Armed Conflict
Use of Force
823 Articles
UK Government’s Disappointing Dodge on Drones
A Royal Air Force Reaper RPAS (Remotely Piloted Air System) at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan- Wikimedia Commons [This post was first published 2:50EDT] The UK Government recently…
The Right to Life as the Jus ad Bellum of Non-International Armed Conflict (A Reply to Lieblich)
An important question raised in a recent post in Just Security is what law governs when a state can resort to military force against a threat from a non-state actor. Professor…
UK Government’s Response on Drone Strikes Policy Leaves British Parliament Wanting More
A heads-up to Just Security readers: The UK government has responded to the British Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) report on the use of drones for targeted…
What Law Applies to the Resort to Force Against Non-State Actors? Filling the Void of “Internal Jus Ad Bellum”
What international legal rules determine when the U.S. government can resort to force against a non-state armed group such as the Khorasan Group, if that organization plans an…
International Law and Proposed U.S. Responses to the D.N.C. Hack
In a short essay in Foreign Policy, retired Admiral James Stavridis addresses recent election season cyber operations against the Democratic National Party that the U.S. has attributed…
Letter to the Editor: Not So Fast on Calling it an “Armed Conflict” Between the US and Syria
In Tuesday’s provocative entry, “Is the United States Already in an ‘International Armed Conflict’ with Syria?,” Ryan Goodman states not only that the US is engaged…
De Facto and De Jure Non-International Armed Conflicts: Is It Time to Topple Tadić?
When does violence between a state and non-state actor constitute an armed conflict and thus trigger the system of legal rules that apply in non-international armed conflict (NIAC)?…
A Humanitarian Exception to the Principle of Non-Intervention?: Measures Below the Use of Armed Force to Save Aleppo
Do the atrocities in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria permit the United States and other states to engage in intrusive actions against the Assad regime that would not ordinarily be…
Just Security’s Questions for Clinton and Trump
Given the importance of tonight’s prime-time debate between US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we’re again running our list of vital national…
The ICRC Updated Commentaries: Reconciling Form and Substance, Part I
Sean Watts’ July 5, 2016 post focuses attention on two significant documents intended to clarify “how best to read and understand the law of war” in the 21st Century: the…
The PPG Visualized, What the US Kill and Capture Bureaucracy Looks Like
This 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 ahead…
Today’s Important Deadline in the ACLU’s Targeted-Killing Transparency Case
Today, more than three years after President Obama announced that he had issued a classified “Presidential Policy Guidance,” commonly known as the PPG, meant to govern the…