The coercive capacity of incumbent governments to control a country’s territory against internal and external challengers is primarily dependent on the availability of weapons. Given that most developing countries are unable to produce their own modern weapons, they depend on international arms imports. This means that restrictions on the supply of arms to incumbent governments can have significant unintended consequences, including the risk of conflict.
Arms embargos can have a disproportional effect on the relative military power of different factions, and therefore reduce the likelihood that different sides will negotiate. Hogendoorn showed that impartial arms embargoes tend to prolong wars, increasing the duration of civil war by 70 percent and reducing the chances for peace to be restored by an average of fourteen months.
During the Q&A session following his presentation, Hogendoorn highlighted that the challenge of winning an arms embargo requires more than simply appealing to the existing base of anti-war activists. It also involves moving beyond the liberal understanding of power as something that is external to organized people and residing only in the ruling class, and instead seeing it as something that people can win when they work together and understand that they have the power to do so. This is why we have worked to bring labor unions into our campaign. This strategy has paid off, with seven large U.S. labor unions now supporting our demand for an arms embargo. They can play a crucial role by helping to mobilize their members to support candidates who support the embargo in as many congressional districts as possible and upholding pressure campaigns like Mask Off Maersk.
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