Noah Weisbord on Aggression Under International Law

Ipse Dixit

In this episode, Noah Weisbord, Associate Professor of Law at Queens University Faculty of Law, discusses his book, The Crime of Aggression: The Quest for Justice in an Age of Drones, Cyberattacks, Insurgents, and Autocrats. Weisbord begins by defining the crime of aggression, and traces its historical development from the attempts to promote peace in the 1920s through the League of Nations to its modern conception in international law. He summarizes the negotiations over the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which established the institution, and the subsequent amendments in 2010 regarding the crime of aggression. He discusses the incorporation of the international legal norm into the domestic realm, bringing up the the prosecution of Russian servicemen for waging a war of aggression in Ukraine and the investigation of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's conduct regarding the Iraq War by the Chilcot Inquiry.

Weisbord outlines the elements that constitute a crime of aggression, placing responsibility for unlawful uses of military force in the hands of military and political leaders. He explains the limitations of the crime, noting that cyber-attacks conducted against Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz by the United States and Israel and the attacks on the 2016 Presidential election by Russian-linked actors do not merit retaliation for violating the international law against aggression. He reflects upon the potential abuses of the crime of aggression by state actors who might use the responsibility to protect doctrine or mis-matched retaliation to justify otherwise illicit uses of force. And he concludes by providing his insights and recommendations on the crime of aggression for the public, policymakers, and governments. Weisbord is on Twitter at @NoahWeisbord.

This episode was hosted by Luce Nguyen, a college student and the co-founder of the Oberlin Policy Research Institute, an undergraduate public policy organization based at Oberlin College. Nguyen is on Twitter at @NguyenLuce.

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