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Search: battlefield robots

18 Dec

[Dr Chiara Redaelli is a research fellow at the University of Geneva, IHL and ICL expert with the International Development Law Organization Ukraine Office and co-editor in chief of the on the Use of Force and International Law] From Drug Boats to Battlefields? The United States’ Case for Using Force against Cartels Since early September 2025, the United States has carried out a series of lethal strikes against suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, publicly framed as a campaign against so-called “narco-terrorists.” The operations, announced by the Trump...
18.12.25 | |

19 Oct

[Dr. Thomas D. Grant is a Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Fellow of the National Security Institute at George Mason University.] Remedy for the Breach: Seating Ukraine Part One of this blogpost proposed that the anomaly of Russia’s presence as a Security Council Permanent Member be addressed through Rule 17 of the Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council. To recall, Rule 17 provides that “[a]ny representative on the Security Council, to whose credentials objection...
19.10.22 | |

06 Jul

...this guy? Presumably it was acting under the statutory AUMF we’ve been discussing so much of late (e.g. here), on the theory that the statute authorizing the President to use force against those persons and organizations he deems responsible for the attacks of 9/11. That such persons or organizations may be captured outside the confines of the Afghan/Pakistan battlefield has long been a (more or less explicit) part of both Bush and Obama administrations’ readings of that statute, a reading informed (in this administration) by the understanding that the international...
06.07.11 | |

23 Oct

...princess would. But what do I know? I once thought that a really great TV comedy in the 1990s would be an American military surgeon assigned (in order to get much needed expertise, this being the pre Iraq 1990s) to a roving team of those plucky, happy go lucky, hard partying Swiss doctors out dealing with landmine and other battlefield injuries across the world: sounded pretty funny to me but, if one needed confirmation that it was not, it sounded pretty funny to my friends at the ICRC, too. Jody,...
23.10.08 | |

21 Jan

...equipped to answer some international law questions than others. Rationalist accounts may be better equipped to make general predictions about “states” than to explain specific individual decisions. Anthropology, on the other hand, may be able to explain those individual decisions, but with its emphasis on deep description, may not yield many generalizable hypotheses. Controlled experiments will be easier to carry out in some contexts than others: it is easier, for example, to test the opinions of the general public than that of experts in negotiation or on the battlefield. Public...
21.01.15 | |

06 May

...but joining ISIS (or al-Nusra) as reprehensible. This lack of regularity undermines existing policies, as it gives the impression that the distinction is based on ideology, which is a dangerous precedent to set. This development is especially alarming given that the Western-backed coalition (including Russia’s) objectives may not align with those of the YPG’s in the long-run. Kurdish territorial ambitions in a fragmented Iraq and Syria are likely to increase – not diminish – with battlefield success, pitting them against the US, Turkey, Russia, and Iran once the guns fall...
06.05.16 | |

18 May

The NY Times ran this piece this morning on the challenge of coming up with estimates of the total dead as a result of the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. The problem is common in the face of mass humanitarian disasters: how to estimate death tolls in a place with no birth or death certificates or accurate census data, where complete villages have been destroyed, and where the size and conditions on the battlefield are such that actual counting of bodies is next to impossible. Moreover, survivors are...
18.05.05 | |

10 Nov

...January 2002 as a collection of crude open-air cells guarded by Marines in a muddy tent city is today arguably the most expensive prison on earth, costing taxpayers $800,000 annually for each of the 171 captives by Obama administration reckoning. That’s more than 30 times the cost of keeping a captive on U.S. soil. It’s still funded as an open-ended battlefield necessity, although the last prisoner arrived in March 2008. But it functions more like a gated community in an American suburb than a forward-operating base in one of Afghanistan’s...
10.11.11 | |

12 Jun

...the “specific direction” standard bulldozes over. In broaching the question of necessity, courts would discriminate between: (a) providing Syrian rebel groups with weapons (knowing that they will lead to some international crimes) in order to prevent bloodletting of civilians on a massive scale; and (b) furnishing the same weapons (knowing that they will lead to some international crimes) in order to trial cutting edge military technologies in a battlefield setting. Clearly, the rationale for the assistance matters enormously in ascribing moral and criminal responsibility, but the new “specific direction” standard...
12.06.13 | |

05 Mar

...treatment. And they secure the right to appeal to Article III judges – all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In addition, like our federal civilian courts, reformed commissions allow for the protection of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence gathering, and for the safety and security of participants. A key difference is that, in military commissions, evidentiary rules reflect the realities of the battlefield and of conducting investigations in a war zone. For example, statements may be admissible even in the absence of Miranda warnings, because we...
05.03.12 | |

01 Apr

...are attacked (including with lethal force) should not amount to gratuitous injury or suffering. I contend that the right to use armed force is limited to the objective of rendering individuals hors de combat (taken out of battle) or, in the collective sense, to defeating enemy forces. Parties have a right to kill enemy combatants during hostilities, but that right is constrained when killing is manifestly unnecessary to removing an individual from the battlefield. In some circumstances, it will thus be unlawful to use lethal force when a fighter could...
01.04.13 | |

28 May

...Afghanistan has put in place an exceptionally restrictive ROE for the purpose of minimizing civilian harm that goes beyond what the law itself would require – but that is a matter of discretionary counterinsurgency strategy, not a requirement of law. Review of strikes is by the military itself, in theatre. The CIA, up until recently at least, has had a different strategic role and mission – taking out high value targets far from battlefield action, on the basis of various intelligence sources. The use of force is far more focused,...
28.05.10 | |