In Chapter 4, the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88) serves as a case-study to test (and ultimately refute) a purely enforcement-based formalization of belligerent reprisals. In the field of chemical warfare, reciprocity and enforcement are shown to converge (rather than exclude each other) in the operationalization of belligerent reprisals. Reciprocity is seen as inspiring both the purposes associated with the measure (restoring the balance of rights and obligations and countering unlawful military advantage) and the specific traits that it would take (in-kind breach). In the "war of the cities", belligerents resorted to reprisals with purposes that cannot be encapsulated in the enforcement paradigm. These included the function of ensuring equality of opportunities (as a form of negative reciprocity) and that of strengthening, enacting and agreeing on new standards of conduct when the specific content of applicable rules was not clear or settled (as an aspect of positive reciprocity). As a result, belligerent reprisals appear as a highly flexible tool by which parties to an armed conflict bargain, approve or refuse, and police the concrete legal framework governing wartime interactions.

This chapter examines Lakhdar Brahimi’s agency as a mediator in Syria, while also clarifying how his strategic perceptions affected his mediation behavior. Adopting a slightly different structure than its predecessor, it consists of two sections. The first assesses the mediator’s agency in determining the main mediation policies and responses from his appointment on August 17, 2012 till his resignation on May 13, 2014. During this period, five policy responses stand out—the Eid al Adha Ceasefire, the May 7 Communiqué, responding to the use of chemical weapons, Geneva II, and the mediator’s resignation. A first-level analysis is applied to clarify the mediator’s input on each. The second section moves to explain the dynamics behind his decision-making. To do so, it focuses on the mediator’s perceptions regarding the four categories outlined in the contingency model—the identity of the mediator, the context of mediation, the parties, and the process of mediation. Such analysis helps shed light on the links between the mediator’s perceptions on these four categories and his decision-making in Syria as well as the formulation of more generalizable principles.

Chapter 8 looks at the general rules which apply to the means and methods of warfare, and what kinds of weapons have been prohibited or restricted under IHL. The general principles governing how warfare is conducted are explained – the prohibitions on causing unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury, and on indiscriminate means and methods. The chapter examines a number of particular weapons, such as dum-dum bullets, mines and booby-traps, weapons that leave non-detectable fragments in the human body, incendiary weapons, blinding laser weapons, cluster munitions and chemical and biological weapons. Chapter 8 also looks at the problem of explosive remnants of war being left in the conflict zone, as well as a number of means and methods which have been the focus of much attention but whose legality is highly contested, including nuclear weapons, white phosphorus, depleted uranium munitions, cyberwarfare, drone warfare and targeted killings. The chapter also explains prohibited methods of warfare such as ordering ‘no quarter’, perfidy, siege and pillage, along with the particular rules relating to belligerent reprisals, mercenaries, espionage and autonomous weapons.

This chapter is concerned with Germany’s stand on State responsibility and liability. It is found that Germany mistakenly attributed acts by the Houthi rebels to the State of Yemen and mistakenly assumed that the Houthi rebels are bound by Yemen’s international human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Further, Germany’s position that Russia is responsible for the use of a chemical weapon in the poisoning of Alexei Nawalny will be addressed. It will be argued that Germany should have cooperated directly with Russia rather than only calling the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Concerning the Federal Parliament’s Scientific Research Services’ assessment on claims against China for damages incurred due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, it will be argued that the only conclusion to be drawn from the report is that legal actions against China must be doomed to failure. Finally, the question will be raised whether Malta apologising for a Maltese ambassador who compared the German Chancellor to Hitler forms a rare example of a formal State apology.

Civilians can be protected by eradicating and reducing the availability of weapons that would harm them. While international humanitarian law and international human rights law regulate the use of weapons, international disarmament law outlaws weapons entirely, notably those which tend to have indiscriminate effects and thereby are particularly dangerous for civilians. This chapter considers how anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions, and chemical weapons have been outlawed by dedicated disarmament treaties. It also considers how the UN Arms Trade Treaty regulates and restricts the transfer of almost all conventional weapons.

In the middle of the 1930s, Britain released its first formal statement about air raid precautions (civil defense) and acknowledged that it could offer no guarantee of immunity for civilians in a future war that might involve both air power and chemical weapons. At the start of the decade, Britain had begun to create civil defense for chemical warfare by cultivating first aid for civilians facing chemical arms and continuing to test both chemical weapons and anti-gas protection. It had not yet decided whether to provide gas masks to its entire civilian population. The official release of civil defense measures in 1935 led to vocal opposition from a variety of groups including feminists, socialists, scientists, and religious pacifists like Quakers. Then, the return of the use of chemical weapons in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935–36 dramatically altered the public conversation about the use of such weapons and the devices to protect against them. The return of aerial bombardment to Europe with the Spanish Civil War alongside the use of chemical arms served as a catalyst for developing anti-gas protection as a key component of civil defense preparations for the war to come.

Chapter 20 studies gas, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, looking at each of those prohibited weapons in turn. Poisonous gases were first banned in 1925 – but only their use, not their production or sale. There have been numerous uses of poisonous gases, including today in Syria. Biological and toxin weapons were banned in 1972, although their use is unmentioned in the 1972 Convention. A 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, with a strict verification process, has been more effective. Russia’s continued poisoning of state critics is detailed as an example of state-avoidance of the 1993 Convention. CS (“tear gas”) use is limited by the 1993 convention but still employed as a riot control measure. There is no international law that makes nuclear weapons unlawful. Of the several multinational treaties that bear on nuclear weapons, the most significant is the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which, so far, has but forty-four State Parties. None of the nine nuclear powers have joined, of course. In short, gas, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons are abhorred and condemned until they are used; then the international community looks the other way.

