I was struck by this piece tucked away in today's Washington Post, noting that Pat Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management at the State Department, had to remind diplomatic personnel in Germany that they were prohibited from attending Barack Obama's speech today in Berlin. It is a mark of just how unprecedented Obama's current overseas visit is, mixing as it does official...
Thailand and Cambodia have both mobilized troops to defend their claims to sovereignty over the Preah Vihear Temple, which is located on their border. The dispute has lingered for decades and was supposedly dealt with by this 1962 ICJ decision which awarded sovereignty to Cambodia. Apparently, Thailand is still not convinced and is prepared to occupy the temple by force (it is only...
I've been spending more time than is probably healthy over the last year researching the Compact Clause. Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution prohibits U.S. states from entering into any "treaty, alliance or confederation" and bans them "without the consent of Congress" from entering "into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power." The Supreme Court...
I really wanted to ignore the Wall Street Journal editorial that Julian mentioned yesterday, filing it in the "life is too short" category. But I can't help myself, because the editorial is just shockingly factually inaccurate -- to say nothing of its rather curious judgment, such as the idea that Bashir "may be the only man able to guarantee...
I know we will be having a discussion of Tom Farer's book on a grand liberal strategy for dealing with terrorism down the road, but I wanted to note that the general issue of 'grand strategy' is at the heart of Philip Bobbitt's new book, Terror and Consent. It has deservedly been widely reviewed and highly praised - Ferguson in...
I don't know how seriously to take Prof. Francis Boyle, who is literally dying to file an application in the ICJ on behalf of Iran against Israel and the U.S. Still, this interview in the Iran English language news site suggests something might happen soon. And Iran might get a sympathetic hearing at the ICJ. And it would raise...
I'm not sure what to make of this argument by Messrs David Rivkin and Lee Casey in today's Wall Street Journal questioning the legality of the ICC Prosecutor's proposed arrest warrant for Sudan's president: The U.N. Security Council is not a judicial body, and any legitimate authority it may have to subject member states to the ICC -- or its own...
Honestly, I thought I had seen it all. I had resigned myself to the traditional media doing everything they could to avoid drawing attention to McCain's inability to keep basic facts about foreign policy straight -- Sunni vs. Shia, Czechoslovakia (four times!), Somalia vs. Sudan, the remarkable Iraq/Pakistan border. But I never expected CBS to actually edit an interview with...
As Texas stays on track to execute Jose Medellin on August 5, it is worth shifting our attention back to Texas. I've always thought the ideal solution to the ICJ-Vienna Convention conundrum is for each individual state to independently comply with the ICJ's judgment. Although I think the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention is not entirely persuasive, I think...
Globalization's effect on basketball has been in the news quite a bit recently. I blogged last week about the Iranian national team coming to Salt Lake City to play in the NBA's Rocky Mountain Revue. On Monday, the superb FP Passport blogged about "The NBA's euro problem" -- the fact that more and more NBA players, including American ones, are...
The somewhat surprising answer from U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey is "Yes!", or at least an acknowledgement that "the Nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans--soldiers and civilians alike." This is one takeaway from...
AFP is reporting that Radovan Karadzic, the former president of Republika Srpska and the former head of the euphemistically named Serb Democratic Party, has been arrested. This is great news -- if the ICTY had a "most wanted" deck of cards, Karadzic would be the Ace of Spades: As early as July 1991, the Bosnian Serb leaders, and in particular, Radovan...
