Search: drones
25 Mar Bleg for Harold Koh’s ASIL Speech
...— this was an enormously positive step. Second, on the substance. On first read, I think this is a great statement. It addresses an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces. But it also asserts self-defense several times as an alternative. I had been greatly concerned, frankly, that the administration’s lawyers would narrowly confine the justification for targeted killing using drones to situations that would really only cover the military using them on active battlefields. But on first read, this statement does not do that at all....15 Oct The AfPak Conflict and the Leadup to the December 2010 Review
I am currently underwater with some things and won’t be posting much, despite my interest in the debates over drones, targeted killing, and much else besides. However, I wanted to suggest that, for those trying to make sense of US actions in AfPak – including the overt strikes by NATO against safe havens in Pakistan, the sharply increased public pressure by the US on the Pakistan government to take action against these safe havens, the unapologetic defense of targeted killing even of US citizens in places like Yemen or Somalia...06 Feb Are President Obama’s Assassinations of U.S. Citizens Constitutional?
...law. Under international law, the main question is whether there is legal authority to kill or assassinate anyone, much less one’s own nationals. But even under international law, as readers of Ken Anderson’s posts here and at Volokh know, it is still not all that clear. Indeed, there seems a more than plausible argument that certain kinds of assassinations, as currently executed by the Predator drones, could indeed constitute a violation of the law of war. In any event, if the U.S. is going to pursue this policy, it should...12 Jan Laurie Blank on the Rationales for Targeted Killing
I want to call readers’ attention to a very useful new essay written by Emory’s Laurie Blank, which is forthcoming in the William Mitchell Law Review. Here is the abstract: Targeted strikes – predominantly using drones – have become the operational counterterrorism tool of choice for the United States over the past few years. Targeted killing can be used both within armed conflict and in the absence of armed conflict, as a means of self-defense, usually as operational counterterrorism. Indeed, this duality lies at the heart of the United States...28 Jun That Syria War Power Debate, Continued
Cross-posted at Balkinization If, as I argued earlier this week, the 2001 AUMF passed by Congress cannot be read to authorize the growing set of U.S. military actions against Syrian and Iranian forces in Syria, does the President’s Article II power standing alone support these strikes? The best articulated argument I’ve seen that the President has the Article II power to attack Syrian aircraft (or Iranian drones or any non-ISIS force in Syria) in the interest of defending U.S.-allied Syrian government rebels goes something like this. The President surely has...
21 Nov Russia’s Lawfare Against the West in the UN Security Council and the Law of Neutrality
...States, twenty-five of which are NATO members (except Hungary) provide military assistance that consists of weapons (initially body armor, small arms, ammunition and progressively climaxing to artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armored vehicles, tanks, reconnaissance and attack drones, cluster munitions and a pledge for F-16 jet fighters), strategic and tactical targeting intelligence and cyber counter-offensive operations. The military assistance to Ukraine has been determined on the basis of the priorities of the Ukrainian government. It is interesting that the law of neutrality is totally absent from statements of governments providing assistance to...19 May Weekend Roundup: May 12-18, 2012
This week on Opinio Juris, Chris Borgen posted about Peter Watts’ short story on the legal and ethical questions relating to the use of autonomous aerial combat drones; Julian Ku shared Cato Institute’s Walter Olson’s observations on the revolving door between the UN and the US legal academy; Kevin Heller gave an account of his PhD viva at Leiden; and Roger Alford made us guess which six countries were the focus of the AP Comparative Government this week. Peter Spiro continued last week’s discussion on US taxation of US expats...05 Jun Targeted Killings Symposium: John C. Dehn on Richard Meyer and Col. Maxwell on Status-Based Targeting
...civilian contractors to perform various logistics and combat support functions in the theater of operations, from arming and maintaining drones to feeding and housing troops to protecting civilian government officials. Although it once performed these functions (almost exclusively) with members of the armed forces, to my knowledge it considers most if not all of these individuals to be civilians (some of which may take a direct part in hostilities), not belligerents. Under Colonel Maxwell’s proposal, most if not all could be targeted as belligerents if supporting non-state organized armed group...16 Apr “Efficiency” in the Law and Ethics of Targeted Killing?
...unconstrained (by lack of personal risk to one’s forces because of drones and lowered civilian harm because of improved targerting) to resort to force. This paper evaluates this claim, and more broadly the idea that jus in bello proportionality and jus ad bellum resort to force can each have a form of “efficiency.” It rejects the claim as incoherent, because the existence of “sides” in conflict results in incommensurable meanings of winning and losing in jus ad bellum, without which there cannot be an “optimal” level of the resort to...