4 ms·

Quite a lot of "banned" or restricted weapons are simple to produce: anti personnel landmines, poison gas, cluster bombs.. They do run into the problem you des

Quite a lot of "banned" or restricted weapons are simple to produce: anti personnel landmines, poison gas, cluster bombs.. They do run into the problem you described. Most militaries have them. Paramilitaries and sub-state forces (even criminals) have them. They sometimes get used, even by relatively law abiding forces. Despite all that, those treaties do significantly impact their use in various ways. Diplomatic concerns do affect choices in conflict. These treaties put a diplomatic price on the use of certain weapons. They limit trade in these weapons. Weapons treaties are not about perfectly police able, and internally consistent rules. No rules of war are. That doesn't mean they are entirely worthless.

noir_lord 8y ago
One way the treaties help is they reduce R&D expenditure because their is no legal market for the products which slows the progression. Not much point engineering something you can't sell. It's not a perfect solution but its a positive outcome. It also puts diplomatic and PR pressure on countries who use weapons generally prohibited which also is good. The problem generally is that technology continues to improve and the cost of doing things continues to drop. I've no idea what it would cost to build a cruise missile using off the shelf components and props instead of jets (and I'm not going to Google it) but on YouTube there are people operating remote control aircraft at long ranges with love video feedback, that's a payload away from a smart bomb already. In reality targets are soft enough that you don't need to do those kinds of things to attack a civilian area but that doesn't mean they couldn't. The recent drone at Gatwick shows the problems.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  That's a good point. Banning weapons lessens military industries ability to produce them. They tend to be made locally, within the militaries themselves and that often means less/worse... Eg Syria/Assad.

noir_lord 8y ago

One way the treaties help is they reduce R&D expenditure because their is no legal market for the products which slows the progression. Not much point engineering something you can't sell. It's not a perfect solution but its a positive outcome. It also puts diplomatic and PR pressure on countries who use weapons generally prohibited which also is good. The problem generally is that technology continues to improve and the cost of doing things continues to drop. I've no idea what it would cost to build a cruise missile using off the shelf components and props instead of jets (and I'm not going to Google it) but on YouTube there are people operating remote control aircraft at long ranges with love video feedback, that's a payload away from a smart bomb already. In reality targets are soft enough that you don't need to do those kinds of things to attack a civilian area but that doesn't mean they couldn't. The recent drone at Gatwick shows the problems.

dalbasal 8y ago
That's a good point. Banning weapons lessens military industries ability to produce them. They tend to be made locally, within the militaries themselves and that often means less/worse... Eg Syria/Assad.