Amidst the breaking-down of cooperation between the USA and Russia in addressing the war in Syria, the continuation of the Ukrainian crisis and the US charges against Russia for its alleged interference in the American Presidential elections, the sanction tit-for-tat between the two Powers continues. The most recent episode occurred during the first week of October, when the Russian Federation decided to suspend – and in one case terminate – various nuclear-related agreements between itself and the United States of America. Russia’s unilateral decisions raise several questions, notably with regard to the law of treaties; however it is Russia’s justification for suspending the 2013 Agreement on Cooperation in Nuclear and Energy Related Scientific Research and Development (hereafter the ‘2013 Agreement’) that caught my attention and on which I wish to comment. It so happens that the Kremlin justified the suspension as a countermeasure in response to the American sanctions against it. The 2013 Agreement‘s aim is to provide a stable and reliable framework within which the USA and Russia can cooperate in fields…
Nuclear Weapons
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Capitulation in The Hague: The Marshall Islands Cases
When questions around nuclear weapons are brought before the ICJ, we don’t expect easy answers – too far apart are the realities of power politics from any defensible conception of what the world ought to look like, and international law is caught in the middle. In the 1996 Advisory Opinion on the legality of the use of nuclear…
No Dispute About Nuclear Weapons?
On 5 October 2016, the ICJ rendered judgment in three cases brought by the Marshall Islands against nuclear weapons States (namely against India, Pakistan and the UK). Notwithstanding differences in the respondents' optional clause declarations, the three judgments are largely identical. In all three of them, the Court decided that it did not…
Whose Security is it Anyway? Towards a Treaty Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
On Friday, 13 May 2016, the UN’s Open Ended Working Group (OEWG), convened pursuant to UNGA resolution 70/33 (7 Dec 2015) and mandated, inter alia, to “substantively address concrete effective legal measures, legal provisions and norms that would need to be concluded to attain and maintain a world without nuclear weapons”, closed its second session with a…
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