In this article, Kevin Rousseau explores the ways in which the modern focus on international humanitarian law has affected strategic decisions of both weak and major powers. Rousseau provides examples of “lawfare” in action and concludes by observing that waning principles of sovereignty require the state to adapt to the changing international legal operating environment… Continue reading International Law & Military Strategy: Changes in the Strategic Operating Environment
Tag: Combatant
Outsourcing Covert Activities
Over the past decade, the United States has radically shifted the way it projects its power overseas. Instead of using full-time employees of foreign affairs agencies to implement its policies, the government now deploys a wide range of contractors and grantees, hired by both for-profit and nonprofit entities. Thus, while traditionally we relied on diplomats, spies, and soldiers to protect and promote our interests abroad, increasingly we have turned to hired guns. Contrast the first Gulf War to later conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Torture Lite,” “Full Bodied” Torture, and the Insulation of Legal Conscience
Several years ago, I began work on a project that I fancied to be both hypothetical and academic. In the aftermath of September 11, a number of commentators, including one prominent member of the legal academy, advanced the proposition that interrogation by torture in pursuit of terrorists should be viewed as permissible under the United States Constitution when undertaken with procedural safeguards. In an article published in 2003, I argued that these commentators were legally sloppy and morally obtuse: no matter what procedures accompany it, interrogation by torture is both at odds with settled constitutional law as it is and profoundly inconsistent with the legal system as it should be.