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Louis René Beres

Louis René Beres
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Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), and is the author of many books, monographs, and scholarly articles dealing with various legal and military aspects of  nuclear strategy. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon, 2003). Over the past years, he has published extensively on nuclear warfare issues in the Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Yale Global Online (Yale University); JURIST; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; The Atlantic; The Washington Times; US News & World Report; Special Warfare (Pentagon); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon); The New York Times; The Hill; The Jerusalem Post; and Oxford University Press. His twelfth book,  published in 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield, is titled: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy.

 

Nullum crimen sine poena, “No crime without a punishment” The ICC Warrant Against Vladimir Putin The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for committing egregious war crimes in Ukraine. With this law-enforcing issuance, the ICC acknowledges inter alia the continuing validity of the Nuremberg Principles under international law. Though the Court most specifically alleges that Putin is responsible for the “unlawful deportation and transfer” of Ukrainian children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation (a genocide-like crime at both the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention), it makes a wider case for linking Putin to certain related crimes of war, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. More generally, because the world legal order remains fundamentally “Westphalian” or anarchic, each individual state has ineradicable Nuremberg enforcement obligations. This is especially true for the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is more than a little ironic that the named state in current aggressions against Ukraine is itself one such member. For legal scholars and policy makers, there are clarifying details. Prima facie, regarding Russia’s current crimes against Ukraine, authoritative international law has long been a part of US law. Though it is ordinarily proper under international law that any one sovereign’s open call for the removal of another represents an impermissible intervention, that expectation must be reversed whenever the called-for departure is based on “crimes against humanity” and/or related Nuremberg-category crimes. Significantly, such egregious crimes are punishable even in the absence of any specific treaty or relevant “positive law.” Justice and the Obligation to Intervene Even in our Realpolitik system of international law – the corrosive global system of “balance” brought into being at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 – a core presumption of world community and solidarity trumps all ordinary prerogatives of national sovereignty. Now, especially after accepting strong reinforcements by the post-World War II Nuremberg Judgment and principles, states maintain not only the right but also the obligation to intervene in other states on behalf of basic (“peremptory”) human rights. Among other obligations, and without any exception, all states are expected to categorically reject UN Charter claims to “domestic jurisdiction” in circumstances wherein major crimes are being committed during an unjust war. Correct legal language should always stipulate that the harms Russia is inflicting upon Ukraine (crimes that include the establishment of “filtration camps” and mobile crematory units) warrant “international concern.” Here, every state member of the “global community” maintains both the right and obligation to stand against the Russian aggressor and with the Ukrainian victim. Scholars and policy-makers could find ample support for this imperative not merely in “common sense” jurisprudence, but in the classical legal writings of Cicero, Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and Emmerich de Vattel. Though such names will appear arcane or esoteric to most readers and diplomats, they were substantially well known to Founding Fathers of the United States. First transmitted into US law by William Blackstone’s eighteenth century Commentaries on the Laws of England – learned observations that represent the recognizable beginnings of current United States law – these jurists were imbued with the philosophy of “natural law.” It is a philosophy that continues to display variously practical and indispensable legal authority. There is more. The natural law origins of the United States have never been seriously challenged or in any way abrogated. Such efforts would have been illogical ipso facto. These origins now call for the active removal of a Russian sovereign aggressor who is making a daily mockery of basic human rights in the victimized state. Scholars and policy makers need look no further than Book 2 of Emmerich de Vattel’s encyclopedic “The Law of Nations” (1758): Says Vattel: “If there should ever be found a restless and unprincipled nation, every ready to do harm to others, to thwart their purposes and to stir up civil strife among their citizens, there is no doubt that all other states would have the right to unite together to subdue such a nation, to discipline it, and even to disable it from doing further harm.” Ironically, US President Joe Biden’s comments on 26 March 2022 concerning Vladimir Putin’s continuance in office actually fell short of his established rights under international and US law. If there should remain any sincere doubters of this shortfall, they need only recall the explicit language of the UN’s Statute of the International Court of Justice at Article 38, which describes as primary source of international law “the general principles of law accepted by civilized nations.” The US Constitutions and Natural Law The Constitution of the United States is based upon variously core foundations of Natural Law, “self-evident” principles that are perpetually binding upon all persons and all sovereigns. While less explicit and harder to identify than codified or “positive” law, these principles are in no way inferior to statute or treaty. Accordingly, they ought never be wittingly minimized or disregarded. The reason-based principles of Natural Law represent more than quaint artifacts of America’s