scholarly journals The Combatant’s Privilege in Asymmetric and Covert Conflicts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens David Ohlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
The Government ◽  
Turf Battle

[First introductory paragraph] As the United States has engaged in an unprecedented campaign of targeted killings against members of al-Qaeda and associated forces, various agencies within the government have engaged in increasingly pitched squab-bling regarding their respective control over drone strikes in multiple foreign theaters. Authority and responsibility has vacillated between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Department’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the former being an intelligence agency tasked with both intelligence and covert operations directives, and the latter a military organization under the direction of the Secretary of Defense. In addition to the inherent policy questions in this turf battle, there are urgent elements of domestic and international law simmering beneath the surface. Some critics have suggested that CIA officers should not be involved in drone operations because CIA officers are non-uniformed individuals that do not meet the international law standards for privileged belligerency. According to this argument, the calculus regarding the appropriate agency for drone operations ought to take into ac-count that international law does not confer the combatant’s privilege on non-uniformed CIA employees.Published: 40 Yale J. Int'l L. 337-93 (2015)

Do U.S. Drone Strikes Cause Blowback? Evidence from Pakistan and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (04) ◽  
pp. 47-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aqil Shah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Muslim Communities

Many analysts argue that U.S. drone strikes generate blowback: by killing innocent civilians, such strikes radicalize Muslim populations at the local, national, and even transnational levels. This claim, however, is based primarily on anecdotal evidence, unreliable media reports, and advocacy-driven research by human rights groups. Interview and survey data from Pakistan, where, since 2004, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has launched more than 430 drone strikes, show little or no evidence that drone strikes have a significant impact on militant Islamist recruitment either locally or nationally. Rather, the data reveal the importance of factors such as political and economic grievances, the Pakistani state's selective counterterrorism policies, its indiscriminate repression of the local population, and forced recruitment of youth by militant groups. Similarly, trial testimony and accounts of terrorists convicted in the United States, as well as the social science scholarship on Muslim radicalization in the United States and Europe, provide scant evidence that drone strikes are the main cause of militant Islamism. Instead, factors that matter include a transnational Islamic identity's appeal to young immigrants with conflicted identities, state immigration and integration policies that marginalize Muslim communities, the influence of peers and social networks, and online exposure to violent jihadist ideologies within the overall context of U.S. military interventions in Muslim countries.

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

1997 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-517
Author(s):  
Marian Nash (Leich)
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Government ◽  
Contemporary Practice

On March 3,1997, President William J. Clinton transmitted to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification as a treaty the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Hong Kong for the Surrender of Fugitive Offenders, signed at Hong Kong on December 20,1996. In his letter of transmittal, President Clinton pointed out that, upon its entry into force, the Agreement would “enhance cooperation between the law enforcement communities of the United States and Hong Kong, and … provide a framework and basic protections for extraditions after the reversion of Hong Kong to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China on July 1, 1997.” The President continued: Given the absence of an extradition treaty with the People’s Republic of China, this Treaty would provide the means to continue an extradition relationship with Hong Kong after reversion and avoid a gap in law enforcement. It will thereby make a significant contribution to international law enforcement efforts.The provisions of this Agreement follow generally the form and content of extradition treaties recently concluded by the United States. In addition, the Agreement contains several provisions specially designed in light of the particular status of Hong Kong. The Agreement’s basic protections for fugitives are also made expressly applicable to fugitives surrendered by the two parties before the new treaty enters into force.

James Angleton and the Church Committee

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 128-147
Author(s):  
Loch K. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
First Line ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Public Defense ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Church ◽  
Extreme View

James J. Angleton, who served as chief of counterintelligence for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1954 to 1974, was an important figure in the Cold War and, in a sense, the first line of defense against clandestine Soviet intelligence operations directed against the United States and its allies. In 1975 a U.S. Senate investigative committee—informally known as the Church Committee and led by Senator Frank Church—called Angleton to testify in public on his approach to counterintelligence, especially how he had become involved in illegal domestic operations in the United States. His testimony to committee staff investigators preceding the hearing, along with his public statements to senators during the hearing, displayed an extreme view of the global Communist threat. Amid ongoing revelations in the mid-1970s of illegal CIA actions, Angleton proved unable to mount an effective public defense of his approach.

