Democratic nations need their armed forces to act decisively in defence of national security. But in recent years the legal frameworks governing military operations have increasingly failed to reflect the realities of armed conflict. International humanitarian law applies where normal civil mechanisms have broken down. Armed forces are deployed only when civilian agencies cannot cope-whether at home or overseas. In those circumstances, policing laws are not fit for purpose, and this new Military Operations Bill makes clear that operations should be judged under the law of armed conflict.
Service personnel are asked to make decisions in conditions of danger and uncertainty, often under intense time pressure. If those decisions are later judged against legal standards which do not match up to the operational environment, the result can be years of legal jeopardy for those who acted lawfully and hesitation within the chain of command.
The case for reform is both practical and constitutional. Practically, the present system has made possible the prolonged and repetitive processes which punish the innocent as well as the guilty, damaging morale, retention, and operational effectiveness. Constitutionally, it has helped shift the locus of authority over war from elected government and military command towards retrospective judicial reconstruction through the misapplication of peacetime human rights standards to armed conflict.

The past couple of years have seen a substantial number of new developments regarding the relationship between international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL). These include what is probably the most significant judicial engagement ever with this relationship – the 2025 European Court of Human Rights Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia merits judgment – as well as three advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice (2024 Policies and Practices; 2025 Climate Change; 2025 UNRWA AOs). One aspect of these decisions, however, is of particular interest: how the ECtHR and the ICJ have clearly abandoned lex specialis as the conceptual framing of the IHL/IHRL relationship.
Two principal arguments emerge. First, lex specialis has experienced near-total judicial abandonment in the IHL/IHRL context; both courts have embraced harmonious interpretation and systemic integration while deliberately avoiding the Latin formula, even when expressly invited to use it. However, the hardest cases – genuine norm conflicts in the conduct of hostilities, especially regarding deprivation of life under Article 2 ECHR and the role of derogation – remain open. Second, the recent jurisprudence demonstrates the substantial gap-filling role IHRL can play where IHL is sparse or silent, particularly in relation to digital rights, socio-economic rights, and a state's treatment of its own population. The article further argues that IHRL enables a top-down, strategic assessment of the cumulative civilian harm caused by military operations, an inquiry that IHL's atomized, attack-by-attack focus cannot easily undertake.

A dispute over a ship stranded in the Black Sea raised two interesting points on force majeure: the meaning of “unforeseeable” and whether a notice requirement was a condition precedent. Inerco agreed to sell Ukrainian corn to ADM Israel, due to be shipped between April and May 2023. A force majeure clause dealing with “prevention of shipment” covered “unforeseeable … impediments” and required notice “within 7 consecutive days of the occurrence”. A separate extension clause required notice “not later than the next business day” after the “originally stipulated period”. Due to the invasion of Ukraine, ships entering the Black Sea to load grain were inspected. In May, the Russian inspectors stopped inspecting inbound vessels. Inerco therefore invoked the force majeure clause. When ADM Israel rejected this, Inerco treated that as a renunciatory breach and terminated the contract.

Timely and accurate information is the lifeblood of successful military operations and is often critical to meeting law of armed conflict (LOAC) obligations. But as Clausewitz famously noted: "War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty." Some of this proverbial "fog of war" is inherent to the extremely complex and chaotic nature of combat. Some is the result of deliberate efforts to deceive one's enemy, degrade the availability and quality of the information available to it, and corrupt its decision-making processes.

Clausewitz, the 19th-century Prussian strategist, wrote about war in the aftermath of the Napoleonic campaigns. His goal was to explain why earlier theories of war proved inadequate during those campaigns, which for the first time involved the mobilization of a nation. But the questions he posed are the same as those that Operation Epic Fury raises today. Did the use of force serve a clearly defined political purpose? Was the right kind of war being fought with the right means? Were the conditions for termination set before the operation began? Here, the author applies six of Clausewitz's core principles to this U.S. "war of choice": war as the continuation of political intercourse, matching ends to means, the center of gravity, the culminating point, friction and uncertainty, and the paradoxical trinity.

