This book explores how the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a leading humanitarian actor, addresses the problem of weapons. A triangulation of strategies such as testimonialization, medicalization and legalization, are investigated, with the help of critical security studies literature, to cultivate an understanding of an effects based approach to weapons. The attempt here is not only to introduce some innovative, conceptual tools but also to provide a coherent and critical narrative of the experiences of the ICRC vis-a-vis states to regulate and prohibit weapons. This experiential account of the ICRC's engagement with the problem of weapons is significant as it produces an empowering, alternative discourse making visible subjugated knowledge in the field of arms control and disarmament.

This book seeks to decolonize practices of arms control and disarmament. In this endeavor it seeks to problematize our understanding of time and civilization as rhetorical resources. The need for such an undertaking can be premised on the claim that while problems of modernity, ethnocentrism and universalism are now a central concern within the field of international relations, these ideas are scarcely debated or contested within the field of arms control and disarmament. The singular focus on technological innovations and specific policy-oriented agreements in practices of arms control and disarmament appears to stymie the need for such engagements. This book is an invitation to explore intersecting discourses on colonialism, racialism, nationalism and humanitarianism within a historically grounded terrain of weapons control. An understanding of these practices is vital not to prescribe any standards of civilization or exceptionalism in weapons control but to be cognizant through critique of the dangers embedded in any effort at reconstellating the constitutional nuclear order.