jurisprudential past. As the nation’s current political leaders consider and re-consider a broad variety of critical matters – e.g., US foreign and domestic policy on human rights; US domestic policies on civil rights; issues of nuclear war avoidance; etc. – there are times when the written law could once again be manipulated for politically self-serving purposes. An example of this not-unprecedented problem would be reactionary political arguments for selective infringements or curtailments of civil rights, arguments that often take unsupportable refuge in the Second Amendment. As even the US Constitution is subject to almost any variety of unreasonable interpretations, justice can never be served by this document ipso facto. In essence, no law-based US codifications, no matter how well intentioned or intelligently conceived, could ever claim self-evident meanings. Ultimately, the US Constitution, in the same fashion as any other authoritative codification of national or international law, must depend upon the method and human spirit by which it is consulted or invoked. In those plausibly foreseeable circumstances where adversarial interpretations would hinge less upon any peremptory expectations of order and justice than on variously antecedent preferences and prejudices (e.g., questions of gun control and public order), codified law could be suitably augmented by certain apt considerations of Natural Law. To be sure, per Blackstone, there would always be far-ranging differences on what actually constitutes “the eternal, immutable laws of good and evil,” but Natural Law should still remain a final template of correct legal judgment. There remains one final observation about relevant international law, a system of norms and procedures that is always a binding part of United States law. During the Trump years, American foreign policy routinely turned a blind eye to massive human rights violations in other countries, including genocide and genocide-like crimes. In these unhidden cases, codifications of US law, including specific provisions of the US Constitution, were cynically reinterpreted to support presumptive geopolitical interests. For Trump, Vladimir Putin was always admirable and enviably “strong.” It was hardly “interventionary” or inappropriate for Joseph Biden to declare on several occasions that Russian president Putin “cannot remain in power.” Ultimately, pursuant to the binding Nuremberg Principles and various antecedent norms, even senior Russian military officers who carried out Putin’s illegal orders to target Ukrainian civilians and carry out multiple crimes of war, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity should be indicted, apprehended and prosecuted. As a practical matter, casting any wider nets of criminal containment and punishment will prove difficult to operationalize, but openly identifying some high-level examples ought at least to be attempted. Superior Orders and International Criminal Law With respect to the plea of “superior orders,” even the classical writers on inter­national law rejected it as a proper defense against a charge of war crimes. Even the German Code of Military Law operative during World War II provided that a soldier must execute all orders undeterred by the fear of legal consequences, but added that this would not excuse him in such cases where he must have known with certainty that the order was illegal. This view was upheld in a landmark decision of the German Supreme Court in Leipzig in 1921. According to that Court, a subordinate who obeyed the order of a superior officer was liable to punishment if it was known to him that such an order involved a contravention of international law. The defense of “superior orders” was also rejected at the Einsatzgruppen Trial undertaken by an American military tribunal. According to the tribunal: “The obedience of a soldier is not the obedience of an automaton. A soldier is a reasoning agent. It is a fallacy of widespread consumption that a soldier is required to do everything his superior officers order him to do. The subor­dinate is bound only to obey the lawful orders of his superior.” The overriding obligation to arrest and prosecute Vladimir Putin is linked to another peremptory obligation under international law – the obligation of national self-defense, of “staying alive” as a state. The first stipulated obligation stems in part from the second. According to Emmerich de Vattel’s 1758 work on The Law of Nations, a text that influenced Blackstone, Jefferson and other conceptual founders of US law, “The right to punish injustice is derived from the right of self-protection.” The peremptory right of self-defense in international law is itself drawn from Natural Law, which can never be subordinated to any “man-made” international agreements or any extra-legal considerations of power politics. After the multiple crimes of state committed by Nazi Germany during World War II, international law made certain to create guiding principles to prevent and punish future crimes. Taking the lead in this necessary effort, the United States has since been closely associated with fashioning the derivative Nuremberg Principles, formal norms and procedures to thwart any repeat of Nazi-era crimes of war, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. Today, faced once again with such state-inflicted barbarisms – this time, Russia’s crimes against peace and crimes against humanity in Ukraine – America’s president (regardless of party) should stand firmly behind what was authoritatively settled and codified at Nuremberg. The peremptory legal principle of Nullum crimen sine poena (“No crime without a punishment”) could have no greater or more timely meaning. The ICC arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin is not the first time that this Court has issued such a document for a sitting head of state, but it is the first time that the indicted leader has been a permanent member of the UN Security Council. That said, Russia (like the United States) is not a party to the Rome Treaty creating the ICC, and there is too little chance that Putin will ever have to face an actual trial. Oddly enough, alleged criminal Vladimir Putin has never explicitly denied Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, but instead has identified these “adoptions” as a humane and dignifying legal process. Such identification is not “merely” uncivilized and perverse. It represents an unsupportable contravention of binding Nuremberg principles.