The British Government Published a dossier on 24 September 2002 setting out its claims regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Parliament was recalled for an emergency session on the same day to hear Prime Minister Tony Blair's presentation of it. The dossier stated that Iraq had WMD and was producing more. After the invasion in March 2003, no WMD were found. Ever since, there has been controversy as to whether the dossier reported accurately intelligence which turned out to be wrong, as Blair has claimed consistently, or whether the dossier deliberately deceived by intentionally giving the impression of greater Iraqi WMD capability and threat than the intelligence suggested. Despite a great deal of attention to the September dossier, there has not been any analysis conceptually well developed enough, or sufficiently grounded in the empirical evidence, to make much headway in resolving this disagreement.
This article assesses the extent to which the dossier was part of a campaign of organized political persuasion and whether that campaign involved demonstrable deception. It shows that the dossier did not accurately represent the content and strength of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. Instead, the dossier portrayed a misleading picture of greater capability and greater certainty than the intelligence warranted. The misleading nature of the dossier was not an accident. There was a concerted effort by many of those involved in producing the dossier to push the claims about the intelligence as far as possible. The phrase "dodgy dossier" was originally used to describe this September dossier. The British government published another dossier on 3 February 2003 which was exposed as being mostly plagiarized. Subsequently, the term "dodgy dossier" has tended to be applied mainly to this second dossier. In view of the arguments in this article, the September dossier ought to be known as the deceptive dossier.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, together with video and press statements, that the United States would be undertaking an effort to dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC), "brick by brick if necessary." The authors and others responded to this statement here. The separate purpose of this article is to address the specific statements in the op-ed (quoted in italics). The authors, writing from their positions as international law scholars, address some of the factual claims or underlying assumptions in the article in a way that they hope will be helpful for the public, journalists, and others seeking to make sense of this announcement.

The UK has committed itself to the responsible adoption of AI technologies for military use. While the Ministry of Defence has published detailed guidance on the ethical dimension of military AI, so far it has offered remarkably little guidance on its legal aspects, including the law of armed conflict. The purpose of this article is to call attention to this imbalance and the risks it poses. A large proportion of AI capability development is now driven from the bottom up. Yet industry is not bound to ensure that its products are compliant with the law of armed conflict. Considerable time, effort and resources may therefore be invested in the design and development of AI systems that subsequently turn out to raise substantial legal concerns. This could present the Ministry of Defence with an unpalatable choice between redesigning these systems at considerable expense or deploying them at the risk of non-compliance. To avoid this outcome, we argue that the Ministry should recognize that the legal and ethical considerations of AI are distinct, determine what exactly its legal obligations demand, communicate these requirements to industry by setting detailed expectations and proactively engage with businesses early in the AI system lifecycle.

The brutal murder of Henry Nowak - and the role played by racial bias of the police officers in attendance.
Strip away the documents, the litigation and the consultancy reports, and what remains is a boy on a driveway, a lie, and a pair of handcuffs that went on the wrong man. Henry Nowak's killer told the police he was the victim of a racial attack, and the police treated the man he stabbed as the criminal. The judge said the officers were misled, and this briefing has sought to explain why the lie was so easy to tell and so certain to be believed. It has shown that for more than 25 years, British policing has been taught to treat an accusation of racism as the most serious charge that can be levelled, and a murderer, who had read nothing of Critical Race Theory but understood the culture perfectly, used that lesson to buy himself time over the body of his victim.

At the 2026 Munich Security Conference, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed Europe's "long tradition in freedom of speech." Then she drew a redline. "We are very clear with digital sovereignty . . . that what is forbidden offline is forbidden online," she added.
Von der Leyen's maxim would have sounded foreign to the continent's leaders just over a decade ago. Inspired by the social media-led movements of the Arab Spring, liberal democracies treated Internet freedom as a geopolitical principle to be evangelized rather than a problem to be regulated. Since then, faith in the liberalizing potential of open access to the Internet has given way to a more technocratic focus on digital sovereignty, the idea that states must control their own data and infrastructure, as the organizing principle of European digital policy. The pivot has come as a response to the increasing dominance of American tech platforms, whose engagement-driven models have driven fears that they might be weaponized by hostile states and groups to spread propaganda and undermine democratic institutions. Since U.S. President Donald Trump's reelection in 2024 - and as Silicon Valley's leaders have cozied up to an administration openly antagonistic toward Europe's political establishment and supportive of the populists challenging it—European policymakers have increasingly felt the need to assert control over what Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has referred to as a "digital Wild West."

