Suchergebnisse

Concerns for the lives of soldiers and innocent civilians have come to underpin Western, and particularly American, warfare. Yet this new mode of conflict faces a dilemma: these two norms have opened new areas of vulnerability that have been systematically exploited by non-state adversaries. This strategic behaviour creates a trade-off, forcing decision-makers to have to choose between saving soldiers and civilians in target states. Sebastian Kaempf examines the origin and nature of this dilemma, and in a detailed analysis of the US conflicts in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, investigates the ways the US has responded, assessing the legal, moral, and strategic consequences. Scholars and students of military and strategic studies, international relations and peace and conflict studies will be interested to read Kaempf's analysis of whether the US or its adversaries have succeeded in responding to this central dilemma of contemporary warfare

Since the early twenty-first century, tertiary education has witnessed a dramatic shift with the rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs). Celebrated by some as the ultimate "democratization" of education, this development has not been without controversy. The main purpose of this article is neither to confirm nor dispel the controversies rather it seeks to critically examine one MOOC to encourage more nuanced reflections about teaching international relations through this new format. The case study presented here is of "MEDIAWARx," a MOOC offered on edX in the IR field since 2017. This article provides an in-depth view into the pedagogical aims and design as well as the response to and experience of one specific MOOC.

How can we tell what state the laws of war are in today, and whether they face exceptional pressures? Standard accounts of the condition of this body of law focus on problems of compliance and effectiveness. In particular, there is a dominant international legal diagnosis that most non-compliance is accounted for by the prevalence of non-state belligerents in irregular or asymmetric conflicts. We propose that any such diagnosis is partial at best. A focus on compliance and effectiveness tells us nothing about the reasons for actor behaviour, or about its impact on the regime. We advance a different conceptual framework, exploring the complex connections between compliance, effectiveness and legitimacy. We propose an alternative diagnostic model that places legitimacy at the heart of the analysis, treating it as causal, not simply symptomatic. This highlights when violations result in legitimacy costs for the individual actor, as opposed to reaching a tipping point when violations cumulatively impose legitimacy costs on the regime itself. We argue for the need to move beyond discussions framed by compliance and effectiveness, and towards the forms, reasons and reception of non-compliant behaviour, as this provides a truly social measure of the state of the law. In order to illustrate this, we examine three distinct types of challengers — Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the US and Russia — and present them as, respectively, revisionist, rejectionist and denialist threats to the regime. Unusually, the laws of war today face challenges on all three fronts simultaneously.