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Download PDF (495K)
  • From the Emergence of the Sovereign-State System to the Present
    TAMARA ENOMOTO
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 3-20
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Television media accounts often report with disapproval that large amounts of arms are flowing into the Middle East and North Africa and falling into the hands of non-state armed groups. In fact, states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United States have supplied assault rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition, and other kinds of weapons to Syrian rebel groups since the conflict began in Syria in 2011. Some of these arms have been diverted to a broader range of groups, including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). But why, exactly, are arms transfers to non-state actors considered morally, ethically, or legally problematic? The problematization of arms transfers to non-state actors has changed significantly since the formation of the sovereign-state system. This article gives an overview of the shifts in international policy debates on arms transfers to non-state actors from the emergence of the sovereign-state system to the Cold War period. It then introduces how ‘the problem’ has been framed and defined from the 1990s onwards. The article argues that each framing of ‘the problem’ has reflected the predominant conception of statehood in each period. Finally, it outlines the current state of affairs and future prospects for international policy debates.
    Download PDF (697K)
  • TETSUYA SAHARA
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 21-30
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    In this paper, the author attests to the fact that post-Cold War arms recycling is one of the decisive factors that has reproduced a chain of regional conflicts. When hostilities break out, surplus arms – often obsolete weapons of secondary importance – pour into zones of conflict. After the war, the weapons subsequently move to neighbouring regions of unrest and ignite new conflicts. The Yugoslav War of Succession clearly displayed this pattern. The same mechanism is present in the on-going Syrian Civil War, where the used arms from the Libyan battlefield have played an important role in the deterioration of the situation. As the Syrian Civil War became a quagmire, the increasing external arms supply to the rebels eventually gave rise to the Islamist extremists and prepared the way for the ascendance of the “Islamic State” (IS).
    Download PDF (661K)
  • MUSUTAFA TÜRKES
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 31-39
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    This paper explores why and how the government of Justice and Development Party (JDP) and the European Union (EU) reached the so-called 18 March deal on the Syrian refugee issue. First, this paper points out the motives of both the EU, particularly Merkel, and the JDP leadership. Second, it shows basic flaws in the approaches of both sides regarding the refugee issue, the readmission agreement and visa liberalisation. It further asserts that the failure of the deal had some impact on Turkey as well as the EU. In fact, the refugee problem and the visa liberalisation issue have not been solved, but only transformed. This paper argues that refugees are the victims and, once again, are being instrumentalised by both sides.
    Download PDF (623K)
  • The Greek State and Society Confronted with Migrant and Refugee Question(s), 1980-2016
    TASOS KOSTOPOULOS
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 41-50
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Why the arrival of more than 1 million of Middle Eastern refugees in Greece during 2015 and 2016 did not provoke an open racist backlash, just as it happened in other European countries during the same period? A number of factors, both circumstantial and/or historical, may explain this development. The transitional nature of the refugee border crossing, judicial suppression of local Nazis but also the recent discredit of private TV Channels and the availability of volunteer activists generated by the recent capitulation of the SYRIZA government to the troika, are the main circumstantial reasons that have contributed to the massive show of solidarity that did not allow xenophobic reactions to take the upper hand. As for the historical reasons, they can be traced back to the fact that up to one fifth of today’s Greek population is itself of refugee descent –and the subsequent collective memories arising from that.
    Download PDF (659K)
  • The Controversy over the Plan of Budgetary Limitation
    Tomoari Matsunaga
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 51-73
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Although the Geneva Disarmament Conference (1932–34) was the largest international conference of its time since the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, it received little attention or study for a long time. However, in the 1990s, Dick Richardson and Carolyn Kitching ignited new interest in the conference, and since then, there have been many studies about it. According to the new orthodoxy put forth by Richardson and Kitching about the conference, the British government’s negative stance to international disarmament was greatly responsible for the conference’s failure. At the same time, those studies tend to overlook the role of the second Labour government (June 1929 to August 1931), which took charge of preparing for the Disarmament Conference. This article aims to elucidate the disarmament policy of the Labour government.
