Dear Marko (Marko Milanovic, Professor of Public International Law, vår anm),
the alacrity of your analysis is admirable, as is your evident support for the importance of international law on the use of force. I am writing from the United States, however, where decades of creating exceptions and reinterpretations of law helps explain our leadership’s contempt for the law today.
The United Nations Charter has one standard for the use of force in self-defense, not three. The right arises “if an armed attack occurs”. The right does not depend on what is in the minds of national leaders or the lethality of weapons.
A state victim of aggression is also governed by the Charter and the principles of attribution, necessity and proportionality. Iran can halt and repel Israel’s attacks but is restricted from attacking Israel because doing so would be pointless, owing Israel’s effective defensive shields. Iran has squandered its resources by failing to build its own defensive shield.
The existence of nuclear weapons and the persistent use of military force to retaliate or to signal resolve relate to 1940s realist-deterrence theory. The theory is based on projecting military force regardless of the law. Militaries are programming AI-enhanced computers with deterrence-based data at this moment. They are not inputting the authentic law of self-defense. Geoffrey Hinton, the father of AI, sees us heading to human extinction.
But AI also has the antidote. A shift to defensive shield systems that are more effective than the violent mind games of deterrence, plus diplomacy, can lead to the end of nuclear weapons, proxy wars, and the rest. It can give us the courage to speak legal truth to power. Läs artikel