A Tale of Two Strategies

What’s At Stake in U.S. Strategy in Syria, Newsday, October 4, 2014. "The Obama administration's strategy for Syria relies on using U.S. air power to support local forces. If this approach fails, as it has failed in the past, the United States will find itself still lacking an effective, politically viable strategy for fighting Islamist terror more than a decade after 9/11 attacks."

Who Gets the Job Done?

Force, Not Law, Got Qaddafi, Contentions, October 24, 2011. "Dan Pipes observes that Qaddafi is the sixth former tyrant to be tracked down like a common criminal in the past decade – Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic from Serbia, Hussein in Iraq, Bin Laden in Pakistan, and now Qaddafi. Very true, but what stands out to me about this list is that none of these successes had much to do with Nuremberg-like processes, the International Criminal Court, or the U.N., no matter how much responsibility is attributed to them."

Kosovo Redux

It's Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Kosovo, Contentions, April 15, 2011. "Does the Libyan affair remind anyone of Kosovo? It’s taking place on Europe’s borders, yet—as always when Europe’s hour strikes—no one from the EU is home. NATO has taken over, but most of its members are unenthusiastic. British leadership is a constant, while France has replaced Germany—even more riven by pacifism today than it was in the 1990s—as Britain’s comrade in arms. The U.S., militarily essential as always, gives the appearance of indecision when compared to Britain, although the sentiments of the British people are less clear."

Koh on the Declaration of Independence, Then and Now

A Sidelight on the ICJ’s Kosovo Decision, Commentary, July 23, 2010. "Yesterday, the International Court of Justice, in a nonbinding opinion that resulted from a referral from the UN General Assembly at Serbia’s behest, ruled that Kosovo’s breakaway from Serbia was not illegal because “general international law contains no applicable prohibition on declarations of independence.” Well, that’s a relief. On its merits, the opinion was correct. But this is exactly the kind of fundamentally political question that cannot be settled by the courts – especially not an international court."