Nikki Haley, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, bragged on Twitter recently about cuts to UN peacekeeping funding, saying:

“Just 5 months into our time here, we’ve cut over half a billion $$$ from the UN peacekeeping budget & we’re only getting started.” pic.twitter.com/LA7IKqupff

— Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) June 29, 2017

Haley’s ill-advised and alarming boast and promise to cut more funds, is a serious risk to UN peacekeeping operations.…   continue »

Fighting in densely populated areas poses a number of significant challenges to forces trying to adhere to the rules that govern warfare. Even assuming that international humanitarian law (IHL) is respected, the cumulative effect of urban warfare inevitably leads to human suffering.…   continue »

Since last week’s revelation of Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and several of her associates, much of the legal focus has been on which crimes, if any, Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort may have committed.…   continue »

When Donald Trump Jr. sat down with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya last June, he hoped to receive information from the Russian government that would, in the words of an intermediary, “incriminate” his father’s political opponent Hillary Clinton, according to his recently released emails.…   continue »

Word out of Washington is that the Trump Administration has started to restructure the State Department and particularly the Under-Secretariat for Civilian Security, Democracy & Human Rights.  “J” (as it is called around Foggy Bottom) encompasses a number of Bureaus and Offices, including the Bureau of Counter-Terrorism and Countering Violent Extremism (CT/CVE), the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), and the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP).…   continue »

The majority of the world’s countries just adopted a new treaty banning nuclear weapons, placing them in the same category of international law as other weapons of mass destruction (chemical and biological weapons) or that cause unacceptable harm (landmines and cluster munitions).…   continue »

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THE TRUMP-RUSSIA CONNECTION

A meeting between a Russian lawyer with Kremlin connections, a former Soviet counterintelligence official, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort is the first evidence the Trump campaign was aware of Russian efforts to aid it.…   continue »

A number of good legal commentaries have challenged rushing to judgment on the legal implications of the Trump campaign meeting with the Russian government.  It is entirely fair to call for measured reflection when revelations are sensational and the commentary is intense.…   continue »

The disclosure of emails documenting Donald Trump, Jr.’s arrangement of a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskay has lots of people asking whether he or the Trump campaign violated federal campaign finance law.  The pivotal question is whether they illegally solicited an in-kind contribution from a foreign national by attempting to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from a Russian national, including incriminating documents.…   continue »

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity — a body set up by President Donald Trump to investigate “the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections,” including vulnerabilities that could lead to voter fraud — is widely seen as perpetuating the myth of mass fraud in the 2016 election in order to facilitate voter intimidation and suppression, including selectively purging voter rolls.…   continue »