Suchergebnisse

In Wars of Law, Tanisha M. Fazal assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war for the commencement, conduct, and conclusion of wars over the course of the past one hundred fifty years.After a brief history of the codification of international humanitarian law (IHL), Fazal outlines three main arguments: early laws of war favored belligerents but more recent additions have constrained them; this shift may be attributable to a growing divide between lawmakers and those who must comply with IHL; and lawmakers have been consistently inattentive to how rebel groups might receive these laws.By using the laws of war strategically, Fazal suggests, belligerents in both interstate and civil wars relate those laws to their big-picture goals. In Wars of Law, we learn that, as codified IHL proliferates and changes in character—with an ever-greater focus on protected persons—states fighting interstate wars become increasingly reluctant to step over any bright lines that unequivocally oblige them to comply with IHL. On the other hand, Fazal argues, secessionists fighting wars for independence are more likely to engage with the laws of war because they have strong incentives to persuade the international community that, if admitted to the club of states, they will be good and capable members of that club.Why have states stopped issuing formal declarations of war? Why have states stopped concluding formal peace treaties? Why are civil wars especially likely to end in peace treaties today? Addressing such basic questions about international conflict, Fazal provides a lively and intriguing account of the implications of the laws of war.

If you were to examine an 1816 map of the world, you would discover that half the countries represented there no longer exist. Yet since 1945, the disappearance of individual states from the world stage has become rare. State Death is the first book to systematically examine the reasons why some states die while others survive, and the remarkable decline of state death since the end of World War II. Grappling with what is a core issue of international relations, Tanisha Fazal explores two hundred years of military invasion and occupation, from eighteenth-century Poland to present-day Iraq, to

If you were to examine an 1816 map of the world, you would discover that half the countries represented there no longer exist. Yet since 1945, the disappearance of individual states from the world stage has become rare. State Death is the first book to systematically examine the reasons why some states die while others survive, and the remarkable decline of state death since the end of World War II. Grappling with what is a core issue of international relations, Tanisha Fazal explores two hundred years of military invasion and occupation, from eighteenth-century Poland to present-day Iraq, to.

The question of where to begin when considering the conditions under which states and non-state actors comply with international humanitarian law (IHL) is itself an interesting one because of the history of IHL. IHL was created by states, principally to govern their behavior in relation to each other. The major codified elements of IHL, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, are agreements signed by states. For the last several decades, however, most wars have occurred within, rather than between, states. This trend raises the question of whether and when armed non-state actors (ANSAs, typically called "rebel groups" by political scientists) might comply with IHL.

Abstract
Dramatic improvements in US military medicine have produced an equally dramatic shift in the kinds of battle casualties the US military has sustained in its most recent wars. Specifically, there has been a notable increase in the ratio of nonfatal to fatal casualties. Most studies of casualty aversion in the United States, however, have focused on fatal casualties. Using a series of survey experiments, I investigate whether respondents are equally sensitive to fatal and nonfatal casualties, differences between populations with and without close military ties, and whether views on casualties are conditioned by respondents' level of knowledge about casualties or the individual costs of war they expect to incur. I find that, while the general public is generally insensitive to different types of casualties, respondents with close ties to the military are better able to distinguish among kinds of casualties. This advantage, however, is not due to respondents with close military ties being better informed about war casualties. Instead, those who bear the costs of war directly appear better able to distinguish among those costs.

AbstractWhat will be the consequences of the criminalization of aggression? In 2010, the International Criminal Court made aggression a crime for which individuals can be prosecuted. But questions around what constitutes aggression, who decides, and, most important, how effective this legal change will be in reducing the incidence of war remain. This essay considers these questions in light of two recent books on the criminalization of aggression: Noah Weisbord'sThe Crime of Aggression: The Quest for Justice in an Age of Drones, Cyberattacks, Insurgents, and Autocratsand Tom Dannenbaum'sThe Crime of Aggression, Humanity, and the Soldier. While the authors argue in favor of the efficacy of the criminalization of aggression as a means to reduce future war, it is also likely that the criminalization of aggression will reshape war in potentially profound ways.

Is war in decline? Recent scholarship suggests that it is. The empirical basis for this argument is a decline in battle deaths over the past several centuries, a standard metric for counting wars and armed conflicts. Dramatic improvements in medical care in conflict zones—in preventive medicine, battlefield medicine, evacuation, and protective equipment—have raised the likelihood of surviving battle wounds today compared with past eras. Thus the fact that war has become less fatal does not necessarily mean that it has become less frequent. Original data on wounded-to-killed ratios, supplemented by medical research and interviews with physicians from the military and nongovernmental communities, is used to advance this claim. The results show that the decline in war is likely not as dramatic as some scholars have argued. These findings question the foundation of existing datasets on war and armed conflict. They also highlight the growing need for policy focused on the battle wounded.