During the Second World War the United States generally followed treaties even when an adversary was not a State party. This would not be the case for the 1907 Balloons Hague Declaration. To eliminate any ambiguity surrounding its inapplicability during the war, the U.S. War Department issued Circular Number 136 in May 1942, stating that the Declaration "is not binding and will not be observed." By 1943, the U.S. Army's Judge Advocate General's School textbook on the law of land warfare characterized the War Department's Circular as meaning that the United States had "expressly denounced" the Declaration. The United States has a straightforward path to eliminate any such question over the status and applicability of the 1907 Hague Declaration on Discharging Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons. Because the Declaration has a formal withdrawal procedure, the United States should follow it. Remaining a party to this 120-year-old treaty of almost no practical utility, while withdrawal would give the United States promising operational flexibility to leverage new, innovative delivery systems without the risk of being cast as a scofflaw.

While States must be guided by extant international law when considering whether and how to use force, its rules set only the legal boundaries that they may not cross, whether through action or omission. The decisions our leaders make must equally be informed by moral considerations, which seem in short supply in the ongoing conflicts. Just war doctrine helps calibrate the moral compass that should inform such decisions and serves as a useful framework for balancing military and humanitarian considerations when interpreting international law rules that may not offer clear guidance in the attendant circumstances. Despite the Vice President's pontification on the matter, the author will stick with the views of the Pontiff on the interpretation of the doctrine.

There are times when government lawyers (including military legal advisors) are faced with a stark choice. Their political masters (or their superiors in the military) are clearly set on pursing a certain course of action that seems pretty patently illegal. The stakes are exceptionally high, including very possibly in lives lost. The pressure of raw power is overwhelming. Should the lawyer become (or continue being) an apologist for that raw power, crafting some kind legalistic rationale to justify a decision already made? Or should they just say no, this is illegal and you can't do it?

Iranian power plants and other critical civilian infrastructure are protected from attacks by the law of war the United States helped craft after World War II. Such an object can lose its protection only if it is used for military purposes by the enemy and its destruction "offers a definite military advantage." Even then, such an object can be attacked only if, after a case-by-case rigorous analysis, the "concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" outweighs the civilian suffering that is expected to result.
Despite those well-settled legal parameters, President Trump has repeatedly threatened to obliterate such infrastructure without regard to the law's high demands. His comments are blatant expressions that he is willing to turn the United States into a rogue State, one that rejects the fundamental legal restraints that protect innocent non-combatants like children, and the Iranian civilian population itself.

Around 800,000 Lebanese residents have been displaced so far since the beginning of this round of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. On 2 March 2026, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) issued evacuation orders directing residents of villages and towns in southern Lebanon to leave their homes and move north of the Litani River, effectively depopulating an area covering about 8% of Lebanon's territory and affecting hundreds of thousands of residents (here and here). Similar orders followed on 5 March 2026, instructing roughly 400,000 residents of Beirut's southern suburbs to evacuate (here), and on 12 March 2026, directing residents between the Litani and Zahrani rivers to move north of the Zahrani River (here and here; and see map here). According to Doctors Without Borders, these blanket evacuation orders covered at least 14% of Lebanese territory and displaced more than 800,000 people.
Such blanket evacuation orders raise questions as to their legality, especially when a vast civilian population is affected. This article examines the legality of such evacuation orders in the context of armed conflicts. It begins by providing a brief history of the recent events; second, the author outlines the rule of the law regarding the legality of evacuation orders; and third, he provides his legal analysis in this regard.

