A London court issued, then revoked, an arrest warrant for former Israeli prime minister, Tzipi Livni. The BBC reports on the Israeli and British government responses… Livni: “What needs to be put on trial here is the abuse of the British legal system… This is not a suit against Tzipi Livni, this is not a […]
From the SCOTUSBLOG: The Court’s denial of review of Rasul, et al., v. Myers, et al. (09-227) leaves intact a federal appeals court ruling that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ten military officers are legally immune to claims of torture and religious bias against inmates who were at Guantanamo but have since been released. […]
The G77, a group representing 130 developing nations, has walked out of the Copenhagen negotiations. Find out more about it here. Also, find out more about the implications for global security here, where you can download CNA’s report, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.”
The war in Afghanistan demonstrates that strategic problems arise from international law’s ambiguities. The legality of the Afghanistan War has been disputed by some from the very beginning. The major areas of dispute – whether the U.S. was required to provide evidence to the international community of Al Qaeda’s culpability for the September 11th attacks, […]
Robert Art’s America’s Grand Strategy and World Politics, published earlier this year, is a collection of essays on U.S. grand strategy that Art wrote over the past couple decades. In one essay, “U.S. Foreign Policy and the Fungibility of Force,” Art states: …[M]y goal is to show that arguments about the severely diminished utility of […]
With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty last week (as the FPA European Union Blog reports), I am inclined to revisit Victoria Tin-bor Hui’s book, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. Published in 2005, Hui’s book compares Ancient China during the Warring States Period (in which the balance […]
One cannot swing a virtual cat this morning without hitting an analysis of Obama’s Afghanistan speech. (I recommend reading Juan Cole, who has posts here, here, and here. Also, Patrick Frost of the Afghanistan Blog shares his thoughts.) In lieu of further commentary, I simply offer you Wednesday Morning Videos: 1) John Norton Moore on […]
After the 2005 London bombings, Thomas Friedman wrote an op-ed criticizing Muslim religious leaders for not condemning jihadist suicide attacks. He wrote: The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of […]
A lot of big things happened over the holiday break. Here are some of them: 1) The Kingdom of Buganda rejected a land law passed by the Ugandan parliament. The law gives tenants more rights to resist potential evictions by landlords. Read about it here. 2) The governments of Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia are blocking […]
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the […]
Obama will announce his Afghanistan strategy next week. Reports indicate that troop levels will most likely be close to the 40,000 requested by General McChrystal. According to the New York Times, the three possibilities being seriously considered were: 1) Send 40,000 troops. This plan involves sending about 10,000 troops to Kandahar (where now there are […]
Eric Posner accurately describes Eric Holder’s decision to try KSM in a civilian court: [T]he Obama administration has decided to offer a two-tiered system of justice. We might call them the “high-quality” (civilian) tier and “low-quality” (military) tier. The high-quality approach offers greater accuracy; the low-quality approach offers less accuracy. The Obama administration will use […]
The FPA-o-sphere has been rife with Law and Security Strategy posts this week. Here are some good ones to check out: 1) As the Transitional States Blog reports, the U.S. Senate is considering a resolution condemning the 1915-1916 Turkish mass expulsions of Armenians as genocide. Will this scuttle the Turkish-Armenian peace process? Read the whole […]
There are many arguments floating around, including the one I touched on earlier this week, against trying 9/11 suspects in New York. Let’s examine them. 1) It signals the end of the War on Terror. As John Yoo writes in the Wall Street Journal, the decision “is in effect a declaration that this nation is […]
David Brooks on the NewsHour this past Friday proffered an all too familiar argument. Speaking about the decision to try 9/11 suspects in civilian courts in New York, Brooks said: This trial will become another act of propaganda. The future trials will become other acts of propaganda. And I think we have to understand that […]