Law Of Warfare Research Articles

THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGES DURING ARMED CONFLICTS: THE CASE OF THE WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

Background: There is no war without catastrophic impacts, not only on humans and states but also on the environment and nature. As with all wars, the question is raised as to whether an invasion or aggression is legitimate according to international law. This research aims to discuss an emerging issue at the international level, which is the responsibility of the aggressor state for the environmental damages incurred by the victim state. This paper discusses the possibility of establishing Russia’s responsibility for the environmental damages incurred in Ukraine. It will also shed light on the possible ways Ukraine may raise Russia’s responsibility, internationally speaking. The novelty of this study stems from its originality – it is the first on this topic in the field of international relations and international law. Methods: In this research, the author used a case study to provide an in-depth perspective on the responsibility of the invading state for the environmental damages caused to the victim state. Here, the author used a historical and statistical framework to shed light on the impacts of the Russian aggression against Ukraine on the environment. Moreover, analytical and structural methods were deployed to explain the methods by which Ukraine and the international community might establish Russian responsibility for the environmental damages caused by the invasion. To support the ideas discussed in this paper, the author uses legal texts, international conventions, and official reports issued from national and international institutions. Results and Conclusions: The author found that the Russian aggression against the Ukrainian territory has caused severe environmental damages, which cannot go unpunished. Although traditional international law may be insufficient to punish Russia, customary law, warfare law, and international environmental law include rules that may be used to raise the Russian responsibility for these damages.

Jus post bellum: Justice at the End of War

Post bellum justice considers vindication of human rights and prosecution on occasion of its violation essential to establish just peace at the end of war. An inquiry into the interrelationship between justice in the commencement, during, and at the end of war reveals the centrality of human rights and just peace. Conversely, jus post bellum's failure is associated with discrepancies in jus ad bellum and jus in bello conditions of just war (JW). The study, therefore, observes an intricate relationship between the three conditions of just war. This correlation is further stressed on the importance of jus ad bellum criteria of right intention and proportionality principle of jus in bello to rightly administer judgment for crimes committed during war. To complement the already existing laws of warfare, the paper distinguished crimes based on intention into presumptuous, not-presumptuous, and un-presumptuous. Thus, all three conditions of just war synergistically work together to justify a just war claim for right resort to force.

Adomnán's Lex innocentium and the laws of war by James W. Houlihan

Reviewed by: Adomnán's Lex innocentium and the laws of war by James W. Houlihan Courtney Selvage (bio) James W. Houlihan, Adomnán's Lex innocentium and the laws of war. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020. ISBN: 978–84682–849–2. 240 pages. €50 (cloth). This volume, a published version of Houlihan's Ph.D. dissertation recently completed at University College Dublin, is a welcome addition to the corpus of research on the cáinlaw promulgated by Adomnán in 697. Of immediate note is the decision to refer to the law as Lex innocentium rather than its more commonly used title, Cáin Adomnáin. This is based not only on the way the law is referred to in the Annals of Ulster in the year of its promulgation, but in recognition that the law was promulgated with the purpose of 'protecting innocents' and of its historical place in the laws of warfare. Meyer's 1905 edition of the text and Ní Dhonnchadha's 2001 translation are reproduced in the appendix. The introductory chapter begins with an analysis of the concept and context of Adomnán's law—that is, as a law written distinctly for the protection of innocents: women, children, and clerics. The concept is presented with a discussion of the legal terms jus ad bellum 'the right to go to war' and jus in bello 'right behaviour during the course of war'—both modern coinages, and not in regular use, as the author explains, until after World War ii (12–13). While it may seem strange to apply these recently coined terms to a law composed in the seventh century, the author asserts that it might be understood as an in bello law in parallel to modern humanitarian law. It is his view that a presentation of the law within the context of modern international law may provide some understanding of Adomnán's ideas in the composition of his text. He further indicates that, in consideration of the historical contexts of war and violence from late antiquity to the later Middle Ages, the concept of jus ad bellum dominated, making Adomnán's law a particular outlier. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the 'attitudes of warfare and violence in the early medieval West' (27). This is a necessary discussion, considering the early Christian attitudes towards violence, especially towards innocents, as well as Augustine's views on just war and medieval interpretations of his thought and interest in jus ad bellum. On this basis, Houlihan determines that 'Augustine's attitudes to warfare appear to have had little or no effect on Adomnán's thinking' (47). Instead, as he states, Adomnán's concern was with in bello, and the category of 'non-combatants' who would be protected under his law. The chapter then discusses the position of non-combatants in the 'Barbarian laws', the laws of the Germanic people, admitting tenuous connection to Adomnán's law, but this does provide some insight as to the concerns of contemporaneous legal texts. Finally, the chapter briefly discusses some accounts on mass violence in war which occurred roughly contemporaneously with Adomnán, including one from Bede on a killing of a large number of monks by the Northumbrian king in 603. [End Page 128] Chapter 3 further expands on the ideas presented in chapter 2, as it presents an analysis of contemporaneous Irish attitudes towards violence. The evidence considered includes representations of violent affairs in the portion of the Chronicle of Ireland supposedly composed at Iona during Adomnán's time as abbot; archaeological finds of female burials marked with significant bodily trauma; the protection of innocents in other examples of early Irish secular and canon law; the penitentials and hagiography; and other literary texts and sagas, with particular focus on the concept of díberg 'marauding'. The author makes the most comparison with the sellach-text, part of Senchas már, arguing that it might be seen as the template upon which Lex innocentium was based. We are then given a biography of Adomnán in chapter 4, the core of which does not deviate significantly from other publications on the abbot. Adomn...

