Commentaries by Louis Rene Beres

“For by Wise Counsel, Thou Shalt Make Thy War.” Proverbs, 24,6 As a matter of logic, an Israel-Iran nuclear exchange is presently out of the question. Though energetically pursuing a military nuclear capability, the Shiite Republic still has a formidable way to go before it can claim any credible status as an operational nuclear power. [...]

Nullum crimen sine poena, “No crime without a punishment” The ICC Warrant Against Vladimir Putin The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for committing egregious war crimes in Ukraine. With this law-enforcing issuance, the ICC acknowledges inter alia the continuing validity  of the Nuremberg Principles under international law. [...]

In its steadily escalating war on Palestinian terror, Israel has a law-based responsibility to limit harm to Arab populations and a concurrent responsibility not to bring war-related suffering to its own populations. To clarify these intersecting obligations, this essay will focus on pertinent legal issues of insurgency, counterterrorism, and humanitarian international law in the Middle [...]

“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary…: Rabbi Hillel, Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a Israel’s continuous support for Donald J. Trump represents a grim irony of Jewish history. Even before the latest revelations concerning this former president’s anti-Semitic outbursts (that is, his [...]

“All our dignity consists in thought.” – Blaise Pascal, Pensées For the most part, penetrating thought on politics remains the veiled province of academic specialists. Though such thought can never become appropriate for any wider consumption by “mass,” it nonetheless warrants a more prominent place in world affairs and international law. Nowhere is this assertion [...]

“What does not benefit the entire hive is no benefit to the bee.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations There are many reasons to fear Donald J. Trump’s return to the American White House, but one reason remains especially worrisome. It stems from the former president’s explicit recommitments to “America First.” A previously failed foreign policy orientation, [...]

“Civilization is the never-ending process of creating one world and one humanity.” Lewis Mumford, In the Name of Sanity (1954) Biological Sameness and Species Unification The unity and interdependence of humankind is not subject to reasonable challenge. Beginning with our biological sameness, species’ commonality includes a broad variety of human needs and expectations. In the [...]

Ongoing Russian crimes against Ukraine are egregious and overlapping. Most conspicuous of these crimes are Vladimir Putin’s acts of aggression and of genocide. Jurisprudentially, even if Putin lacks any confirmable “intent to destroy” specific Ukrainian populations, Russia’s law-breaking behavior would still rise to the level of other relevant criteria or standards. Most recognizable, in this [...]

Now facing further rounds of terror attack, Israel must prepare itself along the intersecting dimensions of law and strategy. Law, the first dimension, is universal. It applies to all combatants, everywhere. Strategy, the second dimension, is integral to the creation and maintenance of any single state’s national security policies. From the beginning, a recurrent Palestinian [...]

In world politics and international law, meaningful explanation must always begin with the solitary human being, with the microcosm. This generalized individual, regardless of nationality, seeks to maximize one form of power above all others.  In essence, this searched-for ultimate power is power over death. To continue, there is considerable legal detail for scholars to [...]