Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

Losing The Forest For The Trees: Syria, Law, And The Pragmatics Of Conflict Recognition, Laurie R. Blank, Geoffrey S. Corn

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The situation in Syria has the potential to become a pivotal moment in the development of the law of armed conflict (LOAC). The ongoing brutality serves as a reminder of the importance of extending international humanitarian regulation into the realm of non-international armed hostilities; however, the very chaos those hostilities produce reveals critical fault lines in the current approach to determining the existence of an armed conflict. The international community's year-long reluctance to characterize the situation in Syria as an armed conflict highlights a clear disparity between the object and purpose of the LOAC and the increasingly formalistic interpretation of …