Are 20th Century Rules of Warfare Germane to 21st Century Conflicts ?

David Benjamin Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col.	Hudson Institute scholar and international organizations expert John Fonte	Prominent Washington, DC attorney Nathan Lewin	Professor Jeremy Rabkin from George Mason University	Professor Amichai Cohen from American University and has a Ph.D. from law from Yale University

Are Twentieth Century Rules of Warfare Germaine for the Nature of Twenty-First Century Conflicts?  

By Sarah N. Stern

The Geneva Convention of 1949, and most of the corpus of legal protocols of international warfare, generally had come about in the wake of the vast humanitarian atrocities of World War II, committed at the hands of the state, and the shallowness of the Nuremberg defense.  The entire body of laws of warfare that Western liberal democracies are informed by, today, are essentially humanitarian laws that had been brought about to defend the innocent civilian in the wake of atrocities committed by the over-riding power of the state.

Today, however, we are faced primarily with the phenomena of non-uniformed, non-state actors who hide in densely populated urban centers, and use those civilians as human shields in which to launch attacks.  How is the state, any state, in this new age of warfare, supposed to defend their civilian population, which, according to Article 51 of the UN Charter is a vital responsibility of the nation state?

Western liberal democracies are now under assault, not only by these non state actors, but by an alliance and a congruency of forces between the non-state combatant  and  the institutions of international jurisdiction, such as the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and the International Red Cross, who seem to be stuck in this old paradigm.  The twentieth century paradigm regards the state as the primary source of belligerency against the helpless civilian, but what about in  the case of many, if not most 21st century  conflicts today, when the person wearing civilian’s clothes is not necessarily so innocent, but is simply not wearing a uniform, and who claims allegiance to a greater cause, just not the state?

Are these institutions of international jurisdiction capable of rendering an objective and unbiased judgment ? Or are they stymied by an outdated paradigm, or by a certain zeitgeist, that looks at the machinery of the state as all-powerful against a hapless civilian, even when the civilian might be involved in lethal terrorist activity and has an allegiance to a higher calling with hegemonic aspirations? Have these institutions become political forums for assaulting Western liberal democracies, such as the United States and Israel, and the rule of law that exists within those liberal democracies, when they should be focusing, rather, on the  real human atrocities of Darfur, Rwanda or Yugoslavia?    

On January 26th, EMET held a riveting policy seminar discussing these highly critical issues.  Our  illustrious panel included  Lt. Col. David Benjamin , a specialist in international law for the Israeli Defense Forces Military Advocate General’s Corps, (ret), John Fonte of the Hudson Institute, and the Director of Hudson Institute’s Center for American Common Culture, Jeremy Rabkin, Professor of Law at George Mason University, Prominent Washington DC Attorney Nat Lewin, who is currently an Adjunct Professor  at Columbia University Law School, and Dr. Amichai Cohen, Visiting Professor at American University, and Professor of International Law at Ono Academic College, Kiryat Ono, Israel.

During the seminar, a lively discussion ensued about whether or not the entire corpus of international law is at all relevant for today’s conflicts. Nathan Lewin had actually expressed the view that virtually none of legal precedent of how to conduct warfare is relevant for today’s conflicts.

Both of the Israelis on the panel expressed  reverence for international legal precedent and felt that it is Israel’s obligation to wrestle with these weighty problems  every day with gravity and with care.  Or, as Lieutenant Colonel David Benjamin who for the last seventeen years has been literally in the trenches as part of Israel’s legal advocate corps had put it, “We have a moral obligation to fight in the most humane way possible, and still manage to survive and to win….And we have.”

(For a complete transcript of the proceedings, please click here.)

On Wednesday October 29th, The Endowment for Middle East Truth hosted IDF Reserve Colonel Bentzi Gruber, before a packed room of congressmen, staffers and community members. Col. Gruber is currently Vice–Commander of an armored division, a position that followed other significant posts of command in the course of more than 20 years in the IDF Reserves. He spoke about the moral purity of the decisions of the Israeli Defense Forces, Hamas’ use of urban population centers to harbor terrorists, their use of children as human shields, Red Crescent Ambulances to transport Hamas weapons and terrorists, and the elaborate system of tunnels between Egypt and Gaza which Hamas use to transport weapons and terrorists.

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Dr. Miriam and Sheldon  G. Adelson Policy Seminar Series

Official transcript of the recent seminar that EMET held on Capitol Hill regarding the Saudi penetration into our national infrastructures.

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EMET and The Center for Security Policy

EMET is proud to link efforts with The Center for Security Policy in Washington, as part of the campaign to ensure that Americans divest from companies who do business with states that sponsor terrorist organizations, or who are, themselves, terrorist regimes. By this, we will weaken the governments of Kim Jung Il of North Korea and Mahamoud Ahamdinajad of Iran. We will be hitting them in the pocket book, where it hurts.

www.divestterror.org