On avalanche-like perturbations of relaxed power-law distributions: Richardson’s law of warfare as a consequence of the relaxation to a Pareto-like distribution of wealth

In monodimensional systems where a nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation [G.A. Casas et al., Phys. Rev. E 86, 061136 (2012)] describes relaxation to a distribution function which behaves like a power law in the tail, we show that perturbations of the relaxed distribution behave as avalanches in the sense of Self Organized Criticality [J. Nagler et al., Phys. Rev. E 60, 2706 (1999)]. We determine the power laws followed by both size and return time of these avalanches whenever the relaxed distribution is resilient against perturbation of arbitrary amplitude in the tail. We apply our results to a class of problems in econophysics [J.R. Sanchez et al., Europhys. J. 143, 241 (2007)] where the relaxed distribution of wealth is approximately described by Pareto’s principle [A. Di Vita, Europhys. J. 92, 255 (2019)]. If the destruction of wealth associated with an avalanche is identified with a war, then we retrieve Richardson’s model of arms race [L.F. Richardson, Nature 136, 1025 (1935)], prove that the largest avalanches follow Richardson’s scaling law of warfare [L.F. Richardson, J. Am. Stat. Assoc. 43, 244 (1948)] and show that the probability of war outbreak per unit time follows a Poisson law [L.F. Richardson, Nature 155, 610 (1945)], in agreement with the findings of [L. Cederman, Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 97, 135 (2003), A. Clauset, Sci. Adv. 4 (2018), G. Martelloni et al. arXiv:1812.08071 (2018)].

Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat by Jonathan M. Steplyk

Reviewed by: Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat by Jonathan M. Steplyk Jennifer M. Murray Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat. By Jonathan M. Steplyk. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018. Pp. x, 294. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-2628-1.) Over the last three decades, Civil War scholars have expanded considerably historians' understanding of the war's soldiers, shifting the focus from political and military leaders to the war's common soldiers. Many of these studies explore the lives of Civil War soldiers and engage questions of motivation, thereby creating a vibrant, ongoing debate in the historiography. The focus on soldier motivation has left some subjects of the war's soldiers wide open. Few historians, for instance, have addressed the Civil War's most fundamental element: how soldiers understood fighting and killing. In Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat, Jonathan M. Steplyk, an instructor at Texas Christian University, explores how Union and Confederate soldiers understood killing. In doing so, Steplyk offers an invaluable contribution to the Civil War literature. Although Steplyk's monograph is the first to explore Civil War soldiers' attitudes toward killing, military historians have engaged this topic in other conflicts. S. L. A. Marshall, for example, has studied the behavior of U.S. infantrymen in combat in World War II. Dave Grossman's On Killing (Boston, 1995) explores the psychology of killing and its consequences. Using Grossman's [End Page 457] framework as a point of departure, Steplyk argues that Union and Confederate soldiers demonstrated a "greater willingness in their attitudes and behavior to kill in battle than previously supposed" (p. 8). Rather than explore soldiers' attitudes toward killing in a binary way—those who embraced the act of killing in war and those who opposed it—Steplyk considers Civil War soldiers' attitudes toward killing on a spectrum. Indeed, attitudes toward killing were far from monolithic, and Steplyk skillfully examines a range of behaviors in combat and reactions to "seeing the elephant" (chap. 2). In doing so, he finds some soldiers to be "enthusiastic and purposeful killers," while others proved more reluctant, and some even tried to avoid killing the enemy (p. 75). Steplyk explores acts of "murder and mercy" beyond the fighting and killing on the war's battlefields, when soldiers were forced to grapple with lawful and unlawful killings (chap. 6). For example, Steplyk underscores acts of soldiers' restraining themselves from wanton killing. These acts included the merciful treatment of prisoners and the wounded as well as fraternization between Union and Confederate soldiers. The other end of the spectrum included non-battlefield killings. Here, situations such as the execution of foraging soldiers or revenge killings forced soldiers to consider laws of warfare and unlawful killings. Soldiers' wartime correspondence reveals much about their attitudes toward killing. In evaluating the "language of killing," Steplyk finds that Civil War soldiers used a variety of expressions and phrases to describe combat and killing (chap. 3). Euphemisms such as "bite the dust" and stating that a man had gone to his "long home" were popular expressions in soldiers' correspondence (p. 78). In constructing the "language of killing," Steplyk argues, soldiers built "a way to protect them [selves] from any guilt or anxiety they might feel in regard to killing in combat" (p. 76). When describing fierce firefights, soldiers commonly wrote of a "good execution," "murderous fire," and "deliberate aim" (pp. 83, 84). Steplyk suggests that this terminology allowed soldiers to develop a "businesslike attitude" toward combat and killing (p. 83). Fighting Means Killing offers a critical exploration of the psychological nature of Americans killing fellow Americans. Steplyk's engagement with wartime correspondence and postwar reminiscences of Union and Confederate soldiers who fought in regular units, in both eastern and western theaters, provides a balanced, engaging treatment. Steplyk's study brilliantly blends military history and social history, pioneering an interpretation of how Civil War soldiers understood fighting and killing, war's most important, inescapable element. Jennifer M. Murray Oklahoma State University Copyright © 2019 Southern Historical Association

Conceptualizing Terrorism with the Complications of Unconventional Warfare in Mind

Conceptualizing terrorism, even defining the term, has been highly contentious. The lack of an agreed-upon definition or even an agreed-upon set of concepts that every definition should encompass creates rifts between scholars and potential confusion among practitioners. This article attempts to examine the difficulty of conceptualizing terrorism juxtaposed against the practice of unconventional warfare. Because Special Operations Forces help foment insurgencies when conducting unconventional warfare and because insurgencies often resort to terrorism, it is important for practitioners of unconventional warfare to understand what terrorism is, how to detect it, and, perhaps, how to steer insurgents away from this tactic. This article explores these concepts as well as the potentiality that the intersection of terrorism and unconventional warfare produces a new type of collateral damage not fully covered in the existing international law of warfare.

Trojan War displayed as a full annihilation–diffusion–reaction model

Abstract The diffusive pair annihilation model with embedded topological domains and archaeological data is applied in an analysis of the hypothetical Trojan–Greek war during the late Bronze Age. Estimations of parameter are explicitly made for critical dynamics of the model. In particular, the 8-metre walls of Troy could be viewed as the effective shield that provided the technological difference between the two armies. Suggestively, the numbers in The Iliad are quite sound, being in accord with Lanchester’s laws of warfare.

A Valiant Champion of Equity and Humaneness: The Legacy of Bert Roling for International Criminal Law

The author draws an intellectual portrait of the great Dutch international lawyer and judge. He considers in particular Roling’s contribution to international law made in his two principal works, the booklet on the ‘International Community in an Expanded World’ and The Hague lectures on the ‘Law of Warfare’. He then briefly recalls the views about Roling expressed in the 1990s by two other leading international lawyers, R.-J. Dupuy and E. Jimenez de Arechaga. He finally assesses the merits and the limits of Roling’s major writings.

