Conceptually rooted in the efforts to ban indiscriminate weapons and both their immediate and long-term effects, humanitarian mine action and humanitarian disarmament operations have developed significantly since 1988, when the United Nations first took on work on mine action operations for the protection and benefit of local communities. A large part of those operations has been carried out by humanitarian disarmament NGOs such as the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), one of the first organizations to be established on this issue. Drawing on MAG's experience and perspective, this article explores how the humanitarian principles apply to humanitarian disarmament operations. The aim of the article is to show that as an operator on the humanitarian–development nexus, MAG considers the four humanitarian principles as a critical and necessary part of its reference framework due to the influence of the humanitarian disarmament framework, even when operating in the development space. All in all, the case of humanitarian disarmament and MAG's experience are good examples to illustrate where the humanitarian horizon is extended because of long-terms serious needs, and that humanitarian principles remain essential to keep the focus on the needs of affected populations.

Why do states create weak international institutions? Frustrated with proliferating but disappointing international environmental institutions, scholars increasingly bemoan agreements which, rather than solving problems, appear to exist “for show.” This article offers an explanation of this phenomenon. I theorize a dynamic of deflective cooperation to explain the creation of compromise face-saving institutions. I argue that when international social pressure to create an institution clashes with enduring disagreements among states about the merits of creating it, states may adopt cooperative arrangements that are ill-designed to produce their purported practical effects. Rather than negotiation failures or empty gestures, I contend that face-saving institutions represent interstate efforts to manage intractable disagreement through suboptimal institutionalized cooperation. I formulate this argument inductively through a new multi-archival study of conventional weapons regulation during the Cold War, which resulted in the oft-maligned 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. A careful reconsideration of the negotiation process extends and nuances existing IR theorizing and retrieves its historical significance as a critical juncture and complex product of contesting diplomatic practices.

Will AI-enabled capabilities increase inadvertent escalation risk? This article revisits Cold War-era thinking about inadvertent escalation to consider how Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology (especially AI augmentation of advanced conventional weapons) through various mechanisms and pathways could affect inadvertent escalation risk between nuclear-armed adversaries during a conventional crisis or conflict. How might AI be incorporated into nuclear and conventional operations in ways that affect escalation risk? It unpacks the psychological and cognitive features of escalation theorising (the security dilemma, the ‘fog of war’, and military doctrine and strategy) to examine whether and how the characteristics of AI technology, against the backdrop of a broader political-societal dynamic of the digital information ecosystem, might increase inadvertent escalation risk. Are existing notions of inadvertent escalation still relevant in the digital age? The article speaks to the broader scholarship in International Relations – notably ‘bargaining theories of war’ – that argues that the impact of technology on the cause of war occurs through its political effects, rather than tactical or operational battlefield alterations. In this way, it addresses a gap in the literature about the strategic and theoretical implications of the AI-nuclear dilemma.

The 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 instituted the following obligation for States Parties:‘Article 36. New weaponsIn the study, development, acquisition or adoption of a new weapon, means or method of warfare, a High Contracting Party is under an obligation to determine whether its employment would, in some or all circumstances, be prohibited by this Protocol or by any other rule of international law applicable to the High Contracting Party.’

The obligation to ensure the legality of weapons of war was not new. Article 1 of Hague Convention II with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 29 July 1899 obligated States Parties to issue instructions to their armed land forces, which were to conform to the rules contained in the Annex to that Convention. This included Article 23(e), which prohibited employment of ‘arms, projectiles or material of a nature to cause superfluous injury’. With non-substantive alteration, Article 1 of the Convention and Article 23(e) of the Annex were re-adopted in Hague Convention IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 18 October 1907. Under the international law maxim pacta sunt servanda states have a general duty to engage in good faith performance of their treaty obligations. This would have included a duty to ensure military weapons and munitions complied with Hague Convention IV and obligations contained in other treaties. Article 36 of Additional Protocol I changed the general obligation of good faith treaty adherence to a specific one through codification of this pre-existing obligation. Yet, almost three decades following the conclusion of the Diplomatic Conference that promulgated Additional Protocols I and II, the number of governments implementing this provision is limited. Of 166 States Parties to Additional Protocol I, only nine have been identified as having formal, full-time programmes for the legal review of new military weapons and ammunition.

This article provides the history of and context for Article 36's incorporation into Additional Protocol I, the development of the law of war related to certain conventional weapons over the past four decades, and details as to implementation of this obligation. The last part is based upon the author's experience in preparing legal reviews of military weapons and ammunition over the past 30 years.