This chapter considers the inter-relationship between the right to life and arms control and disarmament more broadly, encompassing also prohibitions and restrictions on conventional weapons as well as those pertaining to weapons of mass destruction. It offers definitions of both ‘arms control’ and ‘disarmament’ in the absence of agreement under international law as to the scope of each term. It then considers obligations under global arms control and disarmament treaties, first with respect to specific weapons of mass destruction and then with respect to conventional weapons. The use of weapons is addressed separately from disarmament duties and other arms control obligations.

This final chapter presents two case studies, one where the veto was utilized while atrocity crimes were being committed, and one where the veto was threatened (expressly or implicitly) while atrocity crimes were being committed. The first case study traces climbing death tolls and growing recognition that mass atrocity crimes were occurring in Syria, while Russia, sometimes joined by China, invoked the veto on thirteen separate occasions. The vetoes blocked recognition of crimes, investigation of crimes, prosecution of crimes, as well as other measures. That a significant number of resolutions that would have condemned regime and/or opposition crimes failed to pass or were significantly delayed could not have failed to send a metaphorical “green light” to the perpetrators; thus, the vetoes are partly responsible for the still unfolding human tragedy. The second case study traces climbing death tolls in the early 2000s while the Sudanese military and Janjaweed militia committed mass atrocity crimes against the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa, and other ethnic groups in the Darfur region of Sudan. These crimes likely constituted genocide, and, at minimum, war crimes and crimes against humanity. During the key years when the crimes were occurring, China blocked by threat of the veto: initially, any imposition of sanctions on the Government of Sudan, and, permanently, any oil embargo, as well as peacekeeping that was not consensually negotiated with the Government of Sudan. Eventually, a hybrid peacekeeping mission was agreed to and deployed, but only after the height of the killing had occurred and with a weakened mandate. The Security Council’s delays and tepid approach to sanctions and peacekeeping, which significantly increased the death toll, are at least partly attributable to Chinese threats (both express and implied) to use the veto.

This chapter explores the foreign policy discourse of the old Anglosphere coalition during the second phase of the crisis and civil war in Syria. First, the chapter analyses Obama’s warning of a ‘red line’ over chemical weapons use. Second, it explores the route out of the rhetorical entrapment enacted by this phrase. Third, it maps out the discursive debates on war and peace that divided the international community and ran through the Anglosphere in 2012 and 2013. The analysis of this second phase establishes the context in which Islamic State would shoot to prominence at the start of 2014, altering the nature of the crisis and civil war, as well as the language and calculations of Anglosphere states.

This chapter traces the development of the crisis and civil war in Syria through the identification of four distinct but overlapping phases, which structure and set the context for the analysis in the book’s second half. The focus here is on domestic developments within Syria, rather than Anglosphere foreign policy. First, the origins of the crisis are mapped out, beginning with the regional Arab Uprisings in the spring of 2011. During this phase of the conflict, the crisis in Syria developed as a battle for human rights and democratic reform. Second, the chapter traces the war’s next phase, which was dominated by concerns about – and the use of – chemical weapons, following Obama’s 2012 pronouncement of a red line and the subsequent attack in Ghouta in 2013. Third, the chapter charts the rise of Islamic State in 2014. In this period, Syria became the epicentre of a new War on Terror. Fourth, from late summer 2015, the chapter traces the emergence of Syria as an explicit site of Great Power proxy warfare, following the intervention of Russia on behalf of Assad.

This chapter charts Syria’s descent into conflict, from the eruption of demonstrations in March 2011 to the unrestrained brutality that would come to characterise the Syrian conflict – itself an umbrella for a number of distinct conflicts, both civil and international. The chapter focuses on the Syrian government’s leading role in Syria’s conflagration. Beginning with an analysis of the conflict’s origins and the Syrian government’s strategy, which developed from suppression and terror to a ‘total war’, the chapter describes the conduct of the Syrian government against its own people, elaborating on the chemical weapons attacks. It then discusses Russia’s and Iran’s intervention and concludes with an assessment of the implications of the conflict on the civil society in Syria in terms of deaths and casualties, demographic changes in the population of Syria, and the economic repercussions of the conflict.

Chapter 3 discusses how the Civil War dramatically interrupted plans for modernisation, forcing chemists to get involved in war, and the way in which violence, repression and exile divided the chemical community. In the three years of the Civil War, the Republican order progressively faded away and a new dictatorship gained power and social support. War dramatically changed chemists’ daily practices and brought division and suffering to a politically polarised community. Involvement from both sides in the production of chemical gases and chemists’ contributions to strategies of civil defence made the morality of chemistry ambiguous, serving different ideological purposes. Some chemists in the new regime became active repressors, whereas others suffered exile and marginalisation. Political ideology played a crucial role in the ways in which power relations were dramatically reshaped and rearranged, but personal rivalries and professional tensions were probably more important than those expressed in the historical actors’ own accounts. Despite certain tacit trends of continuity, dynamic fields such as physical chemistry, spectroscopy and early biochemistry, which had flourished in the 1930s, had now lost momentum and were reshaped and reorganised. The Spanish conflict profoundly changed contemporary perceptions of science, politics, industry and the military.