Search: self-defense
28 Jun Is it Time to Facilitate Cyberwar?
...that a treaty is unnecessary. It instead advocates improved cooperation among international law enforcement groups. If these groups cooperate to make cyberspace more secure against criminal intrusions, their work will also make cyberspace more secure against military campaigns, American officials say. “We really believe it’s defense, defense, defense,” said the State Department official, who asked not to be identified because authorization had not been given to speak on the record. “They want to constrain offense. We needed to be able to criminalize these horrible 50,000 attacks we were getting a...12 Apr Guest Post: How International Law Could Work in Transnational Non-International Armed Conflicts: Part II of a Two-Part Series
...of NIAC and a new interpretations of self-defense permitted the attack. If these two legal regimes (the law of self-defense and NIAC) are left rudderless, is human rights law strong enough to trump them both and correct this problem? And if not, is there reason to seriously consider 1) ensuring that an expanded concept of imminence does not gain international acceptability, 2) States coming together to explicitly prohibit the application of NIAC outside the territory of the State where the NIAC is occurring, and 3) ensuring that States conducting targeting...30 Aug Of Fire and Fury: The Threat of Force and the Korean Missile Crisis
...of force include an element of political messaging. Whether they are routine exercises or exceptional maunvers, demonstrations of force send signals to specific adversaries or to general domestic or foreign audiences, or some combination thereof. Ultimately, whatever the content and political context of that signal, the purpose of demonstrations of force is to affect and shape the policy, preferences, and perceptions of the target state or audience. Demonstrations of force are not merely tools of self-defense and deterrence, but are also an exercise of political influence. As Thomas Schelling put...29 Jul Emerging Voices: Distinction without a Difference – The UN’s Attempt to Fight A War Without Fighting A War
...where one party commits blatant violations, “continued equal treatment of all parties by the United Nations can in the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity with evil.” (Brahimi Report) Peacekeepers also cannot use force except in self-defense or in defense of mandate. “Defense of mandate” may accommodate offensive use of force in some circumstances (e.g., to protect civilians under imminent threat), but peacekeepers certainly cannot lawfully conduct offensive seek-and-disarm missions. Because peacekeepers are not “used outside the humanitarian function to conduct hostilities,” they...07 May Something is Not Always Better Than Nothing: Against a Narrow Threshold Justification for Humanitarian Intervention
...proposed test diverges from its justificatory origins. The test’s first stage is described as mandatory and requires: “a humanitarian crisis [that] creates consequences significantly disruptive of international order – including proliferation of chemical weapons, massive refugee flows, and events destabilizing to regional peace and security – that would likely soon create an imminent threat to the acting nations (which would give rise to an urgent need to act in individual and collective self-defense under U.N. Charter Article 51) [emphasis added].” The test’s second stage – described as a criterion that...13 Sep The Legality of a U.S. Space Force
[Adam Irish is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State University, Chico.] President Donald Trump’s pronouncements that the United States needs to develop a “Space Force” were initially met with derision by national security establishment. In a letter to lawmakers, Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, wrote that he did not “wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations.” However, three Space Policy Directives, one speech by the Vice President, and one report by the Department of Defense...12 Jan MG Miller Invokes – What’s Next?
As Peggy’s earlier post indicated, MG Geoffrey Miller today asserted his privilege against self-incrimination in order to avoid being questioned by the defense attorney representing a soldier pending trial for using military working dogs to abuse prisoners. Is this significant? First, as we know from press reports, MG Miller made this decision on advice of his military defense counsel, Major Michelle Crawford. According to her statement, MG Miller’s made this decision because he has been repeatedly questioned on this subject. However, he has never been questioned by the defense counsel...19 Oct Guest Post: The ICC intervenes in Georgia–When is a Peacekeeper a Peacekeeper?
...consequently, there will be no international crime of killing those peacekeepers (provided other IHL violations, such as a disproportionate attack, did not occur). Yet, aside from the purely evidentiary challenges and factual complexity of these cases, the Prosecutor’s investigation is also bound to raise more fundamental legal questions about the nature of peacekeeping. Given that many attacks occurred in different locations in the space of a few days (para. 164 and 176), the question is when individual self-defense (allowed for peacekeepers) reaches the threshold of direct participation in hostilities (not...09 Dec “Constitutionalizing” Global Administrative Law or Experimenting With a Hybrid Transnational Legal Order? (a Response by Karl-Heinz Ladeur)
...“eigenvalue” of the differentiated language of law as such. Jerry L. Mashaw has convincingly argued that the doubts of the “lawness” of global administrative law stem from the same origin as the conventional ignorance of the generative power of administration that manifests itself in the emergence of the “internal administrative law” in the 19th century. With reference to administrative agencies that have to operate with an internal perspective of creating a layer of self-binding and self-reflexive rules on the one hand and with an outside view to other private and...
25 Sep Three Reasons Why the International Community Should Engage with the Situation in Belarus
...State has the duty to refrain from any forcible action which deprives peoples referred to above in the elaboration of the present principle of their right to self-determination and freedom and independence. In their actions against, and resistance to, such forcible action in pursuit of the exercise of their right to self-determination, such peoples are entitled to seek and to receive support in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter.’ Obviously, this provision was created in the context of decolonization, but if the right to self-determination is applicable...