War

Challenging and Refining the “Unwilling or Unable” Doctrine

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VJTLMy latest law review article has just been published: “Challenging and Refining the ‘Unwilling or Unable’ Doctrine,” 52 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 245 (2019). The abstract is as follows:

This Article challenges and proposes refinements to the “unwilling or unable” doctrine. Governments after 9/11 have invoked the doctrine to justify the use of force in self-defense against non-state actors (NSAs) operating within the territory of nonconsenting states. Responding to criticism that it lacked substance and a legal foundation, Daniel Bethlehem famously developed more detailed principles to embed the policy firmly in law, strike a balance between the interests of target states and territorial states, and bridge the gap between scholars and policy makers. His principles were embraced by governments as reflecting custom. The effort was laudable, but the principles fell short of their objective, and they create a risk of destabilizing the jus ad bellum regime.

This Article notes that the principles do not reflect custom, and it examines some of the ways in which they are inconsistent with the established understanding of the jus ad bellum regime. Specifically, they: lower the threshold for what constitutes an armed attack; eviscerate the temporal component from the concept of imminence, thereby destabilizing the core principle of necessity; improperly import the law of state responsibility into the jus ad bellum analysis; and undermine the independence of the international humanitarian law (IHL) and the jus ad bellum regimes. Finally, the principles do not provide sufficient guidance on how or by whom a range of key determinations are to be made, particularly regarding the “ability” or “unwillingness” of the territorial state. The principles lump all these determinations together, and suggest that they may all be made unilaterally by the target state, governed only by a single, low reasonableness standard. All of this weakens the constraints of the jus ad bellum regime more generally, thus raising the risk of inter-state war.

The Article takes seriously the operational imperatives in dealing with the threat posed by terrorist organizations, but proposes refinements to the principles to address each of these problems, so as to achieve greater consistency with established principles of the jus ad bellum regime. It develops new ideas on imminence, and drawing upon theories of self-judgment in international law, it disaggregates the decisions that have to be made and proposes differentiated standards to govern their execution and later assessment.

What Role and Rules for Canada’s Armed Drones?

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predator-firing-missile_previewI have published a short essay, “What Role and Rules for Canada’s Armed Drones,” in the Canadian Global Affairs Institute: Policy Perspectives, Dec. 23, 2018. Here is the abstract:

The Canadian government announced in June 2017 that it was planning to purchase and deploy armed drones. Yet to date it has provided virtually no information on how and for what purpose such armed drones would be used, beyond anodyne comments that they would be used like any other conventional weapon. However, conventional weapons have varying capabilities and purposes, and implicate international law in different ways as a result. Armed drones have been primarily used for the purpose of targeted killing, in ways that have raised significant legal questions and triggered claims of excessive civilian deaths. Canadians should be concerned about how, for what purpose, and according to what limitations the government plans to deploy armed drones. Other countries have provided greater transparency than Canada regarding the law and policy framework governing the use of armed drones. This short essay reviews how armed drones have been used elsewhere, explains the significant legal issues that are implicated by the different ways in which drones have been used and what that implies for the role of Canadian armed drones. It suggests that strict, clear and publicly disclosed limits be placed on drone use to ensure compliance with Canada’s international law obligations.

International Law and U.S. Military Strikes on Syria

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(Published in the Huffington Post, Aug. 31, 2013).

Cruise missile launchThere has been insufficient analysis, by both policy makers and the media, of the legality of the looming use of military force against Syria. As usual, the law seems to be beside the point. But this not only ignores a key factor, but is rather paradoxical given that one of the primary justifications for the strikes is that they are to punish the Syrian government for its violations of international law. Legality should be an important factor in the decision-making process, because if the use of force is itself not lawful, then it represents nothing more than vigilante justice, likely doing far more harm than good to the international legal order.

There is little doubt that the Syrian regime has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against its own people over the last two years. If it is proven that the Assad regime used chemical weapons in the attack last week, that would constitute a separate and grave violation of international law. All of this screams out for a response by the international community.

The reality, however, is that these crimes do not justify a unilateral use of force, and the contemplated American military strikes would not be lawful. Indeed, the Obama administration, while tossing out platitudes about complying with international norms, has not even tried to make the legal case justifying the use of force.

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Why Canada Should Not Support an Israeli Attack on Iran

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(Published in the Huffington Post (Canada), March 2, 2012)

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The Canadian newspapers reported this week that Prime Minister Netanyahu would be seeking the support of the Canadian government for a possible military attack on Iran. There is increasing speculation that Israel will launch military strikes before summer against the nuclear enrichment facilities within Iran, in an attempt to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Harper has given Netanyahu hope that Canada might back such a move. But the strikes would violate international law, and Canadian support for them would utterly betray the values that Canada has long championed.

First, let us examine the legality. The international law regime under the United Nations system prohibits all use of armed force, except in self-defence in the event of an armed attack, or for collective security purposes as authorized by the U.N. Security Council. The Israelis are trying to characterize the proposed military strikes as acts of self-defence to prevent an existential threat from materializing. Such strikes would not, however, satisfy the test for self-defence.

While there is some agreement in international law that states can use force to defend against an imminent armed attack, rather than being required to wait for the first blow to actually fall, the test for imminence is strict. Such “anticipatory self-defense” is permitted only when the “necessity of self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation” (a formulation that arose from an incident between Britain and the U.S. in 19th-century Canada, as it happens). In contrast, there has been widespread rejection of the concept of “preventative self-defense” — that is, the use of force to prevent the development of a more distant and speculative future threat.

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