This study explores the effectiveness of international law in regulating combat operations during international armed conflict. The first part sketches a theory of effective international law, answering the question: Can the legal definition of a legitimate target of attack make a difference for target selection besides actors' material interests and normative aspirations? Part II centers on an empirical investigation of US air targeting and explores the question: Does the law in fact make a difference for the definition of a legitimate target as the influence of International Humanitarian Law on decision-making in US air warfare between 1965 and 2003 increases significantly? The analysis closes with a normative assessment of law in war, discussing whether the conduct of hostilities improves with the increased relevance of law. The study explores the hypothesis that recourse to law has a distinguishable effect on US behaviour in air warfare. I show that International Humanitarian Law is constitutive of the notion that a target is legitimate in as much as an attack on it efficiently contributes to the achievement of the belligerent's overall political goals. I go on to argue that this effect of law does not amount to a normative improvement in combat operations. International Humanitarian Law's indeterminacy accounts for its failure to regulate war in accordance with the "logic of distinction and sequencing". This logic is demonstrated to be normatively preferable to the "logic of efficiency", whose rise in US air warfare International Humanitarian Law actually encourages. However, even if law were normatively successful, as defined here, it would not render international armed conflict acceptable by contemporary moral standards. For effectiveness of International Law to mean moral acceptability of war, international law would have to change the parameters of the use of force in international relations.

This thesis is concerned with the analysis of the war crime of attacking peacekeeping missions under international humanitarian law and international criminal law. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court criminalises “(…) intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under the international law of armed conflict”. However, the exact scope of application of this war crime is unclear and controversial due to the overlap of three different fields of international law: international criminal law, international humanitarian law and United Nations law. These distinct bodies of law have their own principles, objectives and logic and might not necessarily be in perfect harmony with each other at this particular point. Major complexities linked to it include the definition of a peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the status of peacekeeping personnel and objects under international humanitarian law, and the scope of peacekeepers’ right to self-defence. The central research question that this thesis addresses is about the compatibility of this war crime with the system of international law. This is answered in the affirmative. The contribution to knowledge that this thesis offers relates to critical studies on international criminal law, international humanitarian law and the United Nations system. The thesis clarifies the scope of application of the war crime of attacking personnel and objects involved in a peacekeeping mission in accordance with the United Nations Charter. This is the first comprehensive analysis of the overlap of legal regimes with respect to this war crime, which can assist courts in application of the rules relating to the protection of peacekeeping missions.

This dissertation, entitled Justice for Strangers, is an in-depth historical and socio-legal analysis of 131 war crimes trials conducted by the British military in Singapore after the Second World War (the Singapore Trials). These trials involved diverse participants who spoke different languages and hailed from different legal systems and cultures: British and Allied judges and prosecutors; Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean accused; Japanese defence counsel; and hundreds of Asian witnesses from as far afield as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean. My dissertation is based on under-explored archival material and is also the first comprehensive study of the Singapore Trials, trials that are important because of their regional scope. After the war, Singapore served as the hub for British war crimes investigations in Asia. Allied judges and lawyers from Australia, the U.S. and the Netherlands participated in the Singapore Trials. Defendants were prosecuted for war crimes committed not only in Singapore but throughout the region. The Singapore Trials thus reveal much about British and Allied war crimes policy in Asia. This study is organised around three questions: (a) How did the cultural difference between trial participants give rise to problems of language, participation, and argumentation; (b) How did judges respond to these problems and why did they choose to do so in particular ways; (c) What could have been done better in the Singapore Trials and what lessons do these trials hold for present-day war crimes trials. Among others, my findings confirm that participants need to share a certain amount of shared cultural knowledge for effective communication at trial. Cultural learning is nevertheless possible, and judicial intervention can minimise the impact of culturally related communication problems.

The decade from 1899 to 1909 was a critical period in the development of naval strategy. The 1899 and 1907 Peace Conferences and the 1909 London Conference debated, drafted, and formally imposed the laws of war on naval warfare. Consideration of the issues raised by the laws of naval warfare were vitally important for the Royal Navy – the acknowledged leading naval power in the world – and the US Navy – a small but ambitious force stepping onto the world stage following the Spanish-American War. Both navies were concerned about the impact of the laws of naval warfare on their strategic naval planning and sought to mould them to suit their own situations. The historiography of the pre-First World War era, however, has generally disregarded or minimized the significance of the laws of naval warfare for the navies of Great Britain and the United States. The numerous analyses by modern historians of naval strategy before the First World War ignore the 1899 Peace Conference and at best only tangentially consider the laws naval warfare from about 1905 onward. This thesis fills this lacuna in the research and returns the laws of naval warfare to their proper place as an important factor in naval planning in both countries. It establishes the foundational nature of the long-ignored 1899 Peace Conference, and reveals the significant planning and discussions in Great Britain and the United States with respect to the laws of naval warfare, the internal debates and conflicts that arose between the views and objectives of the naval leadership and their respective civilian authorities, and the conflicts that surfaced between the two countries, particularly at the 1907 Peace Conference. This thesis thereby provides new insights and adds to the vibrant discussion of naval history prior to the First World War.