B.V.A. Roling -- A Personal Recollection and Appraisal

The author draws an intellectual portrait of the great Dutch international lawyer and judge. He considers in particular Röling’s contribution to international law made in his two principal works, the booklet on the ‘International Community in an Expanded World’ and The Hague lectures on the ‘Law of Warfare’. He then briefly recalls the views about Röling expressed in the 1990s by two other leading international lawyers, R.-J. Dupuy and E. Jiménez de Aréchaga. He finally assesses the merits and the limits of Röling’s major writings.

Michael G. HaselMilitary Practice and Polemic: Israel’s Laws of Warfare in Near Eastern Perspective.2004 Andrews University Press Berrien Springs, Michigan $24.99

Michael G. Hasel<i>Military Practice and Polemic: Israel’s Laws of Warfare in Near Eastern Perspective.</i>2004 Andrews University Press Berrien Springs, Michigan $24.99

New Challenges to the Traditional Principles of the Law of War Presented by Information Operations in Outer Space

With the rapid development of space information technology and constant advancement of militarization of outer space, the legal aspects of information operations in outer space have aroused the attention of international community. Information operations in outer space have brand-new features and means, which are apparently different from those of traditional operations, thus challenging almost all major aspects of the traditional principles of the warfare law. This paper makes a pilot study on challenges to the traditional principles of the law of war against the background of information operations in outer space from the following three aspects of the regulations in the law of war: Jus ad Bellum, Jus in Bello and neutrality.

Military Practice and Polemic: Israel's Laws of Warfare in Near Eastern Perspective

Military Practice and Polemic: Israel's Laws of Warfare in Near Eastern Perspective

Military Practice and Polemic: Israel's Laws of Warfare in Near Eastern Perspective

Military Practice and Polemic: Israel's Laws of Warfare in Near Eastern Perspective

Alarm Bells from the Past: The Troubling History of American Military Commissions

Alarm Bells from the Past: The Troubling History of American Military Commissions MICHAL R. BELKNAP Among the most controversial of President George W. Bush’s responses to the deadly September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was his issuance two months later ofan order authorizing the trial before military commissions ofaliens suspectedofmembership inthatmurderous organization or ofinvolvement in terroristactivities.1 Two years after Bush’s promulgation ofthat November 13, 2001 military order, no terrorist has yet stood trial before such a tribunal. That is not a bad thing. The history ofAmerican military commissions suggests that this is a legal device vulnerable to abuse that should be used only with the utmost caution. Besides being susceptible to misuse, mil­ itary commissions are a type of court unfa­ miliarto mosttwenty-first-centuryAmericans. The United States has not employed such tri­ bunals since the immediate aftermath ofWorld War II. Although long forgotten here, military commissions are a well-recognized method for dealing with irregular fighters, such as al-Qaeda terrorists, who ignore internationally accepted laws of war. When such “unlawful combatants” fall into the hands of the enemy, the detaining state may subject them to trial in either a civil court or a military one.2 Americans began subjecting such defen­ dants to militaryjustice during the Revolution­ ary War. In 1780, acting pursuant to a congres­ sional resolution, a court martial tried and con­ victed Joshua Hett Smith, a civilian, of aiding and abetting the treason of General Benedict Arnold.3 A military court also decided the fate of a more famous Arnold accomplice, Major John Andre ofthe British Army, who, while out of uniform and in disguise, received from the notorious traitor papers concerning the Amer­ ican fortifications at West Point. Andre was convicted ofspying, a violation ofthe custom­ ary laws ofwar.4 In 1818, U.S. General Andrew Jackson used courts martial to try two British civilians accused of inciting Creek Indians to wage war against the United States.5 Although in each of these cases a group ofsoldiers vested withjudicial poweradjudged ALARM BELLS FROM THE PAST 301 Major John Andre of the British Army was captured as a spy near West Point in 1780 after receiving secrets about American fortifications from General Benedict Arnold. The first military commission occurred during the Mexican War, when General Winfield Scott declared martial law and issued a general order providing that certain crimes against American soldiers (and crimes committed by American soldiers) should be punished by military commissions. This lithograph shows Vera Cruz during the bombardment on March 25, 1847. 302 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Military commissions such as the one utilized to try Confederate Army Captain Henry Wirz, the commander of the notorious Andersonville prison camp (pictured), were used widely during the Civil War. Such commissions continued for more than five years after the end of the war. a defendant guilty of violating the laws of war, the tribunals that decided them were not military commissions. The first use of some­ thing comparable to what President Bush au­ thorized in his order of November 13, 2001 occurred during the Mexican War. After in­ vading central Mexico, General Winfield Scott declared martial law and issued a general order providing that certain crimes against Amer­ ican soldiers committed by Mexican civil­ ians (including murder, robbery, and theft) should be punishable by military commis­ sions. In addition, Scott mandated the use of such tribunals to try members of his own army who had been accused of similar of­ fenses; the Articles of War authorized the court-martial of American troops only for the offenses the Articles enumerated, which were limited mainly to breaches of discipline.6 “In essence,” law professor Carol Chomsky ex­ plains, “these military commissions [which General Zachary Taylor also employed] re­ placed the civilian criminal courts in occupied, hostile territory after the declaration of mar­ tial law.”7 To punish violations ofthe “laws of warfare,” Scott employed another type ofmili­ tary tribunal, referred to as a “council ofwar.” These court-martial-like bodies provided the models for what we refer to today as military commissions.8 During the Civil War, the Union Army made extensive use...

