War & Strategy

Atmospheric Intervention?

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cjelMy latest law review article has just been published: “Atmospheric Intervention? The Climate Change Crisis and the Jus ad Bellum Regime,” 45 Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 331 (2020). Here is the abstract:

Many governments have begun to understand that the consequences of climate change will increasingly create both direct and indirect threats to national security. Under some projected scenarios these consequences may pose an existential threat to human civilization. Yet there has been little attention to how this will implicate the jus ad bellum regime. As the climate change crisis becomes more severe, states will begin to view not just the consequences but some of the causes of climate change as comprising a threat to national security. Specifically, they will begin to characterize other states’ recklessly excessive and flagrantly unlawful contributions to climate change as a threat to international peace and security. The international climate change regime will be sufficiently developed to help frame such characterizations, but incapable of enforcing or mobilizing compliance with its obligations.

States will thus look to the collective security regime to coerce such “climate rogue states” to comply with their climate change law obligations. The identification of climate rogue states as posing a threat to international peace and security will trigger the basis for collective action, up to and including the threat or use of force. In the face of UN Security Council inaction, there will be increasing pressure on the jus ad bellum regime to adjust so as to permit and justify such action. Recent efforts to relax the constraints of the jus ad bellum regime, in response to other purportedly novel threats — such as nuclear proliferation, transnational terrorism, cyber-attacks, and humanitarian crises — provide templates for the kind of arguments we may anticipate for justifying action against “climate rogue states.” We will see efforts to expand the doctrine of self-defense, or to establishing new exceptions to permit “atmospheric interventions.”

The logic of these arguments for adjusting the jus ad bellum regime are more powerful than recent efforts, because the threat they seek to address will increasingly appear to outweigh the resulting increased risk of armed conflict. They will likely gain traction as the crisis deepens. This requires us now, before fear drives the agenda, to begin a discussion of how such adjustment might best be shaped, limited, or resisted. As compelling as they will become, the arguments are dangerous. They will not only weaken the jus ad bellum regime but are likely to compound some of the injustices of the climate change crisis and undermine the international rule of law in ways that will be counterproductive to our efforts to respond to the crisis.

Questions on Legality of Israeli Strikes in Iraq and Lebanon

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(Published in Just Security, Sept. 9, 2019)

A flurry of news reports during the final week of August detailed recent Israeli air strikes against Iranian affiliated groups in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. The Washington Post published an Editorial questioning the wisdom of this Israeli policy, though typically, and regrettably, utterly neglected to consider issues of legality. It did repeat the media mantra that “Israel has a right to defend itself from Iranian attacks,” but then failed to examine whether any of the Israeli strikes had been responding to actual or imminent armed attacks. A New York Times analysis of the escalation similarly avoided the legal questions.

The short answer, based on publicly available evidence (discussed below), would be that the strikes were unlawful. Only one of the strikes on Syria was reportedly responding to an imminent attack, which should thus make for a very short analysis on the legality of the rest of the strikes. But a brief and somewhat disjointed exchange among some international law scholars on Twitter last week raised some questions and advanced some arguments (to the extent Twitter can sustain such a thing) that suggested a perhaps more complex and interesting analysis. I explore that line of analysis here.

Some Facts

First, a brief review of some of the facts. Israel carried out several air strikes in July and August in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. For simplicity I will leave the strikes in Syria aside for now, and focus on the strikes in Iraq and Lebanon, though it should be understood that Israeli representatives have argued that most of the strikes (or those that have been acknowledged by Israel) served the same broad purpose of preventing Iran from establishing a weapons supply line through Iraq and Northern Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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The Danger in Abe’s Constitutional Amendment Proposal

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(Published in The Japan Times, Aug. 5, 2019)

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has demanded that the Diet move forward with debating his Liberal Democratic Party’s proposal for amending Article 9 of the Constitution, with a view to possibly having a vote on the issue in 2020. Having failed to retain a two-thirds supermajority in the Upper House election on July 21, he will need to sway some members outside of his coalition to win approval of any such amendment, and thus the debate will be more meaningful, its consequences more significant.

Many observers will be struck by how modest the new amendment proposal seems, and thus may be lulled into thinking that there is little to fear from it. This is a grave mistake. Once analyzed in its broader context, the ramifications of the proposal look much more dangerous.

To begin, it will be recalled that Article 9 has two paragraphs. The first provides that Japan renounces war and the threat or use of force as sovereign rights of the nation. The second, which has been more controversial and far less effective, has two clauses: first, a prohibition on the maintenance of land, sea or air forces or other war potential; and second, a denial of the rights of belligerency. While many legal scholars view the existence and size of the Self-Defense Forces as being patently inconsistent with this provision, that is not the official view.

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Japan’s Dilemma in the Persian Gulf

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(Published in Australian Institute of International Affairs: Australian Outlook, Jun. 26, 2019; re-published in Opinio Juris, Jul. 5, 2019)

In the wake of the recent attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, there has been considerable discussion about Europe’s difficult position amidst the escalating tension between the United States and Iran. There has been far less discussion of Japan’s situation. Yet one of the ships was Japanese-owned, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Tehran at the time of the attack, specifically trying to dampen those tensions. Nonetheless, Japan distanced itself from the American accusations of Iran’s role in quite surprising and uncharacteristic fashion.

Why was that? Like the EU, Japan appeared to be on the horns of a dilemma, but the nature of its dilemma seemed far less clear. One explanation may lie with the Japanese government’s 2014 so-called “reinterpretation” of the war-renouncing provision of the Constitution. The current situation in the Gulf dovetailed with that “reinterpretation” in manner that created a dilemma with huge risks for the government.

Japan’s Surprising Response to the Crisis

Most readers would be familiar with the increasing tensions between Iran and the United States, from the American withdrawal last year from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the American tightening of sanctions since then, through to the recent U.S. deployment of forces to the region, followed by the two separate attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman. This timeline is a good refresher.

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