Editor's note: This post is part of a book discussion on Alexander Wentker’s “Party Status to Armed Conflict in International Law". Alex Wentker’s book, which will stand as the definitive work on co-party status for years, offers an extremely careful and comprehensive look at the nature and implications of being a co-party to an armed conflict. In addition to providing a range of insights about how to assess co-party status, his book prompted three reflections. One is a modest question about his approach to “collective contributions” of states to a conflict; the other two involve issues on which I think that he may have undersold the importance of his conclusions. 1. Collective contributions to an armed conflict. In his opening post, Wentker summarizes his argument that states should and do assess their collective contributions to acts against an enemy, rather than requiring each actor to assess its own contributions against that enemy, when determining that an armed conflict exists. As he writes in his opening post: “Regarding the…
Armed Conflict
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On Parties and Co-Parties: A Comment on Alex Wentker’s Book
Editor's note: This post is part of a book discussion on Alexander Wentker’s “Party Status to Armed Conflict in International Law". I doubt that a doctoral thesis – and then a book – on international law could be more timely than Alexander Wentker’s Party Status to Armed Conflict in International Law. The ongoing wars in…
Party Status to Armed Conflict in International Law: An Overview
Editor's note: This post is part of a book discussion on Alexander Wentker’s “Party Status to Armed Conflict in International Law". Introduction Russia’s war of aggression has sparked intense public debates about whether and how to support Ukraine across many Western States over the past three years. These debates capture the heart of…
Gaza and the Collective Political Costs of Algorithmic Warfare
Since Israel started its military campaigns against Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank after the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, both academia and the media have intensely debated the Israel Defence Force's (IDF) use of so-called artificial intelligence-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS) for its combat operations. Controversies have mainly revolved around the staggering number of deaths…
Three Legal Issues on First Reading of Resolution 2773 (2025) on Eastern DRC
Introduction In this post, I explore three legal issues pertaining to Resolution 2773 (2025), adopted by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on 21 February 2025 in relation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This resolution addresses the ongoing offensive of the armed group M23 in the DRC, which started in January 2025…