The sustained U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Iran, and Iran's response against not only those States, but also other States in the region, has generated a cascade of questions regarding how the law of armed conflict (LOAC) governs the hostilities. In this Q&A, we explain the LOAC rules that apply in many of the attacks that have drawn attention based on who or what appears to have been targeted, how the attacks took place, or their consequences. We begin by establishing that there is an international armed conflict to which LOAC applies. Discussion then turns to issues concerning the targeting of persons and objects, including at sea; specific weapons, the use of which is controversial; and targeting processes and limitations, including the rule of proportionality and the obligation to take precautions to minimize civilian harms in attack.
At the outset, it is essential to emphasize the foundational premise that runs through every answer: LOAC operates on the principle of equal application. That means the same set of rules binds all sides to the conflict without regard to which party had the legal right to resort to military force. Accordingly, whether the United States and Israel acted in lawful self-defense as they claim (Article 51 letters: Iran, US, Israel), or in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which we believe to be the case, that question is entirely separate from–and has no bearing on–the obligations of the parties under LOAC.

Recent naval incidents in the Indian Ocean involving Iranian warships, the United States, and regional coastal States have drawn renewed attention to a body of law often assumed to belong to another era: the law of neutrality at sea. Reports that an Iranian warship was sunk by a US submarine south of Sri Lanka, followed by the rapid rescue of survivors by nearby States, together with the docking and repair of another Iranian warship in an Indian port during ongoing hostilities, raise legal questions that classical neutrality law was intended to address, yet which rarely arise in contemporary discussions of naval warfare.

On 20 March 2026, the UK Government announced a significant change in its policy of allowing the United States to use British military bases during its war on Iran, solely to stop Iranian attacks on countries in the Gulf. Now, the UK Government has expanded the consent it had given to the United States to also extend to operations against Iranian assets being used to attack shipping in the strait of Hormuz:

• Ministers condemned Iran's expansion of its targets to include international shipping. They agreed that Iran's reckless strikes, including on Red Ensign vessels and those of our close allies and Gulf partners, risked pushing the region further into crisis and worsening the economic impact being felt in the UK and around the world.
• They confirmed that the agreement for the US to use UK bases in the collective self-defence of the region includes US defensive operations to degrade the missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
• They reaffirmed that the principles behind the UK's approach to the conflict remain the same: the UK remains committed to defending our people, our interests and our allies, acting in accordance with international law and not getting drawn into the wider conflict.

The statement the UK Government released yesterday fails to answer some fundamental questions on why US attacks against Iranian military assets on Iranian soil would be lawful, and distinct from its overall war of aggression, simply on the basis that the Iranian assets were being used to attack shipping in Hormuz. Because that's the key problem – if the US strikes cannot be justified by self-defence, then the UK cannot legally allow its bases to be used for that purpose.

In an unprecedented series of attacks, Iran has targeted commercial data centers in Gulf countries in the context of the armed conflict initiated by the United States and Israel on Feb. 28. On March 1, it used Shahed 136 drones to strike two Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), causing devastating fire, power outages, and further damage as firefighters fought the blazes. A strike on a third Amazon data center in Bahrain soon followed, although reports suggest the attack caused the damage indirectly when a drone hit nearby. It is unclear at this time whether the strike slightly missed the data center or merely caused collateral damage to the facility while attacking another target. These attacks highlight the importance of data centers to civilian society and their growing operational significance in contemporary warfare.

In the morning of Wednesday 25 February 2026, a Cuban government vessel carrying five border guard troops approached a speedboat, registered in the U.S. as FL7726SH, after it had, according to Cuba's Interior Ministry, entered its territorial waters in Falcones Cay, Villa Clara province. Upon being approached for identification by the Cuban vessel, the crew of the speedboat allegedly opened fire leading to the wounding of one Cuban commander and, in the ensuing exchange of fire, four of the people on board the speedboat were killed, with the other six wounded.
Cuba claimed that the group was comprised of U.S. based anti-government Cubans, some of whom were previously wanted for plotting other attacks, and that the individuals on this occasion were allegedly trying to infiltrate the island 'for terrorist purposes'. Shortly after the incident U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the U.S. had not been involved and that it would carry out its own investigation, and Cuba has not expressly alleged direct U.S. involvement.
Using the FL7726SH incident as a vehicle for analysis, this short piece places the incident in the context of the relevant law of the sea whilst, at the same time, identifying some of the intersections between this framework and the jus ad bellum in general but also as they emerged during the incident, and the possible implications of this.

