This timely new volume brings together experts on the laws of war from academia, the military, and the NGO community to examine the issues surrounding September 11th and its aftermath, which have raised fundamental challenges to the existing corpus of international humanitarian law. The book features a thoughtful overview and discussion of the extent to which "new wars" call for new laws. The authors analyze specific topics pertaining to this theme, including the definition of armed conflict, the identification of military objectives, the meaning and application of the principle of proportionality in contemporary conflicts, the legitimacy of "targeted killings," the treatment of individuals detained in non-traditional armed conflicts, and the contemporary application of the law of occupation. Specific highlights include: Lt. Col. William K. Lietzau, National Defense University and former Special Advisor to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense (DoD), on when to apply the law of war and when to apply a law enforcement paradigm; Yoram Dinstein, Stockton Professor of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College, on proportionality; Crimes of War website editor Anthony Dworkin on due process problems in the anti-terror campaign; Ken Watkin, Visiting Fellow in the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, on targeting and assassination; and much more. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

The Laws of War and 21st Century Conflict explores how international law considers and confronts the so-called new warfare. To many, modern conflict appears unlike any we have known before. A modern battlefield might as easily be found in an urban shopping mall or in the frontline trenches of a failed state. Weaponry that once populated science fiction novels and movies is now a reality, with unmanned aerial drones used against military targets in several countries and automated robots replacing some soldiers on the battlefield. Globalization and the diffusion of technology have eroded state controls and empowered other actors, from terrorist groups to mercenaries. Now, the most deadly threats might be activated by the push of a cell-phone button or from a computer hacker's screen on the other side of the world.

This book introduces students to the essential questions of the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.

This book examines the key dimensions of 21st century war, and shows that orthodox thinking about war, particularly what it is and how it is fought, needs to be updated. Accelerating societal, economic, political and technological change affects how we prepare, equip and organise for war, as well as how we conduct war – both in its low-tech and high-tech forms, and whether it is with high intensity or low intensity. The volume examines changes in warfare by investigating the key features of the conduct of war during the first decades of the 21st century. Conceptually centred around the terms ‘kinetic’, ‘connected’ and ‘synthetic’, the analysis delves into a wide range of topics. The contributions discuss hybrid warfare, cyber and influence activities, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the use of armed drones and air power, the implications of the counterinsurgency experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, as well as the consequences for law(fare) and decision making. This work will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, security studies and International Relations. Chapters 1, 2, 5, and 19 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Examines the legal issues surrounding non-international armed conflict (NIAC) in the modern era.