The Law of War (original) (raw)

Under Attack: Challenges to the Rules Governing the International Use of Force

Under Attack makes a new contribution to the field of international relations in general and the study of international law and armed conflict in particular, in two core ways. First, it links information from varying disciplines, most notably international relations and international law, to form a comprehensive picture of state practice and the challenges it poses to the legal rules for the use of force. Secondly, it organises the information in such a way to identify two core groups of contemporary justifications used by states: humanitarian reasons and self-defence, both with their sub-categories. At the core of this book is the question of how state practice since 1990 has challenged the long-established legal regime on the international use of force. Are we merely witnessing a temporary and insignificant challenge to international law or are the rules genuinely under attack?

Modern Warfare Under the Laws of War

From the dawn of civilisation to today, warfare has brought great destruction and terrible human suffering, affecting combatants and civilians, who frequently bear the brunt of war. Families have been torn apart, and entire generations have been damaged, dislocated, and dispirited by loss, violence, and abuse. Although armed conflict has been romanticised in heroic stories of liberation and revolution, those who have experienced the reality of war are often terribly troubled and traumatised. Melzer notes “for as much as war is exclusively human, it is also inherently inhumane”.1 There is nothing inevitable about the agony and desperation of victims of war; the international community has the ability and means to prevent this. A large corpus of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) has evolved to mitigate human suffering at war. In a world where conflict often spills across national borders, and with novel and unconventional forms of violence, the importance and necessity of this body of law has, perhaps, never been so great. As the face and practice of modern warfare are dramatically transformed by technology, the urge to ensure the protection of civilians becomes ever more pressing. The article begins with the chapter by Lean- dro Pereira Mendes, who presents the main principles and a brief history of the development of IHL. In the next chapter, Aris Vasilliou discusses the conflict in Eastern Ukraine regarding potential war crimes committed there by the parties of the conflict. In chapter three, Candela Fernández Gil-Delgado looks closely at the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, focussing on one specific situation: the right of self-determination, self-defence and the use of force. In chapter four, Christian Di Menna discusses the challenges and possible solutions vis-à-vis compliance with the principles and rules of IHL in situations of contemporary armed conflicts.