     Unlike the preceding Conservative government (November 1924 to June 1929) and the National government (August 1931 to June 1935) that followed, the Labour government was sincere in its pursuit of international disarmament. Their disarmament policy was controlled by a strong alliance between Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson and a Conservative politician, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, the British representative to the League of Nations. The government’s strategy for the conference was that Britain would take the initiative in achieving a consensus on the budgetary limitation of armament. This strategy came close to success because the United States, which had been the strongest opponent of the budgetary limitation, leant to accepting it under the heavy pressure of the public opinion. The Foreign Office also considered conceding to the French demand for security against Germany in order to reach an agreement at the conference. However, after the Labour government collapsed in August 1931, British disarmament policy drastically changed. Under the National government, the service departments successfully vetoed the Foreign Office’s disarmament policy. Had the National government adopted the policy of the former Labour government, the Geneva Disarmament Conference might have succeeded.
    Download PDF (785K)
  • Ken Kotani
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 75-90
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    This essay focuses on the preliminary negotiations of the second London Naval Conference held in 1934 from the Japanese, American, and British points of view. International crises in the early 1930s, such as the Manchurian incident of 1931 and the rise of Nazi Germany, strongly influenced UK and US naval policy. The British Royal Navy in particular faced strategic challenges by Germany and Italy in Europe and Japan in the Far East. Serious financial constraints prevented the navy from countering both threats, so the British government decided to prioritize defence in Europe over the Far East and to appease Japan at the conference. However, it was expected that this appeasement policy would not be accepted by the US government, which wanted to deter Japanese expansion in the Far East. The British government also faced a diplomatic difficulty in handling a rivalry between the US and Japan.
     Soon after the Roosevelt administration came to power in 1933, the new US government decided to expand its naval command to the upper limit of the Washington and London naval treaties in order to counteract Japanese expansion policy. This decision gave the Japanese navy an excuse to expand, and Japan decided to secede from the Washington and London naval treaties. In October 1933, the commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), Shingo Ishikawa, drafted a secret plan, “Personal policy to the next naval conference”, which suggested denouncing the Washington Naval Treaty if the UK and US did not accept Japan’s demand. The Kantai-ha (Hawks) of IJN, who were frustrated by the treaty, formally approved Ishikawa’s plan.
     During the preliminary negotiations of the second London Naval Conference, the British government tried to be an intermediary between the US and Japan, but the Japanese delegation was uncompromising in its demand for naval parity among the UK, US, and Japan. The UK and US delegations, who estimated that a naval ratio of 5:5:3 should be beneficial for Japan, rejected the parity plan. The British government tried to keep Japan at the negotiating table, but the Japanese government denounced the Washington Naval Treaty on December 29, 1934, indicating the failure of the preliminary negotiations of the Second London Naval Conference.
    Download PDF (722K)
  • Hirofumi Takahashi
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 91-114
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    It is very important and interesting to resolve why and how the Pope could acquire “papal military exercise rights”, or the right to exercise military powers. The aim of this article, therefore, is to consider the paradigm of this right with a close analysis of Relación de las cosas de Japón para Nuestro Padre Fray Francisco Arezubiaga, Comisario General de todas las Indias en corte, written by Fray Martin de la Ascención in Japan in 1596.
     Medieval Popes engaged in military activities not only independently but also proactively because at that time they played a role of secular and political importance in their exercise of temporal powers. Papal military activities, therefore, were very important issues to catholic missionaries who preached the word of God in Japan in late 1590s. According to Ascención, Jesus Christ devolved all authorities and powers upon the pope with the inevitable result that the pope, as Vicar of Christ, could use every means possible to achieve Pax Dei .Ascención’s theological theory united the political and religious powers of the pope and authorized him to use the papal military powers.
     However, as the pope recognized as the holy presence, the Pope Clemens VIII had to avoid using military force as much as possible and therefore needed to find a secular monarch who would undertake pontifical duties, particularly temporal ones, including military activities. Pope Clemens VIII selected the Spanish king, Felipe II, to do so. Thus it was that the pope could exercise papal military rights without getting his own hands dirty.
     The pope is the Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ and Successor of the Prime of the Apostles. Despite of these sacred titles, popes of early modern times was, against Christ’s will, involved in military affairs such as organizing papal soldiers, lending war funds to secular monarchs in Western Europe, etc., which required much of their annual income. We have had considerably “militant” popes such as Gregorius IX, Paulus III and Clemens VIII. With the pope as military ruler of the sacred world, wars were justifiable, and as a consequence, Christian ethics and morals were prevented from putting an end to wars.
    Download PDF (803K)
  • [in Japanese]
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 115-117
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Download PDF (595K)
  • [in Japanese]
    2017 Volume 2017 Issue 1 Pages 119-123
    Published: January 20, 2017
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Download PDF (558K)
feedback
Top