Giving Ukraine heavy weapons does not mean NATO is at war with Russia | The Economist - 0 views
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ukraine heavy weapons nato war russia casus belli neutrality collective self-defence
shared by Javier E on 18 Apr 22
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The charter recognises that states have a right to self-defence, and that other countries can join in “collective self-defence” to help them. States are allowed to give military support to victims of aggression, or to impose sanctions on the aggressor, without affecting their own neutral status.
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this law of neutrality was designed for a world where war was an accepted tool of statecraft. That changed with the adoption of the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928, which made it illegal to attack another country unprovoked—a principle later enshrined in the UN’s charter.
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International law, as it developed in Europe beginning in the 17th century, required countries that wanted to stay out of others’ wars to observe strict neutrality. That meant they had to trade equally with both sides of a conflict, as Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, professors at Yale Law School, explained in a recent article. Supplying arms to one side only, or favouring its trade, could make their ships fair game for attack by the other.
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In Ukraine no such Security Council resolution has been adopted—but only because Russia, a permanent member, vetoed it. The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned the invasion
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when the UN Security Council condemns an act of aggression, that resolution is legally binding on all member states.
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As for states becoming co-belligerents, the bar is even higher, argues Michael Schmitt of the United States Military Academy at West Point. German supplies of arms to Ukraine do not make Germany a party to the conflict with Russia because “there are no hostilities between the States concerned”—their soldiers are not killing each other.
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“If Russia wants to feel provoked and attack NATO it will do it, independently of whether we have delivered tanks,”
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thers think that if supplying heavy weapons increases the risk of a direct conflict, it is mainly because they make more inviting targets
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it is wrong to dismiss the legal aspects of co-belligerency entirely: they help prevent a conflict escalating to nuclear war. When America and other NATO countries rule out putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, they emphasise such a step would make them parties to the conflict. This, Mr Haque thinks, is a useful way to draw red lines between nuclear powers. “America is using these rules of international law to signal to Russia that we will come up to a clear red line but not cross it. I think Russia understands that signalling,”
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“But they will try to contest the American interpretation of those rules and invent their own red lines—not based on law—to serve their aims.”
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America never accused the Soviets or Chinese of being co-belligerents, and the nuclear powers never came close to direct conflict. American bombers avoided Soviet freighters: when US Air Force pilots accidentally strafed one in 1967, they were court-martialled. America was restrained not by international law but by the fact that bringing the Soviets or Chinese into the war would not have been in its interests.
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That will be the decisive factor for Russia in Ukraine, too. “If Russia wanted the conflict to spill over and drag us in, it would have already succeeded in doing that,”