Congo/Zaire-US Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Namikas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Plantation Slavery ◽  
The Cold War

At the dawn of the 20th century, the region that would become the Democratic Republic of Congo fell to the brutal colonialism of Belgium’s King Leopold. Except for a brief moment when anti-imperialists decried the crimes of plantation slavery, the United States paid little attention to Congo before 1960. But after winning its independence from Belgium in June 1960, Congo suddenly became engulfed in a crisis of decolonization and the Cold War, a time when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for resources and influence. The confrontation in Congo was kept limited by a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force, which ended the secession of the province of Katanga in 1964. At the same time, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) intervened to help create a pro-Western government and eliminate the Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Ironically, the result would be a growing reliance on the dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu throughout the 1980s. In 1997 a rebellion succeeded in toppling Mobutu from power. Since 2001 President Joseph Kabila has ruled Congo. The United States has supported long-term social and economic growth but has kept its distance while watching Kabila fight internal opponents and insurgents in the east. A UN peacekeeping force returned to Congo and helped limit unrest. Despite serving out two full terms that ended in 2016, Kabila was slow to call elections amid rising turmoil.

The United States and the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979–1989

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conor Tobin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Post Cold War

In December 1979, Soviet troops entered the small, poor, landlocked, Islamic nation of Afghanistan, assassinated the communist president, Hafizullah Amin, and installed a more compliant Afghan leader. For almost ten years, Soviet troops remained entrenched in Afghanistan before finally withdrawing in February 1989. During this period, the United States undertook a covert program to assist the anti-communist Afghan insurgents—the mujahideen—to resist the Soviet occupation. Beginning with President Jimmy Carter’s small-scale authorization in July 1979, the secret war became the largest in history under President Ronald Reagan, running up to $700 million per year. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acted as the war’s quartermaster, arranging supplies of weapons for the mujahideen, which were funneled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), in coordination with Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, and others. No Americans were directly involved in the fighting, and the overall cost to the American taxpayer was in the region of $2 billion. The Afghan cost was much higher. Over a million Afghans were killed, a further two million wounded, and over six million refugees fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran. For the Soviet Union, the ten-year war constituted its largest military action in the postwar era, and the long and protracted nature of the conflict and the failure of the Red Army to subdue the Afghans is partially responsible for the internal turmoil that contributed to the eventual breakup of the Soviet empire at the end of the 1980s. The defeat of the Soviet 40th Army in Afghanistan proved to be the final major superpower battle of the Cold War, but it also marked the beginning of a new era. The devastation and radicalization of Afghan society resulted in the subsequent decades of continued conflict and warfare and the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism that has shaped the post-Cold War world.

Basic U. S. Sources For Current Research In International Law: An Elementary Vade-Mecum

1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adolf Sprudzs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Many ◽  
The U.S

Among the many old and new actors on the international stage of nations the United States is one of the most active and most important. The U.S. is a member of most existing intergovernmental organizations, participates in hundreds upon hundreds of international conferences and meetings every year and, in conducting her bilateral and multilateral relations with the other members of the community of nations, contributes very substantially to the development of contemporary international law. The Government of the United States has a policy of promptly informing the public about developments in its relations with other countries through a number of documentary publication, issued by the Department of State

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

1995 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 366-375
Author(s):  
Marian Nash (Leich)
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Socialist Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
Contemporary Practice

On January 28, 1995, representatives of the Government of the United States and of the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam signed at Hanoi the Agreement Concerning the Settlement of Certain Property Claims and the related Agreement Concerning the Transfer of Diplomatic Properties.

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