As the dust settles on the Ukraine crisis, we should ask how it might affect our understanding of international law. Various  theories of compliance with international law must contend with the fact that Russia violated international law and got away with it. No one has ever argued that countries never violate international law. The argument […]

Thomas Friedman sums it up: Putin’s seizure of Crimea has weakened the Russian economy, led to China getting a bargain gas deal, revived NATO, spurred Europe to start ending its addiction to Russian gas and begun a debate across Europe about increasing defense spending. Nice work, Vladimir. That’s why I say the country Putin threatens most today is […]

I doubt that this Putin defender did Putin any favors by comparing him to the “good” pre-1939 Hitler. The article attacked [a critic of Putin] as “hell-spawn” and suggested that if Hitler had only stopped in 1939, he would be considered a “good Hitler.” “One should distinguish the difference between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after […]

Source: BBC While all eyes are turned to Ukraine and Nigeria, China’s disputes with its neighbors continue to fester. The latest is the ramming of Vietnamese vessels by Chinese vessels in the South  China sea. China claims a big chunk of that body of water–meaning the unoccupied islands on it and the minerals underneath it. […]

That is the (partial) title of a piece I wrote for Foreign Policy. Every so often I make this argument; it works better when the world seems to be crumbling around us. If the center holds, consider it a prediction. May be lurking behind a pay- or registration-wall. The argument is that in the 1990s, […]

There has been a lot of loopy speculation about Putin’s motives, much of it based on conjectures about his psychological makeup. Some people think he is irrational. Another view, which is more plausible, is that he acts tactically in response to short-term opportunities but has no strategic vision. But this view is wrong as well. […]

This year is the 105th anniversary of the publication of Norman Angell’s The Great Illusion, which argued that states act against their self-interest by going to war. While its timing was poor (the book was published in 1909), the argument is actually ingenious: Angell argues that if Germany conquered England, it would simply deprive itself […]

In Slate I argue (once more) that the West can’t do much about Crimea. This time I focus on the ineffectiveness of economic sanctions against a large country, and I touch on the question of whether, and how much, the annexation harms western interests or principles. In short, the costs of sanctions are high and […]

Sachs argues that there is a crisis in international law, based not only on Russia’s actions in Crimea but on the general disregard of use of forces rules by the United States and other western countries: As frightening as the Ukraine crisis is, the more general disregard of international law in recent years must not […]

Did I say that the sanctions imposed on Russian officials would end up rewarding them by enhancing their public standing? Well, here, from AFP, is the evidence: US lawmakers ‘proud’ to be blacklisted in Russia row Washington — US lawmakers scoffed at sanctions imposed on them by Russia Thursday, saying it was a point of […]

Stephen Walt, the distinguished Harvard proponent of “realism” in international relations argues that the Crimea debacle confirms the value of realism by showing how Obama’s liberal internationalist instincts led him astray: To be sure, ousted president Viktor Yanukovych was corrupt and incompetent and the United States and the European Union didn’t create the protests that […]

From his speech to the Duma (with my annotations in brackets): However, what do we hear from our colleagues in Western Europe and North America? They say we are violating norms of international law.  Firstly, it’s a good thing that they at least remember that there exists such a thing as international law – better […]

The U.S. and EU imposed asset freezes and travel bans on a handful of Russian and Ukrainian officials connected to the Crimean secession. Most of them are mid-level people; a few are Putin aides. They did not impose asset freezes and travel bans on Putin or other big shots, nor did they impose sanctions on […]

It doesn’t matter that the referendum did not allow voters to express a preference for the status quo, that many of the 90+ percent who favor annexation by Russia (according to (possibly questionable) exit polls) may have been trucked in, that international election monitors were not used, that ballot boxes may have been stuffed, that […]

In an earlier piece, I said If a fair vote is held, and Crimeans vote overwhelmingly to join Russia, then any Western effort to stop them will be seen as an attempt to thwart the will of the people, a violation of their right to self-determination, which is enshrined in the U.N. charter and multiple […]

My argument is in Slate.

No. The U.S. government claims that annexation would violate international law and the Ukrainian constitution because Ukraine has not given its consent to the referendum. But Russia is not bound by the Ukrainian constitution. Nor does any international law prohibit two countries from merging together. The real question is then whether Crimea’s secession–which you might […]

Here’s Putin: We are often told our actions are illegitimate, but when I ask, “Do you think everything you do is legitimate?” they say “yes”. Then, I have to recall the actions of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, where they either acted without any UN sanctions or completely distorted the content of […]