Latest in International Law: LOAC
Over the past several months, North Korea’s hostile rhetoric and its repeated nuclear and missile tests have led to calls for action against the threats posed by its regime.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle entered Israeli airspace close to the Syrian border. Israel shot down the UAV and responded by attacking the command vehicle, deep inside Syrian territory, that was operating the drone. Syrian anti-aircraft missiles shot down one of the Israeli airplanes that participated in the strike over Israeli territory. In response, Israel bombed a dozen Iranian and Syrian targets in Syria.
The recent bilateral talks between North and South Korea in the town of Pyeongchang seem to have de-escalated tensions on the peninsula. The North has agreed to participate in the upcoming Winter Olympics, and the two nations have resumed military-to-military communication. In fact, the two countries’ athletes will walk together—under one flag representing a unified Korea—in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.
On first impression, beating the Islamic State fighters to death with shovels sounds like a clear-cut case of stooping to the enemy’s level of barbarity. And yet that is exactly what the senior enlisted adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested in a rallying cry to U.S. forces on Jan. 9:
[Editor's note: This piece is the latest installment in a mutli-blog series building on the Fifth Annual Transatlantic Workshop on International Law and Armed Conflict, as explained in detail here.]
Transatlantic Workshop on International Law and Armed Conflict
Wounded and Sick, Proportionality, and Armaments
Editor's note: This piece is the second installment in a mutli-blog series building on the Fifth Annual Transatlantic Workshop on International Law and Armed Conflict, as explained in detail here.
This past summer, the Strauss Center at UT was proud to co-host the Fifth Annual Transatlantic Workshop on International Law and Armed Conflict, in partnership with the Oxford Institute for Eth
On September 6, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria issued its latest report in anticipation of the current Human Rights Council session. The COI criticizes the Syrian regime and the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for their failure to document violations of international law. Additionally, the report offers significant evidence indicating that the Assad regime deliberately used chemical weapons against civilians.
Last week I was among a group of international law scholars and practitioners invited to Israel by the Israeli Defense Forces Military Advocate General for a three-day conference focused on contemporary LOAC issues. The goal was to highlight the complex legal issues that arise in modern armed conflicts, with an emphasis on ground combat operations—what military commanders would call combined arms maneuver—against quasi-conventional and highly capable enemies. To this end, our hosts devoted an entire day of the conference to a “field trip” to Israel’s northern border.
In her recent blog discussing the relevance of the Kosovo precedent in the context of the United States missile strike in Syria, Professor Ashley Deeks noted that “such an intervention, even if narrowly tailored, is very difficult to defend as consistent with international law.