Moral Mission Accomplished? Assessing the Landmine Ban

The ban on antipersonnel (AP) landmines encapsulated in the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT) is a hard case for international ethics insofar as it directly implicates the security functions of the state and its freedom of action in warfare, which is where we least might expect to see the niceties of ethics make an appearance. Indeed, the treaty and associated moral movement seeks no less than to eradicate a type of weapon in widespread use across the globe—a particularly challenging candidate for international moral change. The skeptical position on the role of ethics generally in world politics, and especially in war and security, of course has a long history. In response to contemporary scholarly research demonstrating the role of moral norms in world politics, this view has nonetheless been rearticulated by some realist scholars: “I would love to live in a world in which state conduct was restrained by strong moral norms, especially regarding the use of force. Unfortunately, that it is not the world in which we live, and we are not likely to any time soon.”