Decisions and Revisions: Israeli Nuclear Deterrence and War With Iran
“In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute/will reverse” —T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Though much has been published about both military and legal elements of Israeli nuclear deterrence, not much has been written about the specific ways in which these core elements could conceivably intersect. [...]
Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership, the Sri Lankan civil war reached a brutal conclusion on May 18, 2009, ending a 25-year-long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist rebel group. Rooted in longstanding grievances, including discriminatory policies against Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, the conflict saw the [...]
Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim A.A. Khan concluded his trip to Israel and Palestine on Sunday, issuing a statement stressing the importance of international law. This was the first visit to Israel and Palestine by an ICC prosecutor. Khan made the trip after families of October 7 attack victims asked the [...]
Russia Must Be Held Accountable for Alleged Criminal Aggression in Ukraine: Two Paths to Justice
The concept of aggression in modern international law is rooted in a complex history of war and conflict. Defined as the use of armed force by one state against another in the absence of the justification of self-defense or the authorization of the United Nations, aggression has been a recurring issue on the global stage. [...]
Sexual Assault in the US Coast Guard: A Coverup and a Call for Justice
Sexual assault in the US Armed Forces is a very real and prescient issue for all service members. In April 2023, the US Department of Defense (DoD) reported that in 2022 there had been “a roughly 1% increase in overall reports of sexual assaults” with all the service branches having seen an increase in reported [...]
Israel, Counter-Terrorism, and International Law: The Analytic Challenges of 'System'
“The existence of `system’ in the world is obvious to every observer of nature, no matter whom.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1959) Whether conspicuous or obscure, terrorism generally presents itself as a systemic challenge. This means, inter alia, that seemingly singular strategic and legal matters may actually be many-sided and interrelated. Regarding legal issues, though [...]
US Department of Defense to release fourth Guantanamo Bay prisoner this year
The US Department of Defense (DOD) Wednesday said it will release Gussan Abdullah Al Sharbi after 20 years in Guantanamo Bay. Al Sharbi, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, is set to be transferred the Kingdom for repatriation. Al Sharbi was captured in Pakistan in 2002 by the US military. He was accused of training al [...]
Samuel Moyn’s Unprincipled Attack on Human Rights Giant Michael Ratner Is Shameful
Samuel Moyn’s vicious and unprincipled attack on Michael Ratner, one of the finest human rights attorneys of our time, was published in the New York Review of Books (NYRB) on September 1. Moyn singles out Ratner as a whipping boy to support his own bizarre theory that punishing war crimes prolongs war by making it [...]
The Boston Globe has a new series on Future Proofing the Presidency, making a case for prosecution of former President Donald Trump. Just for the record, in DC the basic Presidential criminality approach is: 1) The President gets an interpretation of the law from a lawyer somewhere such as in the Office of Legal Counsel [...]
Israel versus Hamas: Proportionality, Perfidy and the Law of War
“It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” -Guillaume Apollinaire, The New Spirit and the Poets (1917) Whenever Israel finds itself in the midst of major conflict with Hamas, each side seeks to defend itself in military and legal [...]