This post assesses the legality of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz from the perspective of the law of armed conflict at sea. In the context of the rights of neutral States, it discusses the passage regime in and over the Strait of Hormuz that continues to apply in the on-going international armed conflict (IAC) that was unlawfully launched by the United States and Israel against Iran.
The belligerents United States, Israel and Iran are not parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). From this legal perspective, it is difficult to ascertain that the right of transit passage governs the passage and overflight of their warships and military aircraft in peacetime. The recent attacks against merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz are discussed mostly from the perspective of the law of targeting and naval blockade.

The use of artificial intelligence in military operations is a topic of enormous relevance, as the ongoing conflict in Iran well demonstrates. In particular, the United States has been using Anthropic’s Claude AI model, as part of its Maven project, as a decision support system in targeting. The Israeli military's use of AI systems in the Gaza conflict has also been well documented, and they are surely being used in the Iran context as
There is now a substantial legal literature on the challenges that AI, especially when it is used in autonomous weapons systems and decision support systems, poses to international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Much of that literature points to various 'accountability gaps' that the use of AI might create or exacerbate. These challenges, and gaps, are real. But, in the author's view, and when it comes to international criminal justice in particular, there is a tendency in some of the literature to overemphasize the extent of these challenges and the game-changing nature of AI as a disruptive new technology.

As algorithms begin to make decisions that determine who lives and who dies on the battlefield, the rise of AI-driven autonomous weapon systems (AWS) is forcing a re-examination of some of the most basic principles of international humanitarian law (IHL). This is especially so as recent breakthroughs in AI have fueled AWS proliferation among major powers, with China and Russia in particular pouring increasing resources into innovations like swarming drones. Despite supporters pointing to AWS's potential for increased precision, decreased human error, and fewer military casualties, its introduction into armed conflicts raises pressing questions about compliance with IHL and the capacity to hold parties responsible for ensuing harms.

The UK claims any US aircraft flying from bases like Fairford and Diego Garcia can only act in defence of British regional allies. Such a distinction may be unrealistic in a theatre of war. The UK has taken a step closer to involvement in the US and Israeli war against Iran.
The UK government initially refused President Donald Trump's request to use its military bases in support of the war with Iran. But on 1 March, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced he would, after all, permit the use of UK military bases such as RAF Fairford in the UK and the overseas base on Diego Garcia. This is to be limited to 'defensive' action against missiles and drones based in Iran. This limited concession was reportedly negotiated with Washington, in accordance with London's view on the legal issues involved.
Throughout, the prime minister has been adamant that the UK has not participated in the initial US and Israeli offensive, and that this remains the case. He argued that the UK would, under his leadership, never contemplate going to war without a legal basis. This seems to confirm reports that the UK attorney general may have advised that the US and Israeli operation is not in accordance with international law.

It is important to understand what turns on the question of the applicability of the law of armed conflict and, equally, what does not. The applicability of the law of armed conflict to the killing of Khamenei has no bearing on the rules governing resort to force. These two bodies of law operate independently. There is no tenable justification for the US-Israeli attack on Iran under the rules governing the use of force, as others have explained (see here, here and here). Even if Khamenei was a military objective and directing an attack against him was not a violation of the law of armed conflict (see here for analysis), this in no way justifies the use of force against Iran under the rules on the use of force: his killing would still form part of an act of aggression and therefore be unlawful under those rules.

