Armed Conflict
Just Security’s expert authors provide analysis on the legal, policy, and strategic dimensions of armed conflict, including the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, counterterrorism operations, conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, and other armed conflicts across the globe, with a focus on international humanitarian law, war crimes and accountability, mitigating and remedying civilian harm, and the humanitarian impacts of warfare.
3,544 Articles
The Obama Administration’s Misguided Opposition to Tariq Ba Odah’s Request for Judicial Relief
On October 15, a federal district court in Washington, DC, will hear argument in Ba Odah v. Obama, a habeas challenge by a Guantánamo detainee whose prolonged hunger strike has…
The False Choice of Opposing Torture or Endless War: A Response to Samuel Moyn
In a thoughtful guest post Samuel Moyn has continued and deepened a debate we began in the pages of the current issue of Dissent on the relative merits of opposing war itself and…
Toward a History of Clean and Endless War
It is idle — but interesting — to speculate on what future historians will say about our own time. True: We can never know, and would probably find ourselves shocked by what…
Public Access to Military Trials: The Increasingly Strange Case of Sergeant Bergdahl
I still don’t know what to make of the government’s case against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl (of Taliban detainee transfer fame) for charges of desertion and misbehavior before…
The Special Rapporteur on Torture’s Report on Extraterritoriality Speaks to Migrant Crisis
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Méndez, has issued a new expert’s report (his 17th)—this one on extraterritoriality. (JustSecurity’s extensive…
Amid Calls for UN Investigation Into Kunduz Strike, US Senator Suggests that the UN Does Not Investigate Taliban Abuses. He’s Wrong.
Today, following calls for an independent inquiry into the US airstrike on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) – during a Senate Armed Services…
Precision Weapons, Mistakes, and the Need for Transparency
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…
Was the Kunduz Strike a War Crime?
As reports poured in over the weekend that the United States bombed a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing at least 12 MSF staff members and…
Rest Easy Professeurs de Trahison, You Are Not Targetable Under LOAC
William C. Bradford’s article Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamic Fifth Column, published last summer in George Mason Law School’s…
The Bass-Ackwards Detainee Transfer Provision in the FY2016 NDAA
There’s a lot to say about the 1,915-page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2016 that was unveiled yesterday by the House and Senate Armed Services…
D.C. Circuit Grants Rehearing En Banc in al Bahlul (and Highlights My Poor Math Skills)
This afternoon, the D.C. Circuit granted rehearing en banc in al Bahlul v. United States, the constitutional challenge to the Guantánamo military commissions’ authority to try…
UK’s Legal Rationale for Drone Strikes Differs Fundamentally From US Rationale
Much of the public commentary concerning the UK’s targeted strike in Syria against a British national who had joined ISIS (along with other individuals with him at the time)…