Laws of a Normless Word: A Baltic Perspective on Arms Control for Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems

Efforts to understand the various implications of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) – from humanitarian and ethical to strategic – are well under way in various fora. Important as they are, the continuing discussions tend to ignore or gloss over geostrategic realities in some parts of the world where war has become a dominant theme of the security conversation and arms control has become marginalised.

This report seeks to explore how the ongoing war in Ukraine and responses to it that are emerging in Europe represent both barriers to and opportunities for efforts to regulate LAWS. It argues that, at a time when the fundamental norms around peace and security in Europe are under pressure, Russia’s wartime behaviour poses challenges to the case for control of LAWS. Thereafter, it explores how two sets of logic – deterrence and legitimacy – interact with the imperative for sustaining a viable collective defence alliance and shape the desirability of arms control for LAWS from the standpoint of small Baltic states severely exposed to the threat of Russia’s aggression.