The UK government has been careful in not directly supporting the ongoing US-Israeli use of force against Iran. This is at least partly because the internal view within the government is that the use of force is illegal. Indeed, in the endless political rigmarole about the deal between the UK and Mauritius on the Chagos Islands, including the Diego Garcia military base, it seems clear that one of Trump's flip-flops on the deal was provoked by the UK essentially telling him that Diego Garcia could not be used for illegal strikes against Iran.
Now, however, the UK government has announced that it is engaging in direct action to intercept some Iranian missiles directed against UK allies in the Gulf, and also that it would permit the United States to use British bases to conduct strikes against missile facilities in Iran that have been used to fire missiles against countries in the Gulf.

Keith Dear and Magdalena Pacholska argue that humans are responsible and accountable when delegating the use of lethal force to machines and these actions are regulated by existing international humanitarian law. There is no need for new laws or guiding principles. International discussion on lethal autonomous weapons systems and AI decision support systems are unnecessary. The real concern is artificial general intelligence and jus ad bellum, which should be the focus of UN and international discussions, specifically on AI's military and security applications and effects.

Over the past several years, investigative reporting has revealed a range of coordinated efforts to suppress online speech in Western countries. Often referred to as the Censorship-Industrial Complex, these networks of information suppression (mostly operating under the guise of "countering-disinformation" or "hate speech") have been particularly widespread in the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union. Within the EU, Germany plays an outsized role in this complex, with a plethora of government and private nodes engaged in monitoring online speech and advocating increasing levels of content suppression. While in the US the influence of these networks has diminished with the advent of the second Trump administration (leaving aside the new administration's other free speech aggressions), in Europe and in Germany these networks continue unabated despite popular backlash. Germany' s reputation as a hive of censors has devolved to the level of caricature.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share via Elgaronline, thanks to generous funding support from the Criminal Law Section of the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam. This prescient Research Agenda sheds light on current and expected developments of military law. It provides expert guidance on the application of international law to military operations and assesses new challenges such as AI, hybrid warfare and the militarization of outer space.

It is impossible to rule out the global catastrophe of a US-China war even if the superpowers appear at this point to be building parallel zones of influence. But there is a lot that other countries can do to protect themselves and to stabilise the world. It is encouraging that some are doing that.
There is also much they can do – particularly the US's one-time allies, and particularly the UK – to explain to the American public in this crucial election year the consequences of the Administration's choices. There is an obvious temptation to stay silent, try to avoid causing offence and hope that the forces of politics, economics or the American Constitution will constrain what happens. But the risk of staying silent and not standing up for the principles that have underpinned the liberal international order is that those principles do indeed become an article of history, not the foundation of the world we want to live in.

The Trump Administration's sabre-rattling over securing control of Greenland, the sovereign territory of Denmark, continues to escalate. The President's apparent concerns with Greenland date back to his first term, when he asked his team to explore purchasing Greenland for its "valuable resources" and tasked the National Security Council with assessing options for acquiring the territory. But in this term, the Administration is publicly discussing seizing the territory by military force, and U.S. allies and members of Congress are taking these developments seriously.
The 1949 North Atlantic Treaty (also called the Washington Treaty) established the NATO Alliance and set the terms according to which the Parties to the instrument (the "Allies" in NATO parlance) would respond to an "armed attack" on an Ally in collective defense. The key provision is Article 5. As expressly confirmed in Article 5, the authority to act collectively derives from Article 51 of the UN Charter, which had been adopted four years earlier. In relevant part, Article 51 provides: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." Since Article 5 is grounded in the Charter's Article 51, action taken based on the former is subject to, at least, the same conditions and limitations as self or collective defense under the latter.

If the US no longer abides by rules, how does it expect revisionist states to do so?. In the first week of January 2026, the world watched as one extraordinary moment followed another, notably the US action in Venezuela and the US pursuit and boarding of an (alleged – more on this later) Russian-flagged ship in the North Atlantic. As well as sharing a principal actor, the US, there is another common factor: the apparent flouting of near-universally accepted international laws, enabled by impressive military might. We consider here the second of these incidents: the maritime interdiction of an oil tanker by the US Coast Guard in the North Atlantic, miles from their usual operating area.

