A New Era of Cooperation for the International Society? The Restriction of Illicit International Arms Trade via Digital Technologies

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 2.0, University of Passau, language: English, abstract: The aim of this Bachelor thesis is to provide a theoretical explanation of the recent world order with the English School theory, to present an ignored problem of rising numbers in arms trade deals and to present new ways of cooperation for states to solve the gun trade problem. The arms trade treaty of 2013 has been a first attempt towards a harder control on small arms trade, however today it can be stated that the attempt failed and it hasn't achieve any real effects on the volume of sales in both legal and illicit conventional weapons, military defense systems and their parts, accessories or ammunition. The five hypothesis the author make about the system of arbitrary trade prior to the analysis are the following: Firstly, Guns are being produced and traded not solely for purposes of the defense industry in a political sense of security dilemma, but also for purposes of war making. Conflicts and wars profit certain groups in the international world order. Secondly, global gun trade is regulated not solely by the states foreign policy, but also by gun manufacturing corporations that try to influence the emergence of new conflicts in destabilized parts of the world. Business actors are mainly interested to increase their profits. Thirdly, dominant states abuse arms trade over third world states as a tool of foreign policy, in order to have influence in domestic matters. New opportunities with digital technologies are not applied in the international society, due to the international society structure of sovereign states. This structure makes state cooperation in international order based on self binding norms with little or no consequences for the rule breaking country. Lastly, the restrictions in arms trade volumes or restrictions for states to acquire armaments would lead to less new conflicts in the long term. The challenge of this thesis is to combine three areas, that don't seem to match to each other, namely international relations, gun trade and new digital technologies to give a practical solution to one particular policy problem - unrestricted international gun trade. This paper will challenge orthodox ways of problem - solving approaches in international relations by focusing mostly on empirical evidence, rather than theory. It will combine international relations with the power of new digital technologies, including blockchain technology, to deal with international political and economic problems.