The Historical Development of the Application of Humanitarian Law in Non-International Armed Conflicts to 1949

That humanitarian rules were applicable in armed conflicts was accepted long before the nineteenth century, but the fact that non-international armed conflicts were regarded as beyond the ambit of international regulation meant that the application of such norms to internal armed conflicts was certainly not a matter of course. Towards the end of the eighteenth century there had been a move towards the application of the laws of warfare to non-international armed conflicts as well as international conflicts, but this was based on the character of the conflicts and the fact that both were often of a similar magnitude, rather than any humanitarian concern to treat the victims of both equally. Not until the nineteenth century did the application of the laws of war to non-international armed conflicts become a widespread issue in international law.

The Rwanda Tribunal: A presentation of some legal aspects

If we look back to the diverse origins of the laws of warfare, one basic question which seems to have occupied the early lawmakers was: why, in fact, should there be legal limitations to belligerent actions aimed at destroying a foreign foe? At first glance, any such constraints would appear to be contrary to the very purpose of warfare and thus of no value to those who were either forced to resist an armed attack or who themselves wished to wage war against an enemy.

Blinding Laser Weapons and International Humanitarian Law

Multilateral arms regulations may restrict or prohibit the production and possession of specific weapons (the disarmament approach) or the use of specific weapons considered excessively inhumane or indiscriminate in their effects (the humanitarian law approach). This article focuses on the second approach, seen against the background of the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868, which states that whenever scientific developments lead towards improvement in armaments, the Contracting Parties will `come to an understanding' in order to `conciliate the necessities of war with the laws of humanity'. The article discusses the prospects for and the legal arguments against battlefield laser weapons which can cause permanent blindness on human beings. Since aggressive use of force is forbidden under the UN Charter, it follows that any use of any weapon is prohibited within the context of aggression. But where international law does not prohibit the use of armed force — as in the case of self-defence or Security Council mandated actions — the right of parties to the conflict to choose methods and means of warfare is not unlimited. The argument is made that systematic use of laser-beams against the eyesight of individuals is prohibited under the existing law of warfare. It is also argued that the use of anti-eye laser weapons is prohibited under existing law, although this conclusion will need to be confirmed in a multilateral document.

Law of warfare at sea and neutrality: Lessons from the gulf war

Abstract Since the UN Security Council did not determine that an act of aggression was committed in the Iran‐Iraq War, the conflict must be treated as a war fought by belligerents enjoying equal status under international law. This article focuses on the applicability to the Gulf War of the rules of international law governing the conduct of hostilities at sea and the closely related law of neutrality. The belligerents in the Gulf War took advantage of uncertainties and gaps between the letter of the law and actual past practice. Indeed, they completely disregarded the rules of international humanitarian law in naval warfare. The war between Iran and Iraq also raised the issue of the duties of neutral states. A number of formally “neutral”; countries ignored the duty of impartiality. It is questionable whether a “nonbelligerent”; state has the right to assert the traditional rights of neutrality in relation to a belligerent against which it practices discrimination. The Gulf War demonstrates the need to r...

The Laws of Warfare in the Book of Deuteronomy: Their Origins, Intent and Positivity

The Laws of Warfare in the Book of Deuteronomy: Their Origins, Intent and Positivity

Frits Kalshoven: “The Law of Warfare”

Frits Kalshoven: “The Law of Warfare”