On 6 January 2026, US President Donald Trump restated his longstanding desire to take control of Greenland, declaring that the US needs the autonomous Danish territory 'right now'. On the same day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller confirmed that it is the formal position of the US Government that Greenland should be part of the US. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added that President Trump and his team are discussing a range of options to acquire Greenland and in this context noted that 'utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief's disposal'.
Even without the US resorting to the use of military force against Greenland, significant damage has already been done. The Trump Administration's actions are approaching the point at which they amount to coercive intervention into the affairs of Denmark and a threat to use of force. They may in fact have crossed those thresholds. At some point, European governments may have no choice but to confront the strategic dilemma they are facing head on.

The operation against Venezuela, which culminated in the capture of President Maduro and his wife, amounts to a severe breach of foundational principles of international law. It constitutes a clear violation of the prohibition on the use of force enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. The claim that drug trafficking, or State involvement in such trafficking, constitutes an "armed attack" sufficient to justify a forcible response in self-defense has no support in customary international law or State practice.
Nor can the exercise of extraterritorial enforcement of domestic criminal law, even against narco- traffickers or indicted heads of State, be justified in the absence of Venezuela' s consent. By exercising enforcement jurisdiction there, the United States has violated Venezuelan sovereignty both because the operation occurred on its territory and because it has usurped an inherently governmental function (law enforcement) exclusively enjoyed by Venezuela. Moreover, despite any crimes he may have committed, Maduro' s seizure violates the long-standing rule of immunity ratione personae for heads of State.
In addition to violating bedrock jus ad bellum rules governing the resort to force and the sovereignty of Venezuela, the operation has triggered an international armed conflict between the United States and Venezuela. The legal consequences are immediate and sweeping – the whole body of the law of armed conflict now applies, including the law governing detention, the conduct of hostilities, protected persons, and war crimes.
The U.S. operation has long-term implications for the integrity of the international legal order, including the systems put in place to prevent war and protect States from using their criminal enforcement powers to intrude on other countries' sovereign prerogatives.

Congress has given the president a gargantuan global military force with few constraints and is AWOL in overseeing what the president does with it. Courts won' t get involved in reviewing unilateral presidential uses of force. And no country plausibly could stop the U.S. action in Venezuela. That means that in practice the only normative legal framework for presidential war powers that matters derives from executive branch precedents and legal opinions. The Justice Department, if asked, easily could have drafted an opinion based on these precedents and opinions to justify the invasion of Venezuela.

The news of the US attack on Venezuela and seizure of President Nicolas Maduro is still breaking, so this is just a very preliminary take on the situation by the author, as he thinks it is very important that some of the core issues are properly understood, particularly by the media. There will be time later to discuss more of the nuance and to consider more deeply the broader implications. For now, however, this provides some basic analysis of the legal issues implicated by the actions thus far reported. The scale of the military intervention that has been reported unquestionably made it a "use of force" for the purposes of Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter. There are two established "exceptions" or "justifications": (1) individual or collective self-defense, as provided for in Article 51 of the UN Charter; and (2) use of force authorized by the U.N. Security Council, under Article 42 of the UN Charter, to restore or maintain international peace and security. The second justification is clearly not satisfied here, as there is no such authorization. To justify an exercise of self-defense under Article 51, a state must be responding to an "armed attack," and the use of force must be both necessary to prevent the continuation of such attacks, and be proportionate.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has held (initially in Military Activities, Nicaragua v. United States) that an "armed attack" is the most grave form of a use of force. Efforts by the US to characterize illicit drug shipments to the US, as somehow constituting an armed attack because they ultimately result in thousands of overdose deaths in the US, do not remotely come close to even the broadest conceptions of "armed attack" (leaving aside the factual problems with these claims, since Venezuela plays little role in the flow of fentanyl into the US).
The military intervention is an unlawful use of force and an act of aggression in violation of the fundamental prohibition on the use of force-a rule that is considered a jus cogens norm, that is a peremptory norm of international law that permits of no derogation by states.