This thesis focuses on the criteria established for the use of force in self-defence in international law. The prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter is subject to exemption by way of approval from the Security Council, or by invoking the right to self-defence. The use of force in self-defence is promulgated in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, but is understood to be restricted by the principles of necessity and proportionality. Since the attacks in the United Stated on 11th September 2001, the law on self-defence has focused on the emergence of non-state actors within the framework of jus ad bellum. In view of this, and the contemporary context, this thesis seeks to reappraise the meaning of necessity in light of terrorism. In particular, the study asks whether the meaning of necessity is affected if self-defence is applied against a non-state actor, and if so, how. It also explores the establishment of the two conditions of self-defence, necessity and proportionality, based on the Caroline incident, and examines how the Caroline doctrine has been interpreted in the formulation of rules incorporated in jus ad bellum. The understanding of necessity in self-defence is also re-evaluated by asking the role of necessity in self-defence framework. It is argued that necessity has two important roles in self-defence law. First, it argued that necessity acts as a requirement to self-defence, specifically by seeking whether an armed attack has taken place, and if so, whether there is an alternative option to the use of non-forcible measures. Second, necessity acts as a limitation to self-defence, establishing that any defensive measures must be employed solely to achieve the legitimate aim of self-defence, which is to halt and repel an armed attack. However, it is difficult to assess necessity as a limitation on the use of force in self-defence when force is directed against terrorist groups.

The Research Dossier comprises a Literature Review and a Research Project in two parts, Research Project Part 1 and Research Project Part 2. These were designed as a series of three interconnected pieces of research, with the Literature Review and its Reflexivity section, functioning as the basis for the two research reports, which use the same set of primary data analysed from different methodological positions. In terms of focus, although the significance of justice to survivors of human rights atrocities has been codified in international law, in which it is assumed to have more than material significance, psychology literature in this area is limited. Given escalating global tensions, in which (in)justice has been cited as a factor at least in the public sphere, this research series focuses on the psychological meaning and construct of (in)justice and its significance to the experience of civilian survivors of war trauma. The research series was initially informed by my personal and professional experience with individuals and communities on the ground, as well as more recently within clinical practice working with survivors in the UK, for some of whom the lack of justice appears to be a significant maintaining factor. In addition to highlighting the significance of injustice to human suffering in this context, deconstructed along with justice, to reveal the social and political influences from which meaning is drawn, the research series is aimed at stimulating debate and further enquiry within the profession as an approach which challenges the dominant epidemiological conceptualisation and individualistic approach to suffering in this context, whilst findings support a more holistic and inter-disciplinary psychosocial approach that meets the needs of survivors and their communities. The research series also reflects on the wider societal contributions that Counselling Psychology as a discipline can make in advancing social justice and in engaging, at least through research and in public debate, with the root causes of suffering, beyond the confines of the therapy room.

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This thesis offers a philosophical defence of military humanitarian intervention (MHI). To do so, it develops the ‘other-defensive conception’ of MHI. The other- defensive conception of MHI draws an analogy between so-called rescue killings in domestic society and MHI. In a domestic rescue killing, a rescuer defends a victim against an unjust aggressor. In fact, the thesis argues that the rescuer has a right to intervene on behalf of the victim. This right is correlated to a negative duty falling upon the attacker not to resist the intervention. By analogy, a state that is guilty of committing Atrocity Crimes against those under its rule forfeits its equal sovereign standing in international society. As a result, an intervening state does not violate negative duties not to aggress the ‘target’ state. Further, like a rescuer in a domestic rescue killing, the intervening state is holder of a (moral) right to intervene. The latter obliges the target state not to resist the intervention. The thesis supports this claim through two additional arguments. First, it argues that because Atrocity Crimes constitute grave moral evils, a military response to them is proportionate. Second, states that commit Atrocity Crimes do not perform their sovereign function of preserving the peace amongst those under their rule. Accordingly, the purpose of MHI is not merely to halt Atrocity Crimes, but also to reconstruct stable political institutions in the target state. On this basis the thesis explores the following four issues: 1) the relationship between the declaration of war and its conduct, 2) the problem of non-combatant immunity, 3) the foundation of a duty to intervene, and 4) the ethics of humanitarian occupation. In doings so, it offers a comprehensive discussion of central problems in contemporary just war theory and the ethics of killing and saving.

The focus of this study is on the concept and contours of NIAC under IHL. Its purpose is to provide further clarity to the process of identifying NIACs under international law. At its most basic, conflict identification is the real-time objective assessment of prevailing factual circumstances in order to determine the applicable legal regime(s). It is thus an exercise in the classification of armed violence providing a detailed critical examination of the material concept of NIAC, including its threshold of activation and corresponding personal, geographical and temporal scope of applicability under IHL.

The ‘principle of distinction’ is core to international humanitarian law, regulating who can and cannot be targeted in armed conflict. It states that combatants and those civilians ‘directly participating’ in hostilities may be targeted in attack, while non-combatants may not be. The law defines what it means to be a combatant and a civilian, and sets out what behaviour constitutes direct participation. The principle of distinction purports to be gender-neutral. However, closer examination reveals that international humanitarian law was based on a gendered view of conflict that envisaged men and women playing particular roles; men as fighters and women as victims of war. Problematically, this view often does not accord with the reality in ‘new wars’ today. Across the African continent women participate in armed groups. While sometimes women fight on the front lines, frequently, women contribute to armed movements in gender specific ways. Serving as fighters, cooks, porters and armed group ‘wives’, women often form the backbone of fighting groups, performing functions on which armed groups are highly reliant. The narrow framing of the principle of distinction means that many of the roles that women typically play in conflict are not recognised as ‘combatancy’ or ‘direct participation’ – even where women are actively engaged in armed movements. While this does provide more women with legal protection from attack, there are indirect negative consequences that flow from this. Using women’s participation in new wars in Africa as a study, this thesis critically examines the principle of distinction through a gendered lens, questioning the extent to which the principle serves to protect women in modern conflicts and how it fails them. By so doing, the thesis questions whether the principle of distinction is suitable to effectively regulate the conduct of hostilities in new wars.