Honoring Nuremberg: The Legal Obligation to Prosecute Vladimir Putin Under ICC Jurisdiction

Op-Eds
By
Louis René Beres
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Nullum crimen sine poena, “No crime without a punishment” The ICC Warrant Against Vladimir Putin The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for committing egregious war crimes in Ukraine. With this...
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Seeking Interior Views: Understanding Russian Crimes Against Humanity “from withín”

Op-Eds
By
Louis René Beres
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“So says science, and I believe in science. But up to now, has science ever troubled to look at the world other than from without?” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man Prima facie,...
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If Trump Returns as President: An Existential Threat to the United States

Op-Eds
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Louis René Beres
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Credo quia absurdum, “I believe because it is absurd”-Tertullian There are many reasons to fear Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, but one remains especially worrisome. It stems from the former president’s conspicuous...
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Walkerssk / Pixabay

Another Gaza War? Legal and Strategic Aspects of Israeli Counterterrorism

Op-Eds
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Louis René Beres
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In its steadily escalating war on Palestinian terror, Israel has a law-based responsibility to limit harm to Arab populations and a concurrent responsibility not to bring war-related suffering to its own populations. To clarify these intersecting...
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Glorifying Riches: America’s Relentless Distortion

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Louis René Beres
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“The rich man glories in his riches, because he feels that they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world…At the thought of this, his heart seems to swell and dilate itself within...
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Ascending to human “oneness” – Jewish philosophy and global unity[1]

Jewish World
By
Louis René Beres
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“The dust from which the first man was made was gathered in all the four corners of the world.” Talmud  The Lethal Pathology of Belligerent Nationalism The belligerent nationalisms of world politics are always injurious. By any...
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Humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Credit: Pixabay.

Looking Behind The “Unspeakable Lies”: Russia’s Criminal War Against Ukraine

Op-Eds
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Louis René Beres
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“Happy are those who know that behind all speeches are still the unspeakable lies….” Rainer Maria Rilke, Possibility of Being Russian fabrications about Ukraine are sweeping and “unspeakable.” Still, the twentieth-century German poet Rainer Maria Rilke can...
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An image from the “Knights of Al Aqsa” video game, in which players become Palestinian terrorists on a mission to kill Israelis. Image: Screenshot.

Israel Against Terrorism: The Primacy of Intellectual Struggle

Op-Eds
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Louis René Beres
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Facing new cycles of terror attacks, Israel must prepare to look far beyond traditional forms of counter-terrorism strategy. Rather than remain preoccupied with high-technology weapons and forces, the nation’s military and political communities need...
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Reason And Anti-Reason In Moscow: Psychiatric Determinants Of “Cold War II”

Op-Eds
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Louis René Beres
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Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine has obviously critical implications for United States foreign policy. Among other things, this expanding Russian “crime against peace” has undermined once residual hopes for superpower reconciliation or “détente.” In essence, whatever...
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Israel, Counter-Terrorism and the Perils of Policy Projection

Op-Eds
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Louis René Beres
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From the beginning, Israel has fashioned its counter-terrorism policies as a military matter of strategy and tactics. Today, little has meaningfully changed in this orientation, and a disproportionate measure of attention and investment remains...
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